Suzume: Shinkai's Ambitious Yet Flawed Attempt at Romance and Road Movie

Suzume no tojimari is the third and the last series of Makoto Shinkai’s disaster trilogy. It tells a fictional story about a high school girl, Suzeme meets a mysterious young man, Shota Sometani, whose job is to ‘close doors” to shut out calamity that lies on the other side, or the Worms that spawned from past sorrows will escape from the door and cause a devastating earthquake. The door is supposed to be sealed by the stone cat, Daijin, but Suzume accidentally unsealed it and indirectly caused Daijin to curse Shota to become a baby chair. As a result, Suzume insisted to accompany Shota to catch Daijin while closing the opened door on the way.

Shinkai is good at delivering dream-like visuals, with smooth and detailed drawings.

More or less, Shinkai’s disaster trilogy concerns the haunting grief of the Tohoku Earthquake in 2011. This earthquake had a magnitude of 9.0 and triggered a massive tsunami that destroyed many coastal areas of Japan. The widespread damage, death and displacement brought by the disastrous event had lasting impacts on Japan’s environment, economy and society. Many Japanese artists weep over their sorrow through their artworks. Shinkai turns his despair into hope and brushes it over his animations. In Your Name., Shinkai used a comet as a metaphor for Earthquake. He imagined that in an alternate space-time, a young boy and a young girl swapped bodies but only then realized that the girl was long dead in a disaster already. As the audience was touched by the young boy’s bravery in rescuing the girl at no cost, they would also lament the disaster. Through a tragedy-striking romance, we witness the miraculous power of love, but any settled resolution derived from this process does not necessarily rationalize the tragedy

Shinkai’s characters are always enveloped with a sombre, heroic aura that is expected to self-sacrifice to save the world from greater calamity. In Weathering With You, the female lead Hina is a ‘sunshine girl’ who can manipulate the weather, but the Tokyo citizens expected her to sacrifice herself as an oblation if only the massive rain could stop. Shinkai demonstrated his opinion through the male lead Morishima Hodaka, Amano’s love interest that he would choose love over saving the world. In long term, it’s normal for Tokyo to be flooded with water, but in short term, Hina was everything to Hodaka.

Many times in his films, Shinkai poses to the audience: ‘Is the characters devoting their lives the only solutions to the world falling apart?’. The truth is, the act of God is always beyond human control. Compared to that, the impulse and longing for meeting the loved one is the inevitable energy to break through every obstacle. Suzume said she could not take the fact that living in a world without Shota, so she was equipped with absolute determination to rescue him. Was she being selfish? No, as she said Shota was her everything.

Daijin is a funny-strange character, it ought to be more dramatic. We know so little about Daijin, while he kind of repeat himself throughout the film.

In a larger aspect, everything decays and will fade away as time goes by. Shinkai emphasizes that we should cherish time with our loved ones. Some said that Shinkai downplayed the seriousness of calamity against private emotions. I supposed this statement assumed the magical gift Shinkai introduced in his animated world was true in reality. As a matter of fact, humans are helpless in the act of God. Shinkai utilized the magical setting in his trilogy to magnify the scope of humanity while nothing of the catastrophe was understated. Shinkai presented that even if two lovers can surmount obstacles that seem impossible to get over, then what it will be if everyone does the same?

In Shinkai’s story, we can see abundant personal feelings and deep loneliness in adolescence being revealed. In Suzume no tojimari, he further condoled the lost life which was once vivid before but now turned into ruins. The door shutter has to recall the past living scenes of the lost land to close the door as well as sealing the trauma. Through this setting, Shinkai argues that we should heal our wounds by giving them a good closure instead of abandoning them.

Nevertheless, the plot of Suzume no tojimari is too bonded with Shinkai’s old fashion that it is easily predictable. The character images are still powerful but clichéd, and the romance happened too fast as if the characters were forced to be together. The plot lacks originality and depth. The most probable cause might be Shinkai underestimated the difficulty of mixing fantasy with a road movie. The male lead was cursed to become a chair, and Shinkai was just out of ideas to make him interesting. Moreover, Shota was forced to be asleep for most of the time, while the audience needs to take more time to understand how Suzume develop her feelings towards him. It did make sense that Suzume had a secret crush on Shota since the beginning, but the audience would require some still moments of Suzume unfolding her impulse. The problem was that Suzume was forced to take constant trips to help Shota to close doors, so we can hardly see she sufficiently practice her love feelings. We were not so sure about whether she closed the door to saving the world or saving Shota until the end. When we finally see her executing her determination of sticking with Shota, it only appears as forced romance.

The film did not say how Suzume had anything to do with door-shutters. She just suddenly possess the ability.

The ending supports Shinkai’s idea of love above all, but it is barely convincing. The audience can find it hard to sympathize with Daijin, the stone cat’s feelings toward Suzume, and it is even kind of disappointing that the resolution has to be Daijin sacrifice itself to help Suzume to save Shota. We don’t see much inner activity of Shota as we don’t see much internal transformation of Daijin. Daijin made it very clear that it hated Shota, and there wasn’t a solid excuse that Daijin would trade its new life for saving Shota.

Also, Daijin’s ability to shift into a giant, oval cat appears to be borrowed from Miyazaki’s image of Totoro. This also disappointed some original fans of Shinkai, as his fans always believe that Shinkai has a distinctive difference from Miyazaki, though Shinkai was influenced by the latter.

However, despite the unconvincing plots and inconsistencies, Shinkai still presented a stunning aesthetic of visuals and a heartfelt sound track to his fans. He might not be an excellent storyteller as he was back then, but he is still a great animator as he has always been.