Suzume (film)

Suzume (すずめの戸締まり, Suzume no Tojimari, lit. "Suzume's Locking Up") is a 2022 fantasy anime film by Makoto Shinkai, his eighth major production. Its soundtrack sees the return of RADWIMPS, this time in collaboration with Kazuma Jinnouchi, and with TikTok star Toaka doing vocals on the eponymous song. It is animated by CoMix Wave Films and distributed by Toho. In Japan, the film released in November. It is released in April 2023 in English speaking countries. The film was a box office hit, quickly becoming the fourth anime film to surpass the "$300 million in box office revenue" milestone, following behind Spirited Away, Your Name, and Demon Slayer: Mugen Train. Most of the revenue came from Asian regions, most notably Japan, China, and South Korea. A home video release is announced for September 2023.

Twelve years ago, then four-year-old Suzume Iwato (Nanoka Hara) lost her mother Tsubame (Kana Hanazawa) in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

In present day, Suzume is now a high school student staying with her aunt Tamaki (Eri Fukatsu) in Miyazaki Prefecture, Kyushu, southwest Japan. One morning while cycling to school, she passes a college-age young man looking for ruins, who she later learns is named Souta Munakata (also spelt Sōta Munakata, Hokuto Matsumura). She beats him to an abandoned onsen resort, where she finds a solitary door through which an inaccessible starry sky can be seen. In the process, she dislodges a keystone that turns into a white cat. Later, returning to the resort from school after seeing a wormlike maroon emanation from that direction, she reencounters Souta and helps him close the door the emanation is coming through. He gets injured in the process, and Suzume takes him home to bandage the wound. However, the cat appears and curses him to be bound into a three-legged chair that Suzume's mother had made for her. Suzume and Souta now have to pursue the cat, which social media nicknames Daijin (Ann Yamane), across Japan in the hope of subduing it before it opens any more doors to let disaster through again.

The film is much closer to a Studio Ghibli production than typical Shinkai films, picking up the baton from Children Who Chase Lost Voices. Suzume's town at the start of the film feels like something out of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, with its cozy vibes and bay. Suzume encounters several friendly characters who are like characters from My Neighbor Totoro. There's a couple of Shout-Outs and Homages to Ghibli films as well. Shinkai cited Kiki's Delivery Service as a major source of inspiration for the film. Have you ever wondered, "Hey, what if Ghibli made a film about Eldritch Abominations and chairs?" Suzume is that exact film.

Tropes used in Suzume (film) include:

Abandoned Area: Many doors are located in abandoned areas. The first door Suzume closes is located in an abandoned town, the second in an abandoned school, and the third in an abandoned amusement park. To close them, Suzume has to envision how things were before.
Adult Fear:
- Screenings in Japanese theatres specifically warn audiences about realistic earthquake alerts.
- Your loved one goes missing and you never get closure even years later.
- Your loved one apparently runs away from home and refuses to explain in any detail.
- The Invisible to Normals nature of the worm, while obviously fantastic, reflects a very real possibility overlapping with Paranoia Fuel that danger could be lurking around the corner at any moment with you not knowing until it's too late.
- You lose someone right before your eyes, helpless to do anything.
Aliens in Cardiff: While the story does have vital scenes in Tokyo, it starts and ends in the Tōhoku region, and various intermediary scenes are set in the less well-known Miyazaki, Ehime and Hyōgo Prefectures.
The Alleged Car: Serizawa's fancy-looking convertible doesn't have a roof that can close properly, which becomes troublesome when it starts raining.
Amusement Park: The third door is located in an abandoned amusement park in Kobe.
Another Dimension: The Ever After, where the souls of the dead go and worms are held by keystones. It is impossible for living grown-up characters to reach the dimension; the only possibility of entering the dimension is going through a Portal Door at a young age or, if you're grown up, going back through the door you used to enter the dimension as a child.
