This guy turns into a chair hoping Suzume will sit or step on him.
It all seems familiar for some reason like I've seen the same idea with the cats before. I looked it up to see if that in its own right was a Japanese myth but I found more lore regarding the keystones than anything. It's at least an interesting concept and keeps you guessing with its weirdness.
As far as Shinkai films, it wasn't nearly as good as Weathering or Your Name imo. I don't care to see another natural disaster flick of his because it's becoming a pattern, I see he's not the only Japanese director and for good reason as far as how natural disasters have affected their lives, this one is fine, I just don't care to see it again so soon, that's all.
I'm not sure how I feel as far as its structure because it's one movie for the first half and another for the second and neither are all that bad, I understand what it tries to do and I think it does some stuff well and others not so much. But it kind of messed with the pacing a little bit. But hey, McDonalds is back? The old Shinkai staple. One of the thoughts I had during this was what if everyone just kind of dropped what they were doing to help her, even if they don't know why and that's kind of why she has that moment at the end, it'd be awful convenient and cheesy and it's fine enough the way it is but I just felt like the whole connection to the people thing could've used something of an added touch.
Maybe make it so that Suzume actually has a reason to run away and that's why her aunt freaks out, show why her life is so bad and mundane that she'd wanna go out and explore and adventure rather than just doing it for a guy and she's bored. And while I like the confrontation scene in the rain, I think it could've been more of a resolution had there been some actual feelings between them beforehand rather than seeing them separate up to that point.
