Suzume (film)

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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 scheduled to release in 2023 in English speaking countries.

12 years ago, then 4-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 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 Sōta 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 Sōta 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.

Tropes used in Suzume (film) include:

• 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.
  • You lose someone right before your eyes, helpless to do anything.
• 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.
• Book Ends: An early scene has Suzume cycling to school and meeting Sōta going the other way. The last scene does the same.
• But Now I Must Go: After the sealing of the worm and returning of the two keystones, Sōta tells Suzume that he can't go back yet because there are still other doors out there to close. He promises to find her again once he's done that, though, and keeps the promise.
• Cerebus Retcon: Jokes about chair!Sōta 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".
• Christmas Cake: Tamaki is in her 40s and still single. One of her coworkers, Minoru, is obviously interested in her, but she doesn't seem to notice.
• Contrived Coincidence: Serizawa just happened 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.
• 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.
• Diving Save: Sōta does one to save Suzume from falling debris.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: Many famous landmarks of Japan like the suspension bridge between Shikoku and Honshu, Mt Fuji, Tokyo Tower and the Kaminarimon appear.
• Eldritch Abomination: The worm first emerges from the doors as a, well, wormlike maroon smoke, but as more of it escapes, it starts to take on forms that wouldn't be out of place in Neon Genesis Evangelion. The unknowability comes from how Sōta says that it causes destruction for no humanly-discernible reason.
• 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.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Daijin demonstrates this when it appears in darkness.
• 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.
• Homage: Sōta and Suzume parting ways at the train station at the end is very similar to Takaki and Akari doing the same in 5 Centimeters per Second.
• In a Single Bound: Both chair!Sōta and Daijin make blatantly superhumanly massive jumps.
• Invisible to Normals: Suzume quickly learns to her horror that, apart from herself and Closers like Sōta and his grandfather, nobody can see the worm.
• The Needs of the Many: Sōta's grandfather tries to persuade her to leave Sōta's sacrifice be because it spared the lives of the Tokyoites.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye:
  • Suzume never got closure over her mother going missing.
  • 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.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Suzume removing the keystone is what speeds up the worm's escape.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Chanting occurs whenever Sōta and Suzume try to close a door against the worm.
• Opposite Gender Protagonists: Suzume, a high school girl, and Sōta, a collegegoing young man who's part of a lineage of Closers, travel across Japan closing doors before the worm can escape fully and cause disasters.
• Ordinary High School Student: Suzume starts as this, having no idea of the supernatural struggles hidden to Japanese muggle society. Her removing the keystone, unleashing Daijin, and subsequent drive to make amends lead to her helping Sōta to close doors throughout Japan. The film quickly shifts from being a Teen Drama to an action-adventure film.
• Parental Abandonment:
  • Suzume was raised by her single mother who went missing due to the 2011 tsunami.
  • Sōta was Raised by Grandparents; what happened to his parents is never revealed.
• Parental Substitute: Deconstructed - Tamaki took it on herself to raise Suzume in Tsubame's stead, but developed resentment over what it's cost her.
• 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.
• 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.
• Screen Shake: Occurs in the scene when Suzume first helps close a door, used to emphasize the intensity of the actions occurring.
• 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:
  • One in-universe social media post about Daijin likens the experience to Whisper of the Heart.
  • 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 Sōta 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.
• 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.
• 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?}}
• Tragic Keepsake: The chair was made by Tsubame for Suzume as a birthday gift.
• Urban Fantasy: The supernatural is contrasted against modern life, with social media playing a key role in Sōta and Suzume's tracking of Daijin's movements.