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 released in April 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:

• 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 theme 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.
• The Alleged Car: Serizawa's fancy-looking convertible doesn't have a roof that can close properly, which becomes troublesome when it starts raining.
• Ambiguous Innocence: Daijin. The first time it speaks, it declares that it likes Suzume, but that Sōta is an obstacle, and binds him into the three-legged chair to "volunteer" him to be a replacement keystone, and seems too cheerful about the damage the worm will do. The way it shrinks into itself and runs away after Suzume declares her hate for it following the use of Sōta as a keystone over Tokyo, though, suggests that it wasn't being sadistic but genuinely did not expect Suzume's adverse reaction to its behaviour, and it's more docile when it next reappears. When it helps find the door Suzume went through when young, Suzume wonders aloud if it wasn't maliciously opening doors to let the worm through, but instead leading them to doors that were going to open. Finally, when it sees that Suzume is willing to sacrifice herself to become a keystone as a substitute for Sōta, it helps her free him and goes back to being a keystone in her stead.
• 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 Sōta-chair that can somehow talk and walk and chase a cat.
• Blue and Orange Morality: Sōta says that the gods do not think the way humans do. Daijin demonstrates this throughout the course of the story.
• 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.
• Cats Are Mean: Daijin is not nice towards Sōta at all. From cursing him, to running away from almost every single confrontation, the cat has caused Sōta a lot of trouble. Daijin is pretty good towards Suzume, though.
• 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.
• Clarke's Third Law: When chair!Sōta 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.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Daijin jumps from the ferry to a passing boat, which fortunately happens to also be headed for Ehime.
  • 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.
• Cosmic Keystone: There are two Keystones that keeps Eldritch Abominations trapped in the Ever After dimension. If a Keystone is missing, then the entirety of a worm can escape into the real world. When that happens, if it collapses into the ground, it will be very bad and a lot of people will die.
• Creative Closing Credits: The film proper does a Close on Title after Sōta and Suzume close the door near Suzume's old house. The first part of the credits then play over an epilogue showing Sōta 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.
• Cute Kitten: Daijin. He is, however, far more devious than his cute looks would suggest.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Many of Suzume's flashbacks, along with scenes of Sōta 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.
• Diving Save: Sōta does one to save Suzume from falling debris.
• Doomed Hometown: Suzume's birthplace was destroyed by the tsunami.
• 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.
• 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. An even bigger Eldritch Abomination worm is unleashed over Tokyo due to the failure of both keystones allowing its full form to come out.
• 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.
• Ghibli Hills: Present in a lot of abandoned locations where doors are located. The hills are covered in vivid blades of grass. Also present in the Ever After dimension.
• 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.
• Got Volunteered: When Daijin bound Sōta 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.
• Heroic Lineage: Sōta is the latest in a line of Closers tasked with closing doors across Japan before the worm can escape.
• Homage:
  • Suzume falling from the Tokyo sky resembles the similar occurrence in Weathering with You.
  • Sōta 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. Shinkai cited Kiki's Delivery Service as a major source of inspiration for the film. Although there are no flying witches in Suzume, the film overall has far more Studio Ghibli vibes than previous Shinkai films.
• Implausible Deniability: Suzume's attempts to explain to Tamaki where she's going get increasingly thin.
• In a Single Bound: Both chair!Sōta and Daijin make blatantly superhumanly massive jumps.
• Innocent Innuendo: Suzume uses chair!Sōta to get to a box on top of a shelf, then belatedly asks if she can step on him.
• 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. 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.
• Jerkass Gods: Daijin, a Keystone turned cat, is definitely not a nice god. He wants to spend time with Suzume, but Sōta's presence means Suzume won't spend as much time with him. His solution? Play with mortals by turning Sōta into a chair. He continues to be an asshole whenever chair Sōta enquires about the possibility of regaining his human form, running away from Sōta like there is no tomorrow.
• Kid Hero: The heroine is one of the oldest characters that can still be considered a "kid"; one more year and she'll belong in "Adult Hero". Although she hasn't come of age, she's too old to be considered a conventional Kid Hero. She's old enough to get a bank account, and is able to journey halfway across Japan without strict guidance from her guardians.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Sōta, who Suzume outright calls beautiful when she first sees him.
• 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 Sōta 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: Sōta's grandfather tries to persuade Suzume to leave Sōta's sacrifice be because it spared the lives of the Tokyoites.
• Nephewism: After Suzume's mother died, her aunt Tamaki took over as her caregiver.
• 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.
• 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.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Suzume removing the keystone is what speeds up the worm's escape, in the first door she closes.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Chanting occurs whenever Sōta and Suzume try to close a door against the worm. The soundtrack has a field day with the chanting.
• 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. The two are separated for the majority of the film due to Sōta's being polymorphed, only reuniting in the end. Suzume more than earns her role in Opposite Gender Protagonists by relentlessly pursuing Sōta after he turns into a Keystone.
• 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.
• Product Placement: Many real world brands, such as Toyota, appear in the film. Suzume stops to get McDonalds while on a trip.
• Road Movie: Suzume goes on the road and travels to many different places in Japan trying to catch Daijin and turn chair-Sōta back to normal. Then she goes on the road again trying to turn Keystone-Sōta 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.
  • 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.
    • 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.
• 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.
• 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: Sōta 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. Sōta 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.
• 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 reality is about to end, 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 Sōta and Suzume's tracking of Daijin's movements.
• Voices Are Mental: Despite Sōta becoming a literal chair with nothing close to a larynx or mouth, the chair still can somehow talk, and sound exactly like Sōta before his transformation. Becoming a chair did exactly nothing to impede his ability to communicate.
• Where It All Began: In order to enter the Ever After to rescue Keystone-Sōta, 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.