Animalistic Abomination: Daijin looks like a white cat, but there's something clearly off about its left eye, and that's even before it goes Glowing Eyes of Doom or sounding way too gleeful about the havoc the worm will wreak.
Animate Inanimate Object: A chair. Specifically, the three-legged Souta-chair that can somehow talk and walk and chase a cat.
Bad Vibrations: A small earthquake usually signals a worm is about to escape. When this happens, someone needs to do speed door closing. Quickly.
Blue and Orange Morality: Souta says that the gods do not think the way humans do. Daijin demonstrates this throughout the course of the story by playing hopscotch with the human-made line between "good" and "evil".
Book Ends: An early scene has Suzume cycling to school and meeting Souta going the other way. The last scene does the same.
Boring Return Journey: The journey to get to the door allowing Suzume to enter the Ever After is filled with difficulty, obstacles, and doors to close. The journey back home is pretty uneventful, as outlined in the Creative Closing Credits.
Cell Phone: Unlike a lot of other animated features, cell phones have a dominant role throughout the film.
- Tamaki tracks Suzume's location on her phone by looking at her bank transactions.
- Suzume uses her phone to see how far she is from home.
- Social media posts are used to track Daijin's location and move the story forward.
- Suzume often receives texts from a very angry Tamaki.
- Suzume has real world apps like Spotify and Twitter installed on her phone.
Cerebus Retcon: Jokes about chair!Souta sleeping like a log lose their humour once it's revealed that Daijin binding him to the chair will also lead to him turning into a replacement keystone, a process that is sapping his humanity and vitality.
Character Title: Guess who the main character is. No seriously. Guess. We will give you three hints: the character's name starts with "S", ends in "E", and shares a name with the title of the 2022 Makoto Shinkai film Suzume.
Clarke's Third Law: When chair!Souta starts moving and talking in front of Rumi's children, Suzume tries to pass it off as a chair robot with AI.
Conspicuous CG: A lot of effort was put into blending CG elements with traditionally animated elements, but it's still easy to see that worms and some vehicles are computer generated. Shots with camera movements stand out. It's far less noticeable than other examples, but still noticeable regardless. That said, the CG is integrated so well you can't complain; in fact, the conspicuous artificiality of the worms helps make them all the more disturbing.
Contrived Coincidence:
- Daijin jumps from the ferry to a passing boat, which fortunately happens to also be headed for Ehime.
- Suzume and Souta meet Chika in Ehime while the latter is riding a scooter, which allows them to reach the abandoned school that is the worm's next place of emergence in time.
- Rumi's car passes by the bus stop where Suzume and Souta are waiting, and she and her family happen to be going home to Kobe where Daijin was believed to be going. Daijin later appears at her bar.
- Serizawa just happens to be outside Ochanomizu Station when Suzume is passing by. Then Tamaki just happens to find her there as well, as opposed to any of the many, many other stations in Tokyo she could have tried looking at.
Cool Key: The keys used to close doors. The word "elaborate" doesn't begin to describe them.
Cosmic Keystone: There are two Keystones that keeps Eldritch Abominations trapped in the Ever After dimension. If a Keystone is missing, then a worm can escape into the real world. When that happens, if it collapses onto the ground, it will be very bad and a lot of people will die. If both are dislodged, things will go From Bad to Worse.
Creative Closing Credits: The film proper does a Close on Title after Souta and Suzume close the door near Suzume's old house. The first part of the credits then play over an epilogue showing Souta and Suzume parting ways at a train station and a montage of Suzume and Tamaki returning to Miyazaki while visiting the people that had been met along the way. The rest of the credits are in the standard white-on-black.
Cue the Sun: Right before the climax, the sun is setting in the human world. After the climax, after Suzume returns back to the human world, the sun rises the next morning to support the optimistic future depicted in the end credits.
Delaying Action: In the climax, Sadaijin fights the worm about to escape, giving Suzume enough time to rescue Souta. It also buys precious time while the two figure out how to obtain keystones to trap the worm. It's a losing battle, and Sadaijin will not win; the worm can only be slowed down.
