My Cultural Diet

By all appearances, the runaway success with 2016’s Your Name has given Makoto Shinkai carte blanche. Which would certainly explain the level of technical detail in Suzume, his latest animated feature. Put simply, Suzume is a visual feast in every way possible, from the gorgeous countrysides and cityscapes (I want to go to there) to the weather and environmental effects (nobody does rain like Shinkai) to the nigh-seamless blend of cel and CGI animation. Unfortunately, that same level of freedom means that Suzume’s fantastical tale — which draws inspiration from Japanese mythology and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami — runs about 20 – 30 minutes too long. At first, the titular heroine’s journey across Japan in search of mystical doorways, a divine cat, and a cure for her friend being turned into a chair (it all makes sense when you actually see it) is a delightful peek at some mundane aspects of Japanese society that get overlooked in anime. But then the movie keeps on going as Shinkai tries to wrap up some unresolved plot threads in time for the final showdown — which feels anticlimactic in lieu of the previous final showdown.

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