MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY FILM INQUIRER

Animation, characters, presentation, dialogue… Suzume has a lot going for it in all of these regards, even with some storytelling head-scratchers mixed in. I am new to Makoto Shinkai movies. After watching Suzume, guess who is looking forward to binge-watching some more.

To summarise, Suzume is about a teenager, called Suzume, who sets out to save Japan when she finds out she is able to see supernatural forces that others cannot. Her mission: closing mysterious doors bringing about earthquakes and chaos. Thus, she embarks on a journey with a young man turned three-legged chair, Sōta, the original tasker of saving the world, and a keystone turned cat who wants Suzume to like him.

All this to say that I was very interested in and excited about watching the movie! And when the first scene came on, I was hooked. Let’s talk about the animation.

Animation

It’s beautiful. It’s colourful. It’s bright. It’s happy.

The visual interest is on point, and should keep you staring at the screen for the whole length without having to check your watch. That being said, the happy nature of the character style, along with the dialogue, does take something away from the seriousness of a supernatural threat looming over Japan that our characters have to fight. It’s more about the mundane than the epic. I know, mundane details add a layer to your storytelling, but if it overshadows your story’s main purpose, you have got a problem.

Characters

The characters are well-built, if hollow in places. We meet Suzume first, the 17-year-old high school girl with a tragic backstory, whose dialogue slides toward being funny with just her honest observations. At one point, she brings Sōta home with her so she can bandage a wound of his. When he resists, she mumbles that he is a man-child while walking away- a moment that drew quite a chuckle from the audience and me.

At other times, seemingly normal things were happening on the screen, and people kept giggling. I was very confused. But then, maybe the Japanese audio and cultural context conveys more than the English subtitles.

We spend much of the movie with Sōta when he is turned into a seat. As one, he is undeniably funny, but we learn so little about his motivations and origin that it becomes hard to engage with and feel for him. His predicament as a three-legged chair trying to prevent a catastrophe is more of an object for ridicule than a situation of a grave nature.

He is also a bit forgettable since, when the one in trouble for the second half of the movie, he has little screen presence. We don’t have a chance to feel much for him as a love interest for Suzume, or as a saviour for that matter.

Thankfully, every character has a very distinct personality, even the cats. Here’s where the animation pulls more on our heartstrings. We root for the little white cat because he is just so adorably cute.

Story

The characters and animations are the highlights of the movie. The premise is interesting and has a lot of promise, but the story isn’t the most groundbreaking thing you will see. We delve right into the dilemma with Sōta’s introduction in the first act, and then comes the knee-jerk turn into an action sequence of closing the first door. While we are introduced to the supernatural lore of the movie here, however, it fails to go anywhere. Meaning, we aren’t given much information about anything in the end.

Suzume frees the cat by tripping over it as a keystone. When the cat reappears later, we know that he wants Suzume to like her, so he turns Sōta into a chair. But we are never shown or told why. 

Most of these questions have little to no details for answers. These are the things that solidify the world-building aspect of any story. And this story feels more about Suzume’s trauma healing than the inner workings of the supernatural disaster she is supposed to be saving Japan from.

It is still a feel-good movie, but I feel justice could be better done to the story by dividing it into two. The first half is tighter than the rushed second half. The middle has the perfect ending for the movie, so, when it kept going, it felt stretched and forced.

Toward the end, Suzume has a big fight with her aunt, and both of them say horrible things. But there is no proper build-up throughout the movie for it to be something I could relate to. It is a misfire of an emotional scene that could have had a huge impact, minimised even further by introducing another cat (God) right at that moment. It could easily be misconstrued that the cat causes the argument.

Closing thoughts

I still love the idea of relating a natural disaster like an earthquake, which affects Japan so much, with supernatural creatures, Gods, and higher power. The script has some funny moments and chuckle-worthy lines, but that isn’t always enough to pay off what it lacks in storytelling.

The film has an ambitious amount of themes that it starts tugging at but fails to bring a lot of them to full fruition. Only the themes relating to Suzume’s internal struggles, like her repressed memories, her dreams, and her longing for her mother, are done true justice.

I recommend watching this movie for a light-hearted take on disastrous supernatural phenomena. The animation and characters are bound to hold you captive at least.

Suzume can be seen in cinemas now. This review was produced in collaboration with Farrago Magazine.