Deliberately Monochrome: Many of Suzume's flashbacks, along with scenes of Souta being trapped as a keystone, are depicted in black and white.
Disappeared Dad:
- Tsubame was a single mother; whether Suzume's father abandoned them or died or why else he's absent from their lives is never revealed.
- Rumi is also apparently a single mother to her twins. The father is never shown or discussed.
Disturbed Doves: The worm itself is Invisible to Normals, but the birds its emergence disturbs aren't. One shot of it reflected in a bird's eye implies they can sense it just fine.
Doomed Hometown:
- Suzume's birthplace was destroyed by the tsunami.
- While it doesn't get destroyed in full, the first worm emerging near Suzume's home prompts her to begin her adventure.
Door of Doom: The very last door of the film, the one where Suzume enters the Ever After. It's a pretty ordinary door, even a bit run down, but plays a significant role in resolving the conflict.
Eiffel Tower Effect: Many famous landmarks of Japan like the suspension bridge between Shikoku and Honshu, Mt Fuji, Tokyo Tower and the Kaminarimon appear. Suzume even complains she missed sighting Mt. Fuji on a train trip.
Emergency Broadcast: Phones receive emergency messages in the form of a red pop-up, warning of an earthquake. This happens right before a worm is about to escape.
Exact Eavesdropping: Tomoya complains about how Souta missed his exam to become a teacher. There aren't a lot of good things about becoming a chair, but one of the few good ones is how you can eavesdrop on entire conversations. No one will notice; you blend right into the background! However, this poses a question: how come something this important is being talked about at the exact time Souta is in the room? It is a wonder that Tomoya and Suzume aren't having a good Talk About the Weather.
False Camera Effects: Take a shot every time the film uses bloom, screen shake, or depth of field. You'll be dead in thirty minutes.
Foreshadowing:
- When Suzume first picks up the keystone, around seven minutes into the film, she remarks it's cold. You know what else feels cold? Souta as a chair quickly turning into a keystone.
- Daijin keeps getting sighted on social media in ways that make conveniently obvious where it's at. Almost as if it's not actually the one opening the doors to let the worm out...
Ghibli Hills: Present in a lot of abandoned locations where doors are located. The hills are covered in vivid blades of grass.
Ghibli Plains: The film opens and ends with Ghibli Plains near night time in the Ever After dimension. The trope is used to create a feeling of vastness.
Ghost Town: The Portal Door which Suzume first closes is located here, an abandoned onsen resort. Another portal takes the form of the main entrance of a school where the surrounding town was abandoned following a landslide.
Got Volunteered: When Daijin bound Souta in Suzume's chair, it also turned him into a replacement keystone without his having a chance to refuse.
The Gump: In an antagonist variant, the worm's escapes are responsible for various historical disasters. The 1923 Great Kantō earthquake is explicitly said to be one of those.
Happy Rain: Downplayed. When a door is closed, the worm leaving through that door transforms into rain droplets falling towards the ground. The rain subsides after a couple of seconds. It's not much, but it is more welcome than the Eldritch Abominations they were.
Homage:
- Suzume falling from the Tokyo sky resembles the similar occurrence in Weathering with You.
- Souta and Suzume parting ways at a train station at the end is very similar to Takaki and Akari doing the same in 5 Centimeters per Second.
- "Rouge no Dengon" ("Lipstick Message") is played as Suzume travels to her hometown far, far away. A delivery truck with a black cat is seen. What other film plays "Rogue no Dengon" during a long trip which also involves delivery services? Kiki's Delivery Service. Given "Rogue no Dengon" is an iconic song in Kiki's Delivery Service, it's impossible for a Hayao Miyazaki fan to not think of Kiki during the sequence.
In a Single Bound: Both chair!Souta and Daijin make blatantly superhumanly massive jumps.
