Any new Shinkai Makoto film is an anime event.  He’s arguably the biggest director in anime from a commercial standpoint – the only other possible argument being that it’s still Miyazaki Hayao.  It may be less of an event for me than it used to be, as Shinkai’s films have become safer and more mainstream.  Nevertheless these are still watershed events in anime, and as such they require a certain amount of commitment.  I haven’t been inclined to attend movies in the theatre since the pandemic (I may make an exception for Miyazaki’s latest final film, we’ll see), but I still wanted to give Suzume no Tojimari my undivided attention.

Suzume has proved to be yet another worldwide box office smash for Shinkai, eclipsing Tenki no Ko by a comfortable margin at just over $300 million.  It won’t catch Kimi no Na wa, but that feels like a generational anime event.  With Suzume (that’s the full English title as well as the name of the protagonist) Shinkai follows in the footsteps of auteurs like Miyazaki and Ikuhara Kunihiko in reflecting on the 2011 Touhoku earthquake and its impact on Japanese society.  Both those men did so through the proxy of the 1923 Kanto earthquake (perhaps the “too soon” effect), but Shinkai takes it on directly (though the Kanto quake is a plot point too – fittingly, as this years marks its centenary).

Shinkai’s interest in matters of such import (last time around it was climate change) is never less than interesting.  For me, the impression is that while he always knows what he wants to explore, he doesn’t often possess a cogent sense of how to do so.  Tenki no Ko was kind of a mess in this regard (though generally speaking a bit of messiness was part of its charm).  To be honest I felt the same way about Suzume, though the final sequence did serve to frame the themes of the movie in a more coherent and even emotionally penetrating way.

Shinkai’s genius as a visual artist is obviously well-established, though I don’t find this to be one of his more artistically interesting works.  As a storyteller, it’s more of a mixed bag.  He struggles with conventional storytelling in my opinion, especially when he tries to go big.  He does better with personal stories, and the weirder the better.  As Suzume is a mix of all those elements, it’s unsurprisingly likewise a mixed bag in terms of how well it succeeds as a story.

In the first place, this is is substantially sillier on the face of it than either of its blockbuster predecessors.  All of them have the signature Shinkai magical realism, but in Suzume the male lead spends most of the film as a chair.  And a tiny three-legged child’s chair, at that.  Whether it’s the writer-director’s intention or not, that absurdity gives this movie a pretty different tone than Weathering With You or Your Name, despite all following the Shinkai template.  Why is he a chair?  Because he’s been cursed by a Kami in cat form, Daijin (Yamane Ann).  That male lead is Munakata Souta (Matsumura Hokuto), a long-haired college student with an interest in haikyo (abandoned places).

It’s that interest that connects him with the titular heroine, Iwato Suzume (Hara Nanoka).  She’s a 16 year-old schoolgirl living with her aunt in seaside Kyuushu, and she crosses paths with Souta on her way to school one day.  He asks her if she knows of any haikyo nearby (she does, an abandoned onsen resort) and the rest, as they say, is history.  What’s important about Suzume – in most respects a pretty stock Shinkai heroine – is that she was orphaned by the great tsunami of 3/11/2011, and the aftermath of that tragedy traumatizes her to this day.

Haikyo exploration is a very significant otaku pastime in Japan, and based on his movies I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Shinkai himself is an aficionado – I suspect he’d find them very appealing both visually and emotionally.  And that’s the strongest element of Suzume no Tojimari for me.  The film’s focus on them is part of an overall look that’s grittier and more decayed than his usual style.  Haikyo are evocative for a reason, and Shinkai gets to the essence of it – one can’t but imagine the thoughts and feelings of those who once roamed them.

Of course, the largest and most important haikyo of all is the vast swathe of the Northeast that was devastated by the 3-11 earthquake and tsunami – including Suzume’s hometown.  The MacGuffin is that Souta is a “closer” – a sort of Shinto priest whose family has gone to places where gates to the “Ever-After” open, and the great worm who lives under Japan escapes to the surface and causes earthquakes.  The mythology behind this is the Namazu, a giant catfish who’s said to do basically what the big worm does.  Daijin was once of the two keystones locking it in place, and it’s passed that burden onto Souta (along with the makeover) and fled on a social-media fueled journey.

At that point, the formula here is pretty standard post-indie Shinkai.  Teenager goes on road trip to save the world, meets kindly people and rides trains, and falls in love (with lots of product placement).  The chair element is different, but in most respects we’ve seen this before.  Shinkai can do this sort of thing in his sleep, both in terms of the narrative and the scenery, but even at that it’s still what people pay to see from him so no point in complaining.

To an extent, we see one central theme of Tenki no Ko repeated here – the hero/heroine’s love interest forced to decide between their own fate and that of countless others.  Catastrophic earthquakes are a more immediate threat than global warming, and you get the sense that this is easier for Shinkai to wrap his head around – and the conclusions he comes to are different (and a lot more definitive).  There are some memorable moments along the way – most especially a depiction of Edo Period ruins underneath modern Tokyo – but it’s when the story arrives at the ultimate haikyo that it really resonates.  As a writer I’ve always thought Shinkai was better at poetry than prose, and that most of his commercial work is prosaic.  This, however, is a moment of poetry.

The question most will ask is where Suzume ranks in the Shinkai lexicon.  That will obviously come down to personal taste, but I think Your Name and everything that comes after can’t really be compared with what comes before, because it’s almost as if it’s the work of a different director.  Kimi no Na wa is certainly the most polished, and to an extent I think Shinkai has tried to remake it twice with Tenki no Ko and Suzume no Tojimari.  I like that added layer of weirdness in this one, and Souta at least looks nothing like a traditional Shinkai male lead (even as a human).  It doesn’t transcend its two predecessors for me, or offer anything really new and essential to the Shinkai oeuvre – but it accomplishes the main goal of a Shinkai movie now, to satisfy people’s expectations of what a Shinkai movie should be.