Followers of anime writer-director Matoko Shinkai could discover periodic nods to Studio Ghibli’s motion pictures in his latest work — and so they’re very a lot intentional. However these references aren’t simply homages to Japan’s most well-known animation studio: They serve a really particular goal.
Not like Shinkai’s earlier two motion pictures, Your Identify and Weathering with You, his newest, Suzume, focuses on the influence of a real-life catastrophe: the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. These movies’ little nods to Studio Ghibli — cultural touchpoints viewers are prone to acknowledge — particularly root the world of Suzume nearer to our actuality, earlier than the film’s ties to the 2011 catastrophe are absolutely revealed.
One in every of Suzume’s Ghibli nods is overt — somebody on social media spots Daijin the keystone cat driving a prepare on his personal, and compares the picture to Whisper of the Coronary heart. One other is subtler: Serizawa, a buddy of human-turned-chair Sōta, drives protagonist Suzume and her aunt Tamaki to their closing vacation spot whereas enjoying “Rouge no Dengon” from Kiki’s Supply Service on his telephone. However the film’s finest Ghibli nod is its subtlest. In reality, it may not even actually be a full reference — and but it resonates a lot extra if you happen to learn it as one.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the ending of Suzume — and for Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle.]
All through the film, unintended companions Suzume and Sōta journey throughout Japan to shut magical doorways. It’s not too far of a leap to check these portals to the magical destination-switching doorway seen in Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Shifting Fortress. This feels very true when Suzume first steps via a kind of doorways and sees a lush meadow coated in wildflowers — a panorama that might simply match alongside the attractive area that Howl exhibits Sophie in Miyazaki’s film.
Viewers study that this can be a doorway to the afterlife, and the explanation Suzume can see it via the doorway is as a result of she one way or the other wandered into the realm as a little bit woman. Flashbacks reveal that Suzume did certainly enter a mysterious door as a baby, and was greeted by a determine she assumed to be her lifeless mom. Afterward, she discovered a chair she thought she misplaced, the one which Sōta finally will get cursed to turn into.
Suzume learns she should return to the door she initially entered if she desires to save lots of Sōta, so she returns to the ruins of her hometown. That sequence is paying homage to the climatic scene in Howl’s Shifting Fortress, by which, after Howl’s fort is destroyed, Sophie finds its magical door resting on some rocks among the many ruins. Opening that door, Sophie stumbles into Howl’s childhood, and a previous model of the meadow he confirmed her, then watches him meet his fireplace demon Calcifer, and make the deal that prices Howl his coronary heart.
Because the scene begins to fade away, Sophie calls out to Howl, “Discover me sooner or later!” and Howl and Calcifer each look her method. It’s closely implied that that is the explanation Howl seeks her out later in his life, and can be the explanation that Sophie is finally in a position to save him.
So when Suzume enters her personal magical doorway and finds herself in that wildflower meadow, it appears like an echo of Miyazaki’s film. Suzume enters the afterlife to save lots of Sōta, simply as Sophie entered the previous to save lots of Howl. Admittedly, Suzume options extra giant-earthquake-worm battles, simply sufficient that the quick comparability fades away. However after Suzume saves Sōta — and in doing so, reclaims her personal will to dwell — she gazes on the area of wildflowers and notices a small determine within the distance. It’s herself, as a baby.
In Howl’s Shifting Fortress, reaching again to the previous connects the film’s two protagonists, weaving collectively the beginnings of each their tales. However Suzume isn’t the identical form of romantic film as Howl’s Shifting Fortress. The main target is on Suzume’s development, the way in which she goes from apathy and self-destructiveness to somebody who truly desires to dwell. So, though she steps via the door to save lots of Sōta, she’s truly saving herself. She seems to be again on the previous and sees the youthful, despondent model of herself, and tells that crying little woman that it’s all going to be okay. It ties her story collectively completely, bringing the ending again to the start — simply as Miyazaki’s film does, in its personal method.
Suzume is in theaters now.