Invisible to Normals: Suzume quickly learns to her horror that, apart from herself and Closers like Souta and his grandfather, nobody can see the worm. Used to particularly chilling effect in Tokyo, where the worm's ongoing descent is juxtaposed with shots of how the muggles see nothing more than an apparently normal day.
Karaoke Box: A minor part of the story. There's a Karaoke Box in the bar Rumi owns, which Suzume encounters during her travels.
Masquerade: Closers put up one so that worms will never be revealed to the general public. It's quite an easy Masquerade to pull off, given how Muggles cannot see the worms. However, Closers must do their jobs before any worm fully escapes into the world, otherwise the "Top Ten Most Deadly Earthquake" list will get a new entry.
Memento MacGuffin: The chair Suzume's mother made for her as a young child. One of its legs snapped off, though Suzume can't remember how. Poor Souta was cursed to become the chair.
Muggles: Normal people cannot see worms, and will go about their day to day life as usual even when the world is ending, because they don't notice anything. Only Closers (and Suzume) can see the Eldritch Abominations and do something about them.
The Needs of the Many: Souta's grandfather tries to persuade Suzume to leave Souta's sacrifice be because it spared the lives of the Tokyoites. It doesn't work.
Never Got to Say Goodbye:
- Suzume never got to say parting words to her mother.
- Inverted with the visions of the people who used to stay in the Tōhoku area, as they said goodbye but never got to be welcomed back.
Next Sunday A.D.: The film is set in 2023 and was released in 2022 in its native Japan, 2023 for the rest of us, with no obvious difference from reality.
Ominous Latin Chanting: Chanting occurs whenever Souta and Suzume try to close a door against the worm. The soundtrack has a field day with the chanting.
Portal Door: The solitary doors in the ruins, which apparently lead to a starry area. It's impossible for her to step through, though. Any attempts to do so only lands her on the other side of the door. They're portals to the Ever-After, where the souls of the dead go and all time is present simultaneously, and the living normally can't go there. A young Suzume somehow fell through one, and the only way to go back is to find the same one again.
POV Cam: Right after Suzume helps Chika, a door opens and is about to unleash a worm. A POV shot is used to showcase the urgency of Suzume running as fast as possible to close it in time.
Product Placement: While taking Suzume on as a passenger, Rumi stops to get McDonalds while on the way home, with a fair bit of time in the following shots dedicated to it. Shinkai even made an official commercial crossing the film and Macca's.
Road Movie: Suzume goes on the road and travels to many different places in Japan trying to catch Daijin and turn chair-Souta back to normal. Then she goes on the road again trying to turn Keystone-Souta back to normal. Each place usually has a door which needs to be closed. Among the way, Suzume meets many different people who help her.
Sailor Fuku: The uniform of Chika's high school, contrasting Suzume's which has a normal collar. Chika notes the difference as one of the signs that Suzume's Not From Around Here.
Scenery Gorn: The film opens on the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Many scenes take place in abandoned, overgrown, ruined areas. The climax occurs among a landscape of flaming wreckage.
Scenery Porn: There are lots of shots which focuses on green scenery, starry skies, or wide shots of the sea. Especially prominent in the Ever After.
Screen Shake: Occurs in any scene involving door closing.
Sealed Evil in a Can: The worm is normally trapped in the Ever-After underneath Japan's mortal realm by two keystones in eastern and western Japan.
She Cleans Up Nicely: Initially appearing as a frumpy single mom, Rumi dolls up noticeably for her work as a bar hostess.
Shout-Out:
- An internet user remarks they feel like they are in Whisper of the Heart after seeing Daijin run through town like Moon. In Whisper of the Heart, a cat runs around town and leads The Hero Shizuku to an antique store. The user must feel Daijin is leading them somewhere.
- When Chika asks Suzume how she caught the runaway oranges, the latter says that "My body reacted before I could even think."
- Several to Shinkai's own Your Name despite the lack of common continuity -
  - Suzume wonders aloud if she's met Souta before.
