April 20th, 2023
Suzume: Becuase I don't think MAL would want this as a Review but I have initial thoughts that I am too tired to build upon.
Anime Relations: Suzume no Tojimari
I just came back from watching this in theaters. The heavens, holy man, the heavens are speaking to me. ITS SO BAD BUT ITS SO GOOD. THIS. IS. THEATER. There is no way to describe this other than the perfect cinema movie.
The super TL;DR? If this was a 12 episode anime/book/anything other than a movie which had enough time to properly give it the development, plot AND character-wise, it needed? It would be an ACTUAL 8. But no, this is a cinema 8. What did I actually think about it? It's a 1. What do I mean? Let me tell you.
The story starts off with Suzume blah blah blah morning routine blah blah blah biking to school, BOOM. Ikemen no hito, as she calls him walking through the ruins she pointed him towards upon their earlier first encounter. She grabs a cat thing after trying to chase after a landscape she saw in her dreams, pulls it out, her feet and leggings dry up faster than you can ask what period she got to her class to, and then boom, fire into door into man into close into cat into chair into story. We established that there are these doors that need to be closed and the people who close them are seemingly this ikemen. And then he gets turned into a chair. And now he needs to not be a chair so they chase a cat social media calls Daijin (a reference that only Japanese viewers with an understanding of the cultural references get so I couldn't tell you). Oh and the chair is missing a leg and also it can move really well and also they're like across the entire land of water that separates, uh Kyushu and whichever island Ehime-ken is on.
So if you actually read all of that expecting anything of value, I tricked you. Which is what the movie does. It tricks you into thinking any of this matters. It doesn't! That's the beauty of it. This is an ad for people to come to Japan. All the people are really nice and hospitable and will take you across entire islands to, uh, help you on your soul searching? Suzume like, SPOILERS BY THE WAY, Suzume eventually falls in love with Souta and like, why? BY THE WAY, THATS A 6 YEAR CONFIRMED AGE GAP UNLESS JAPAN STARTS UNIVERSITY EARLIER THAN 18 BUT ASSUMING HE IS A 22 YEAR OLD 4TH YEAR EDUCATION MAJOR THAT MAKES IT A 6 YEAR AGE GAP. 22-16=6. A LITTLE WEIRD, NO? And like, so many questions!
Why does she fall in love with him? Why did they make her fall in love with him? Would a rational human being have abandoned the new soul-housing 3-legged chair that was the final gift their dead mother whose death they haven't fully accepted and went on with their normal life? Why does Japan have so many ruins? Why does everybody Suzume and Souta run into help them, house them, feed them, gossip/child labor/drive them across what I'm assuming is Honshu (7 HOURS)? Why did the aunt get seemingly possed by Sadaijin (a new cat btw that's like the Eastern/Western counterpart to Saijin) when she started to yell at Suzume because "I just dedicated 12 years of my life to you, give them back I want a fucking bf/husband." Sorry about the cussing.
And I have answers too. Like, I think she fell in love with him because... uh... he not only gave life to the last gift her mother gave to her but also he is connected to the dreamscape she constantly sees and that sense of new adventure + he's hot + he's hot + a sense of duty to, uh, the nation or something = love. And I think like, that time travel aspect of her talking to her younger self so that her younger self has the strength to move forward even though very clearly through her journal she represses the memory of her mom dying in that tsunami as shown by blotting entire pages out with black. So, we love a queen who goes to therapy and the therapist is herself who only recently, and by recently I mean literally as the moment is happening, accepts it and finds the courage to love life alongside her soon-to-be-teacher husband who may or may not have a friend who's gay for him (seriously what was up with that dude, uh, Serizawa).
Okay, I've calmed down. The fact of the matter is that none of the questions the anime raises makes any sense. There is zero actual development because what we're developing isn't even created, like, I think Souta and Suzume have some weird issues that aren't resolved when it comes to living but what is resolved within 10 minutes is the issues of aunts/uncles having to raise their dead brother's/sister's kid and like, it's so fraught with potential. Like, so much world-building and just ideas that you can't answer even with a 3 hour film, I mean maybe you could but also like man choose a different medium of entertainment. It's weird. It's really fucking weird. But like, even though it was weird, and even though it is arguably not visually-better than Tenki no Ko, and is easily the weakest sound-wise of the 3? It made me laugh. Either laugh at how ridiculous it was, or just at the fact that, all in all? It was an enjoyable movie experience. And that's why it's an 8.
