Let's get the obvious out of the way first. The animation is still as gorgeous as ever. There are still many beautiful shots that are just jaw-dropping. You can clearly see the amount of detail in drawing and animating many of the scenes. The cinematography is just breathtaking and the otherworldly scenes are just incredibly mesmerizing. Radwimps returns again to collaborate with Makoto on the music score. Radwimps made a terrific upbeat, yet moving soundtrack for the previous 2 movies. In Suzume, he made a more sombre and otherworldly song that is very fitting for the themes explored in this film. It's different but I still love it.
On that note, I enjoyed the themes explored such as coming to terms with loss and building new relationships. The main character, Suzume, begins her journey by meeting a man named Souta and gets pulled into a supernatural world. She then goes on a journey, meeting new people and building more friendships. It is genuinely heartwarming and results in a very terrific 3rd act. The final act is so impactful and has a powerful, emotional resolution that can definitely tug at people's heartstrings. Suzume is such an endearing main character. You do wonder why she puts herself in danger so much but as you learn more and more about her, you end up supporting her a lot and hoping she succeeds. The support characters are all charming as well, even with their short screen time.
A problem I had with the previous movie, Weathering with You, was how it felt too similar in structure to Your Name. Unfortunately, Suzume is still the same. We still get a boy and girl who get brought into a supernatural event in the first act, the second act with an increase in supernatural and a revelation, and a final act dealing with this revelation and its consequences. It results in the film being incredibly predictable. One element this film does do worse though is the romance aspect. Suzume and Souta's romantic chemistry just isn't as strong. There is a lack of romantic moments between them and it is made more difficult to believe when Souta is mostly a chair. Honestly, the movie would have been better if the romance aspect was removed.
The movie can be a bit repetitive for the first half of the story by repeatedly having the characters search for an evil cat, get taken in by strangers, see a worm in sky, find a door, face a challenge and then close the door. It also does have pacing issues with some of the road trips being a bit too long, especially one near the end of the second act. It detracts attention from the main plot and slows the film down. While this film is mostly beautiful, it does use CG a lot more than before. For example, the worm entity is entirely 3D. The CG would be fine if it blended well with the 2D animation. The problem is that the 2D looks amazing and the 3D looks cheap causing this jarring visual at times.
Overall, Suzume is still a wonderful film from Makoto. The themes that are explored will definitely be more appreciated by Japanese audiences than by westerns but the emotional conclusion will still hit hard nonetheless. I don't enjoy this as much as his previous movies but I still enjoyed it a lot. I will still 100% see his next project but I do hope it tries to be a lot more different this time.
