![]() ![]() Cellphones light up as photos of the daring white cat and the anomalous moving chair go viral. Sota Munakata chases the mischievous cat, his wooden legs pumping furiously, as Suzume follows behind.Ĭontemporary technology is as embedded in the story as ancient folktales. Later, in Suzume’s room as Sota Munakata explains his role, the cat materializes on the windowsill, speaks to them and turns the Closer into a three-legged chair. When the girl picks up the keystone holding back a door that rises from the midst of a shallow pond in an abandoned resort (suggesting the closed districts around the Fukushima nuclear plant), the cold grey stone turns into a warm furry cat and scurries away. Suzume follows suit with imaginative storytelling and animation. ![]() He thinks he’s got it down but turns out he needs some help from plucky Suzume.ĭirector Makoto Shinkai achieved great success in Japan and elsewhere with his previous films, Your Name and Weathering With You. In only the most obvious nod to Japan’s Shinto tradition, he invokes “the divine gods who live beneath this land” as he struggles to keep the doors shut, to forestall new catastrophes. He identifies himself as the Closer, who task it travel across the nation closing doors, preventing disaster. Suzume stumbles upon a handsome backpacking young man, Sota Munakata. In Suzume, the Worm is a destructive force from beneath the Japanese islands, held at bay behind closed doors. It's not too wide a leap to interpret the plumb-colored “Worm” that rises from the Earth and covers the sky, triggering seismic shocks, as an allusion to the towering mushroom clouds of 1945. ![]() Japan’s cities were consumed by American firebombing in an aerial campaign that climaxed with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Suzume was released by the legendary Toho, the studio behind Godzilla and an unending string of films that encapsulate and personify the national trauma of destruction during World War II. The latest anime feature to fill big screens in the U.S., Suzume, follows its titular adolescent girl-protagonist on an adventure to save Japan from destruction. Anime won’t elbow Disney out of American multiplexes, yet the Japanese answer to animation has grown a global audience with millions of avid fans. ![]()
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