Suzume: a shallow, bland but well-intentioned adventure

Suzume has been one of the most hotly anticipated new anime movie releases for 2023. With one look at who was in charge of the film, it’s no wonder. As the latest movie created and directed by Makoto Shinkai of Your Name fame, Suzume looks like a departure of sorts from his usual staples that made him so nationally and internationally beloved.

Despite that, some things remain guaranteed when it comes to a Makoto Shinkai film: Radwimps on its soundtrack, romance and stunning visuals. But does this make for a recipe for success each and every time? Let’s get into it.

The Shinkai Makoto formula is not for me

Makoto Shinkai’s latest film Suzume recently released at the time of writing, and it only adds to my confusion about why he is such a popular director, if I’m going to be brutally honest. I will admit right out of the gate that Your Name did not do anything for me. Its body-swapping premise made for extremely weak relationship building, since its main characters never seemed to properly interact with one another over the course of the movie. This is a pretty important element in a movie that is supposedly telling a love story!

But my biggest grievances with Shinkai’s most popular film does not stop there. The main characters of Your Name have very little going for them in terms of any substantial depth, such as motivations or reasons for us to care about them. What’s worse, characters outside of the main pair feel even more empty, with character dynamics across the entire movie severely lacking in scope and feeling.

To say that I take great issue with Shinkai’s writing is an understatement considering all of this, and Suzume further highlights said weaknesses of his even further.

Another anime movie that prioritises style over substance

Suzume is arguably the shallowest title from within Shinkai’s filmography to date. The themes of loss, grief and acceptance in relation to natural disasters should have been the beating heart of the movie. Suzume’s character development was heavily mismanaged with all the story threads that were barely explored, suggesting the films runtime was too short to give her a proper sense of growth. That’s only one specific aspect of the film that completely falls off, due to the sheer amount of themes and topics the movie tries to address.

This is a massive issue, as it means that none of these themes are given a sense of weight and emotional engagement; it’s all lost by how shallow everything in the movie is. As a prime example, the romance subplot is one of the worst romances I’ve seen shoehorned into any kind of film.

It comes out of nowhere when Suzume’s aunt suggests that Suzume is trying so hard to bring Souta back into her life because she loves him. If it had been platonic I would have been all for it, but trying to pull yet another romance out of a Shinkai film once more is becoming a tired dynamic at this point, especially when it is as undeveloped as it is here. Souta even disappears by the latter portion of the movie, which further plays down the significance of their supposedly blossoming relationship. As always, the two were strangers as of very recently, and we have to believe that they fell in love in barely a couple of days.

To add even more confusion to this approach is the bare-bones amounts of characterisation and depth Souta has going for him. He has nothing going for him other than looking like a knock off Howl. His storyline presents themes of familial angst, but since he gets turned into a chair almost immediately that storyline is left in the dust. There is no emotional weight to him and his character, and by the end of the movie I was repping for his teacher in training friend more so than him. At least he had a personality to speak of.

In fact, Suzume desperately trying to save Souta by the halfway point completely overshadowed every single other part of the movie. With the subject matter presenting a variety of opportunities to explore topics such as the wider effects and consequences of natural disasters, Suzume’s character-specific journey of overcoming loss and grief, working towards eventual acceptance, had the the makings of something profound and special.

Unfortunately, the depth just wasn’t there, and the movie feels like a missed opportunity for an emotional experience with solid takeaways as a result.

The few things I did appreciate

That’s been a lot of criticising, so here’s everything that I did like about the movie now. For one, I appreciate that Shinkai did something different with the premise being that bit more fantastical. This resulted in a far more grand, adventurous exploration of natural disasters. CG was also really well done and not at all distracting, but as always, having appealing visuals can’t save a movie when everything else about it is so lacklustre. But that chair animation was peak cinema.

On that note, I was thoroughly impressed by its marketing leaving so much of the movie’s true content ambiguous enough to make for plenty of surprises in its narrative. Its trailer especially was extremely vague, leaving the revelations of the chair as a specifically well-hidden secret – unless you have already been spoiled, that is.

Finally, the many encounters with side characters in Suzume were a vast improvement to my grievances towards Shinkai’s previous films. While no-one could put a foot wrong because they are all so lovely, it functions well in Suzume’s narrative by highlighting the evident goodness in our current climate. People can be and are as kind and giving as the characters Suzume meets across her journey, and this acts as an uplifting reminder that none of us should keep living in the past.

When there is so much joy and so many new adventures to seek out in the present day, overcoming our own personal losses, grief and nihilism is well worth pushing through the pain to experience in our own daily lives.

In conclusion, much like Shinkai’s entire filmography, Suzume is bound to be much more of a hit than a miss for the majority of moviegoers. While I really do appreciate him trying something different with the movie being that much more action-packed compared to his previous creations, Suzume does more to highlight his shortcomings if you ask me. It lacks substance and emotional depth.

But as always, if you enjoyed the movie, then more power to you. We won’t all be as moved or touched with the same story — and that’s okay!

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