Suzume

Because the romance takes a back seat in favor of the main character’s growth, with the primary climax focused inward, Suzume ends up with a particularly unique and beautiful romantic arc.

Suzume is a captivating film that depicts the grieving process in a creative and thoughtful manner. It features a strong cast, a moving score, and some truly amazing animation.

This isn’t the first time Shinkai has raised the specter of environmental disaster within the context of a swooningly sentimental teenage fantasy, and if this one doesn’t achieve the dazzling intricacies or soaring emotional heights of “Your Name,” its easy blend of enchantment and feeling is nearly as hard to resist.

Come for Shinkai’s skies, stay for the feels.

There are key elements of Suzume that directly speak to the history of Japan and the fears of its people, but Shinkai’s gift is his ability to make the issues of trauma and anxiety feel like everyone’s. “Suzume” isn’t quite the masterpiece that is “Your Name” but I wouldn’t blame anyone for falling in love with it.

It’s not just the drama that works. Shinkai delivers hilarious physical comedy in the awkward gambols and leaps of Souta the three-legged chair — a refreshing reversal of the trope of the handsome young love interest who leads the naïve girl on a journey.

In Suzume, they deliver a general lack of focus or full realization of any one of dozens of well-intentioned ideas.

对逝者的追思、对活着的渴望、对神灵的信仰、对生命的敬畏。 让亲情不被苦难所阻挡，让爱冲破冰冷的桎梏。这是一段拯救日常的旅程，也是一段找寻自我的旅程，更是一场跨越了十二年的成长。 与一切的悲痛和解，将过去锁入门中，望向门外明天的朝阳。 “诚惶诚恐，诚惶诚恐。 予以奉还！”

They show this handsome guy in a trailer, but in reality he gets like 5 minutes of screen time. It made me feel kind of disappointed. The main storyline was rather childish, which is no surprise, given the characters. Not "childish", as in "fairytale", but as in "made for kids". There is no drama, no love story- it is just hollow (like moving from 1 quest marker to another), filled with nice visuals. Here is a joke, here is a cute scene, here is an action sequence. Here is a picture of a landscape for 10 seconds. Yeah, we get it, you know how to paint over a photograph, and you have a huge budget. But, at the same time, we know absolutely nothing about how the main character feels, or what they think. One could replace them with a soulless robot, or a wooden stick, and almost nothing would change. Even more, some of the characters have no personality at all. They just do whatever a plot requires them to, like turning from friends to enemies and back for absolutely no reason. Nevertheless, the plot did keep me entertained till the very end. It was unpredictable, for the most part, and fun to watch. All in all, I have mixed feelings about this one. They did put a lot of money on the table: stunning visuals (excluding those ugly 3d scenes), original music, beautiful voice acting, all sorts of ads and promo materials. But, in the end, it all comes down to the plot- and while secondary characters are amazing, I can't name a single main character who did not disappoint me. I would never watch it for the second time.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Visually stunning anime with lots of humour. The main protagonist could have used a little more character development and the plot gets convoluted towards the end. I liked the road trip feeling of the story with great music along the way but the action got a little repetitive eventually.

Seemed like a great movie at first, however the ending was incredibly sad and anti-kitty. Ruined the whole movie, left a bad taste in my mouth and a bad feeling in my heart