And if Shinkai has an Achilles' Heel, it's character drama. I hated 5cm/s despite its beauty and only enjoyed Tenki no Ko in parts. Suzume no Tojimari thankfully eschews most of this, though it does rear its ugly head near the beginning of the third act seemingly to drag the film out even more. While I generally prefer character stories over overarching plots, this does not apply when it's done poorly, which is often the case with Shinkai's films. Suzume herself is a fairly flat character, with her developments in romance coming off very suddenly with no buildup, and Souta is barely a presence apart from spouting generic hero lines. The supporting cast don't fare much better either, with poorly defined motivations applying to the main cast and supporting cast alike; like how the main antagonist just decides to give up and aid our heroes for no good reason or why Suzume just wants to sacrifice herself for a dude she barely met for a few days. Like, I hated Hodaka from Tenki no Ko, but he earned that ending at the end.
Of course, for a Shinkai film, characters are ultimately secondary to visuals. The plot, while similar to his most recent entries, does manage to emotionally create a sense of discomfort and despair in me. When I watched the intro and saw the boats on rooftops, I thought, no way are they gonna do a movie on Fukushima and turn it into a supernatural disaster, it'd be in poor taste, it's gotta be some parallel fantasy world the posters keep showing. But, I gotta hand it to Shinkai, I felt he handled the depiction of 3/11 well enough. Depictions of this disaster is somewhat rare in anime, and usually most would use a parallel analogue to indirectly comment on it (Yuuki Yuuna for instance), so seeing a film so straightforwardly addressing the event is surprising and almost constitutes a plot twist in it of its own. The film does a commendable job on highlighting the tragedy and the pain it causes, but also importance and concept of moving on in spite of it without it being overly sappy or melodramatic or preachy. It also does a good job building up to that moment, with the initial door closing events be Suzume relieving the memories of locations abandoned due to time, financial disasters, up to the climax of her relieving her own memories of 3/11 making for a great emotional climax.
But I hated the cats and the worms and the cats really should never have been in the movie.
And of course the visuals need no further elaboration. Suzume no Tojimari's world is highly detailed, beautiful, cozy, and at times, haunting and uncomfortable. Going from the breezy seaside port town in Miyazaki with its large open coasts to the desolate ruins in Fukushima surrounded by seawalls conjours up more emotions than the characters ever could. The audio is a bit of a letdown though. Apart from the music that plays when they close the doors (which also reminded me of Yuuki Yuuna), nothing is particularly memorable, soundtrack wise. Even the ED did nothing for me. A far cry from Tenki no Ko and it being basically a RADWIMPS music video.
All in all, Suzume no Tojimari is exactly what you'd expect from a Shinkai film. You're not gonna get a good story or characters from him, but it's a great way to kill 2 hours in a theatre.
7/10
(Funny story, I watched this thing on 3/11 without realizing it)
