Suzume
Synopsis: In an animated film, a girl must stop earthquakes.
‘Suzume’ upends everything we think we know about earthquakes. I’m supposing your word association for earthquakes might include seismographs and tectonic plates. Actually, earthquakes have a lot to do with portals, keystones and cats. Cats? Yes. Read on for more info…
Suzume is a teenager in Kyushu, Japan. The place is supposed to be a small town which, in Japan, is probably a population of half a million people. She lives with her aunt because her mom died when she was four years old.
She bicycles to high school along hilly roads, perched above the sparkling Pacific. A hot guy hiking along the side of the road catches her eye. He’s tall and dreamy-looking. She slows down and he turns, his long dark hair fluttering in the sea breeze. “Do you know where any ruins are?” he asks. “Sure,” she stammers and directs him to a nearby ghost town.
Suzume continues on her way, but when she gets to the school grounds, she changes her mind. She needs to see Hot Guy again and zips off in the direction of the deserted town. Once there, she makes her way to a dilapidated conservatory whose ground is covered in a puddle-deep water. A door stands in the center.
I’ve seen Monsters Inc, so I know doors can be portals to other dimensions. And I’ve seen plenty of anime movies, so I know that no good will come to opening the door. Of course she opens the door. Weird things happen (no spoilers), but she momentarily enters an ‘ever after’ land before bouncing back into the conservatory.
Suzume should get out of there. But then there would be no movie and no way for us to learn important truths about earthquakes. The frazzled girl spots a cat statue. Of course she picks up the cat statue. In her hands, the stone is transformed into a real cat. Raar! Now she’s freaked and zooms away on her bike. Good, Suzume, get out of there!
Instead of heading home and collapsing on her bed to continue her freakout, like a western student would, she goes back to school. She attempts to finish-out the school day, but sees a huge cylinder of smoke rising from the ruins. To her shock, no one else can see it. Back onto her bike…
Arriving back at the ruins, she encounters Hot Guy straining to close the portal door before the entire creature can escape. Oops, it escapes. Now the thing is like a huge filmy creature of the phylum Annelida. Annelida seems like a possibly trendy new name for girls. No! It means earthworm.
I have an aversion to the word ‘worm’ so I will, instead, refer to it as Mimizu, the un-icky Japanese word for earthworm. Warning– if you have scoleciphobia (fear of worms) you will not want to watch this movie because this stupid thing goes rampaging in the skies over Japan trying to get the earth quaking.
It will be up to Suzume and Hot Guy to defeat or somehow contain Mimizu. Hot Guy tells newly minted eco warrior Suzume that his name is Souta. He explains the mystical ways of earthquake formation to his new ally. Something about east and west portals which are guarded by cats who keep the Mimizu from escaping. Somehow Suzume and Souta will have to find and return kitty to the portal. I don’t know if there are more mimizus in other dimensions. Yuck.
The duo set off to save Japan. The first order of business is finding the kitty, Daijin. Kitty is so cute that they become an overnight social media sensation. Kitty is featured in numerous cities being cute: strutting across a suspension bridge, wearing a station master’s hat, etcetera. There is just one impediment to chasing Kitty across the country…
Souta has turned into a chair. A cute, three-legged yellow children’s chair. He can’t run quickly now. And a talking, walking chair attracts unwanted attention. Even in Japan, a country which I imagine has more than its share of working robots and animatronic figures. In the West, such devices are relegated to theme parks where they sing (the high caste robots) or pick up garbage (the low caste robots).
Suzume, carrying Hot Guy-Chair, meets friends along the way who shelter and transport her in her quest to stop earthquakes. One woman hires Suzume to babysit while she works at a karaoke club. Her young twins use Hot Guy-Chair as a makeshift table for their MacDonald’s meals. They get too rambunctious, insisting their babysitter is Mt Fuji, and clambering up her legs. Suzume enlists Hot Guy-Chair to play with them. They are astonished, and a little wary, of the enchanted chair. But Suzume tells them it is a robot with AI for conversation which puts them at ease. They frolic till they pass out. Hot Guy-Chair is tired too, tipping over and drifting off.
Meanwhile, Mimizu floats over Japan, causing tremors. Since no one but Suzume and Hot Guy- Chair can see the earthquake-maker, they seem mostly unfazed. People pause to check their cellphones’ earthquake warning, then go about their business.
During the day, our need-to-be heroes make erratic progress in catching up to kitty. Who, I forgot to mention, talks. By night, Suzume’s sleep is disturbed by nightmares. She relives wandering a ruined landscape, crying and searching for her mother. What I didn’t realize until reading interviews with the film’s writer-director, Makoto Shinkai, is that the movie is a lot more than a high stakes adventure about earthquake formation…
Suzume grapples with the loss and collective grief of Japan’s people inflicted by the Tōhoku earthquake. On March 11, 2011 a quake occurred that devasted the east coast of Japan. The 9.0 magnitude quake caused a tsunami with waves reaching more than 130 feet. It slammed into populations centers in the Iwate, Miyagi and Ibaraki prefectures. (Sendai was near the epicenter, 232 miles from Tokyo.) The tsunami’s force and flooding, killed 19,759 persons and causing a catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power station.
The character Suzume is a survivor of the disaster. As in other animated features, Suzume is a child left to their own devices to save themselves or, as in this case, prevent disaster. The child’s quick thinking and determination save the day. Thanks for nothing, Adults!
Suzume is part of healing through Art, safely processing a facsimile of a disaster and vowing to remember the lost. And care for the survivors. Teen girls and sentient chairs can be part of the triumph.
For those of us who live outside of Japan, Suzume is a good primer on the nature of earthquakes…or not.
P.S. Check out Movie Loon’s review of Hiyao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron here
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