The super TL;DR? If this was a 12 episode anime/book/anything other than a movie which had enough time to properly give it the development, plot AND character-wise, it needed? It would be an ACTUAL 8. But no, this is a cinema 8. What did I actually think about it? It's a 1. What do I mean? Let me tell you.
The story starts off with Suzume blah blah blah morning routine blah blah blah biking to school, BOOM. Ikemen no hito, as she calls him walking through the ruins she pointed him towards upon their earlier first encounter. She grabs a cat thing after trying to chase after a landscape she saw in her dreams, pulls it out, her feet and leggings dry up faster than you can ask what period she got to her class to, and then boom, fire into door into man into close into cat into chair into story. We established that there are these doors that need to be closed and the people who close them are seemingly this ikemen. And then he gets turned into a chair. And now he needs to not be a chair so they chase a cat social media calls Daijin (a reference that only Japanese viewers with an understanding of the cultural references get so I couldn't tell you). Oh and the chair is missing a leg and also it can move really well and also they're like across the entire land of water that separates, uh Kyushu and whichever island Ehime-ken is on.
So if you actually read all of that expecting anything of value, I tricked you. Which is what the movie does. It tricks you into thinking any of this matters. It doesn't! That's the beauty of it. This is an ad for people to come to Japan. All the people are really nice and hospitable and will take you across entire islands to, uh, help you on your soul searching? Suzume like, SPOILERS BY THE WAY, Suzume eventually falls in love with Souta and like, why? BY THE WAY, THATS A 6 YEAR CONFIRMED AGE GAP UNLESS JAPAN STARTS UNIVERSITY EARLIER THAN 18 BUT ASSUMING HE IS A 22 YEAR OLD 4TH YEAR EDUCATION MAJOR THAT MAKES IT A 6 YEAR AGE GAP. 22-16=6. A LITTLE WEIRD, NO? And like, so many questions!
Why does she fall in love with him? Why did they make her fall in love with him? Would a rational human being have abandoned the new soul-housing 3-legged chair that was the final gift their dead mother whose death they haven't fully accepted and went on with their normal life? Why does Japan have so many ruins? Why does everybody Suzume and Souta run into help them, house them, feed them, gossip/child labor/drive them across what I'm assuming is Honshu (7 HOURS)? Why did the aunt get seemingly possed by Sadaijin (a new cat btw that's like the Eastern/Western counterpart to Saijin) when she started to yell at Suzume because "I just dedicated 12 years of my life to you, give them back I want a fucking bf/husband." Sorry about the cussing.
And I have answers too. Like, I think she fell in love with him because... uh... he not only gave life to the last gift her mother gave to her but also he is connected to the dreamscape she constantly sees and that sense of new adventure + he's hot + he's hot + a sense of duty to, uh, the nation or something = love. And I think like, that time travel aspect of her talking to her younger self so that her younger self has the strength to move forward even though very clearly through her journal she represses the memory of her mom dying in that tsunami as shown by blotting entire pages out with black. So, we love a queen who goes to therapy and the therapist is herself who only recently, and by recently I mean literally as the moment is happening, accepts it and finds the courage to love life alongside her soon-to-be-teacher husband who may or may not have a friend who's gay for him (seriously what was up with that dude, uh, Serizawa).
Okay, I've calmed down. The fact of the matter is that none of the questions the anime raises makes any sense. There is zero actual development because what we're developing isn't even created, like, I think Souta and Suzume have some weird issues that aren't resolved when it comes to living but what is resolved within 10 minutes is the issues of aunts/uncles having to raise their dead brother's/sister's kid and like, it's so fraught with potential. Like, so much world-building and just ideas that you can't answer even with a 3 hour film, I mean maybe you could but also like man choose a different medium of entertainment. It's weird. It's really fucking weird. But like, even though it was weird, and even though it is arguably not visually-better than Tenki no Ko, and is easily the weakest sound-wise of the 3? It made me laugh. Either laugh at how ridiculous it was, or just at the fact that, all in all? It was an enjoyable movie experience. And that's why it's an 8.
Posted by A_Flamingo | Apr 20, 2023 10:45 PM | 0 comments