  - Listening to voices of things that don't normally speak is an important part of both works' supernaturality.
  - Both Mitsuha and Suzume have epiphanies that lead to them realising that their seemingly fantastic experiences were Real After All.
  - A phenomenon that allows people separated by time to interact plays an important role.
  - A shot of a sliding train door is identical to how that's depicted in the earlier film.
  - "Itomori High School" is played at one point.
- Like in 5 Centimeters per Second, the main character has an apparent dream of an older loved one who is dearly missed set in an otherworldly landscape.
- "Welcome to K&A" from the Weathering with You soundtrack is played at a different point.
Skeleton Key: The key Souta carries around works to close any door, no matter its location, size, or orientation. Usually, you want a key to unlock a door. Not this time, though. It would be very bad if the key unlocks stuff. The best part about the key? It doesn't make skeleton related puns!
Slice of Life: The main part of the film opens this way, starring the journey of an Ordinary High School Student biking to school. Fantastic sequences of closing the doors are also contrasted with mundane life with the people that Suzume encounters.
Soft Water: Justified in the case of Suzume falling from the Tokyo sky as Daijin takes on a giant form that covers and cushions the impact.
Somebody Else's Problem: After sealing the worm over Tokyo and closing the corresponding door, Suzume has suffered Clothing Damage and bloody injury. Lots of people mutter about her condition behind her back, but no one steps forward to help her.
The Song Remains the Same: The ending theme remains in Japanese in the English dub.
Stable Time Loop: In the climax, after sealing the worm, Suzume sees her younger self in the Ever-After and realises that the dream she had of her mother finding her younger self while carrying the chair? That was she herself all along. Which creates the issue that the chair Suzume has is three-legged because it was already three-legged when present Suzume gave it to past Suzume... so how did it lose a leg in the first place?
String Theory: Souta has such a board in his apartment, but apart from a map of Japan, what's on it isn't shown in detail.
Talking Appliance Sidekick: A talking chair sidekick. Souta remains as a walking, talking three-legged chair for half the film after being transformed against his will. Not much about him has changed; he can still run and talk. When he wants food, he does remember chairs don't need to (and can't) eat.
Teen Drama: Majority of the drama is concentrated within the first ten minutes of the film. After the first ten minutes, drama occasionally occurs throughout the film, most involving people asking Suzume about her "boyfriend" or the troubled relationship with Tamaki.
Time Capsule: Suzume buried a tin box containing items from her childhood on the grounds of her original home, including a diary with way too much blacked-out pages following the tsunami.
Touched by Vorlons: Suzume entering a door to the Ever-After while young shortly after the tsunami is apparently the reason why she can see the worm.
Tragic Keepsake: The chair was made by Tsubame for Suzume as a birthday gift.
Travel Montage: A montage of a journey to Suzume's childhood home, set to Serizawa's catalogue of Japanese pop songs such as "Rouge no Dengon".
Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Even when the worm is about to fall on Tokyo to destroy the city with its impact, and over half the screen is red, the average person never comments on anything. Justified, in that Muggles cannot see worms.
Urban Fantasy: The supernatural is contrasted against modern life, with social media playing a key role in Souta and Suzume's tracking of Daijin's movements.
Voices Are Mental: Despite Souta becoming a literal chair with nothing close to a larynx or mouth, the chair still can somehow talk, and sound exactly like Souta before his transformation. Becoming a chair did exactly nothing to impede his ability to communicate.
Wall of Text: Tamaki's text messages, which are so long they fill up several phone screens. Even though the text is in Japanese that doesn't get translated, you can feel our hero is in a lot of trouble and almost taste the lecture she'll get.
Wanted Poster: An internet user posts a wanted poster for more information regarding Souta the chair.
Where It All Began: In order to enter the Ever After to rescue Keystone-Souta, Suzume must travel back to her hometown, through the door she went through as a child. Back where her adventure in the Ever After all began.