When a cat-like animal suddenly appears on social media, being chased by a three-legged chair, you’re in the middle of the story of Suzume.
But let’s get to the beginning of director Makoto Shinkai’s animated masterpiece, whose story is so complex that I won’t go into every detail in my review.
Suzume is the name of a 17 year old girl who lives with her aunt in a small town in Japan. In her dreams she always reminisces about her mother, sees herself as a small child running across a wide meadow, but there is no trace of her mother.
The only thing that remains from that time is a three-legged high chair, which she still has in her room. On the way to school she meets the young man in picturesque surroundings and while she slowly passes him on her bike and thinks about whether she has not seen him somewhere before, he speaks to her and asks about an old ruin that is supposed to be nearby, he is there looking for an old door. Quite excited, she tells him the way, learns from him that his name is Souta, then she continues on her way. Having just arrived at the school, she continues to wonder about Souta and is annoyed that she didn’t ask him more. Without further ado, she turns around and goes to the ruins, and while looking for him, she discovers a striking old wooden door located below a large old glass dome surrounded by shallow water. Suzume goes to the door, opens it and another world is revealed to her with an almost magical starry sky and a large expanse of meadow just as she knows it from her dreams. Of course Suzume would like to see more of this world and with a courageous step she steps through the portal, but it doesn’t work. She passes through the door, but does not enter the other world. Then, behind the door, she discovers a striking stone on the ground that catches her attention. When she holds it in her hands, it transforms into a cat-like mythical creature which then simply runs away. All these impressions seem to have unsettled Suzume and so she quickly leaves that mystical place and returns late to school.
But while she talks to her friends and her eyes roam out the window, she sees a large cloud of smoke rising from the exact spot where the ruins are located.
At the same moment, a light earthquake begins and all the cell phones in the school emit a loud warning tone because of the quake. When the haunting is over again and she looks back at the smoke, she can’t believe what she now sees. The smoke has turned into a gigantic red worm, but her classmates can’t see it. Suzume leaves the school again and goes directly to the ruins. Here she discovers that the source of the worm is the door she opened, and the creature “pours out” of the portal with full force. At the door she discovers Souta, who tries with all his might to close the door, unsuccessfully. Suzume intervenes, again the earth begins to shake. Through a positive memory on the part of Suzume, the two then gain enough strength to close the door at the last moment. In the meantime, the gigantic worm had bent over the entire city and was slowly falling on the city. But after the portal was closed, the worm dissolved completely with a loud bang and fizzled out in a rainstorm.
Suzume takes Souta home and there he explains to her that he is a key guardian. His job is to find portals in ruins and close them before the worm from the afterlife can break out into the present world to cause great damage. There is a problem, however, because one of the two so-called keystones that normally guard the portals is missing, and Suzume remembers the stone she found on the floor after unsuccessfully passing through the door. The stone that transformed into the cat-like creature in her hand. And while Souta is recounting her experience, said cat appears at the window and begins a sparse exchange of words with Suzume and before you know it Souta is gone the next moment but what happens next is probably the craziest thing you’ve ever seen in an anime. Souta has been cursed by the cat and from now on has to be content in the “body” of a three-legged chair. About this curse he is of course not at all enthusiastic and while the cat makes off, Souta alias chair pursues the animal, which inevitably ensures that you can not miss such a “duo” and so the two land their very own social network fame. The nimble cat, which was christened Daijin by her fans, manages to escape from the chair and Suzume, but obviously doesn’t know the implications of social networks and based on the constant photos taken of the cute animal, the two almost always know where the animal is currently staying. However, the number with the cursed chair is not the only problem, because due to the fact that now one of the keystones is traveling through Japan alive and kicking, the worm keeps breaking into different places in the country and Suzume along with the chair (Souka) have a lot to do, so that it does not come to a big disaster.
Conclusion:
As one or the other media already read, after more than 20 years an animated film has made it into the competition again. In 2002 the stage belonged to Chihiro’s Journey to Wonderland (in the competition it was called “Sen to chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away)” at that time).
This is a commendable decision, especially since anime films are often still often declared as children’s films and also otherwise rather a niche existence, although the offer is quite extensive and many anime are even dubbed in German.
Suzume shines above all with impressive images and a lot of attention to detail. I especially liked the scenes in the ruins in whose context then in the fight against the worm of Suzume always old memories of this place were visually represented, so for a moment came back to life and with these beautiful memories gained strength against the actually unstoppable evil. Positive vibrations to fight against something almost unstoppable
Actors:
Nanoka Hara (Suzume Iwato)
Hokuto Matsumura (Souta Munakata)
Eri Fukatsu (Tamaki Iwato)
Shota Sometani (Minoru Okabe)
Sairi Ito (Rumi Ninomiya)
Kotone Hanase (Chika Amabe)
Kana Hanazawa (Tsubame Iwato)
Ryunosuke Kamiki (Tomoya Serizawa)
Hakuo Matsumoto (Hitsujiro Munakata)
Director:
Makoto Shinkai
More about the movie:
https://www.berlinale.de/en/2023/programme/202307156.html
Trailer / film clip:
