Review of Suzume

Far gone the days when Makoto Shinkai gave birth to a work that was not compliant with the norm. Not desperate trying to satisfy the taste of contemporary. Not dependent too much in the quality of animation spectacle, but rather giving full attention to the character-driven story, which will not force the matter of self-projections. Makoto Shinkai who is loyal to his distinctive theme of "distance": 5 cm Per Second, Gardens of Words, Voices of a Distance Star, and specifically Children Who Chase Lost Voices. The old Shinkai's movie that's basically the perfect version of Suzume While the animation is still pretty much a miraculousworks, it somehow feels inferior to the level of immersion that is Gardens Of Word or Your Name

Suzume No Tojimari, on paper has an interesting idea for a subtext: Lifting the story of disaster trauma, wrapped in a fictional rendition of culture (earthquake) and reality (decreasing of population) of Japanese rural society, while inserting a subplots about the phenomenon of young people who runaway. Very typical of Shinkai. But unfortunately, it's the same cases here with Weathering With You, which is lost in the complexity of the plot and subtext, but does not have a strong characterization to become the navigation.

It would be very easy to lose touch in the early half of the duration, because the character used by Makoto Shinkai was too safe in the "teenager" archetype. It is very obvious that the characterization is not the strongest aspect of this movie, that's why they are very dependent on their main premise to move everything behind the screen. But the price that Shinkai must pay in order to create an empty characters, a justification tools, a "Just Like Me", with the aim to be more easily projected with his audience, is to sacrifice the story itself to be superficial! Subtext which should be hidden in the narrative, is now forced to be the main plot of the story. A despair attempt so that the movie seems to still have a message, and so that the young audiences who do not have the patience in investigating a movie, can see this story and consider themselves smart!

The bottom line is, Makoto Shinkai after or since Your Name, only knows and wants to write stories about wet dreams of young people on social media