There are people in this world who decide not to watch anime, for whatever reason. They don’t want to read subtitles, they think they are kid’s shows, they are afraid to have their eyes opened. And then there are the people who have had their eyes opened…
Anime doesn’t have to be some Naruto, Pokemon fad following. What I love about anime is its ability to create and bring life to stories no amount of CGI can bring. The breadth of world building and character creating, the attention to detail and the emotional evocation…
Suzume no Tojimari, brought to you by Makoto Shinkai, the same man who brought us Your Name, does all of that.
The very first scene, with it’s strange and ominous music, reminicient to me of the first time I saw the beginning of Princess Mononoke, or the opening sequemce of Beauty and the Beast. Breath-taking.
Suzume is a movie about a young woman who begins a journey to fix a world destroying problem she inadvertently started. The array of characters, while perhaps stock and seen before in animes of similar style. The drunken karaoke singers. The suspicious toddlers. The trouble-making cat. The aloof young man who walks the world alone, until he meets someone worth walking it with.
Suzume is a movie about a young woman who begins a journey and eventually falls in love. There is no mystery about that. It is about what happens in between. This movie exercises its power to make us feel confused, feel angry, to laugh, and to cry. And in the end, you realize everything has come full circle. When that strange music begins to play again and the credits roll, suddenly you feel the that door close softly behind you.