Suzume (film): Difference between revisions

[[File:Suzume japanese poster.jpg|thumb|350px]]

 

 

 

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 [[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.

* [[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 {{spoiler|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, {{spoiler|if you're grown up, going back through the door you used to enter the dimension as a child}}.

* [[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 {{spoiler|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.

* [[Cerebus Retcon]]: Jokes about chair!Souta sleeping like a log lose their humour once it's revealed that {{spoiler|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.

* [[Cosmic Keystone]]: There are two Keystones that keeps [[Eldritch Abomination]]s 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 {{spoiler|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.

* [[Delaying Action]]: In the climax, {{spoiler|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; {{spoiler|the worm}} can only be slowed down.

* [[Deliberately Monochrome]]: Many of Suzume's flashbacks, along with {{spoiler|scenes of Souta being trapped as a keystone}}, are depicted in black and white.

** 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, {{spoiler|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.

* [[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]]: {{spoiler|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 [[wikipedia:1923 Great Kantō earthquake|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 Abomination]]s they were.

* [[Homage]]:

** {{spoiler|Suzume falling from the Tokyo sky}} resembles the similar occurrence in ''[[Weathering with You]]''.

** {{spoiler|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]]''.

** "[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJwtKY_iWkM 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 Abomination]]s and do something about them.

* [[The Needs of the Many]]: {{spoiler|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}}.

** 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. {{spoiler|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.}}

* [[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. {{spoiler|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.

*** A phenomenon that allows {{spoiler|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.

** 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.

* [[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 {{spoiler|Suzume falling from the Tokyo sky as Daijin takes on a giant form that covers and cushions the impact.}}

* [[The Song Remains the Same]]: The ending theme remains in Japanese in the English dub.

* [[Stable Time Loop]]: {{spoiler|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?}}

* [[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.

* [[Where It All Began]]: In order to enter the Ever After {{spoiler|to rescue Keystone-Souta}}, Suzume must {{spoiler|travel back to her hometown, through the door she went through as a child. Back where her adventure in the Ever After all began}}.