Tag Archives: Shota Sometani

Suzume

Cast: (voiced by) Nanoka Hara, Hokuto Matsumura, Eri Fukatsu, Shota Sometani, Sairi Ito, Kotone Hanase, Kana Hanazawa, Matsumoto Hakuō II, Ryunosuke Kamiki

Director: Makoto Shinkai

Writer: Makoto Shinkai

Every culture has a history of creating artistic parables as a way of processing collective tragedies and traumas, but perhaps none more fantastically than Japan. Godzilla, the 50-ft., fire-breathing monster enacting a terrible vengeance upon the country, was born from the devastation wrought by the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Japan then advanced into the technological revolution of the 60s and 70s, the tumultuous relationship between machinery and nature that emerged became manifest in the twisted body horror of films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man. One can only wonder what wonders and horrors await us when Japanese art well and truly enters its post-COVID age. March 2011 saw another great disaster that left its mark on Japan’s collective psyche, the earthquake in the Tōhoku region that brought about a powerful tsunami, which in its turn resulted in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that saw widespread meltdowns and the leakage of radioactive water. Casualties numbered in the tens of thousands and the resulting damage made the so-called triple disaster the costliest in the country’s history. The emotional fallout has already been felt in such films as 2016’s Shin Godzilla and Makato Shinkai’s masterpiece Your Name. In Suzume, Shinkai chooses to engage with the legacy of Fukushima in more direct, overt terms and does so in the spectacularly outlandish fashion that only anime is capable of delivering.

Suzume is a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl who lost her mother in that very disaster over a decade ago. The movie opens with an image of Suzume as a little girl wondering about a ruined city crying for her mother, an image shrouded in enough uncertainty that we’re not sure if it is a dream or a memory. As Suzume, now living with her caring but distracted aunt, is walking to school one morning, she happens upon Souta, the poster child for the anime boyfriend with his long emo hair, chiselled features, and sombre demeanour. Souta asks Suzume for directions to some local ruins and the besotted girl can’t help but follow after him. There she finds a lone door to nowhere standing in the middle of a long derelict complex. She opens the door and finds a starlit realm on the other side that she cannot enter. In the process she inadvertently dislodges an idol that had been the passageway’s guardian and thereby unleashes a gigantic, worm-like monster of smoke and fire into the world that shall wreak unspoken havoc. Suzume and Souta are able to seal the door and lock the monster within, but the guardian, now a mischievous cat, refuses to resume its post. It transforms Souta into an anthropomorphic three-legged chair (yep) and goes on the run. Suzume and Souta must chase the cat so that it may be restored as the keystone and in the meantime locate the other hidden doors scattered around Japan and seal them before the smoke monster can make its escape.

So there’s a lot going on in this movie, to say the least. Those who have seen Your Name will know just how wild, sweeping, and romantic Shinkai is capable of being and Suzume is shaped by those same tendencies. This is a story of magical dimensions, star-crossed lovers, and apocalyptic catastrophes made tangible by the authentic humanity behind it all. In the few scenes they share before Souta is rendered into a chair (anime, am I right?), the affection that forms between him and Suzume is immediately apparent. A lot is thrown at the viewer in terms of lore and exposition, but what comes through firstly and foremost are the feelings and motivations compelling these characters. We see in Suzume a caring soul, one who is compassionate and nurturing in her very nature and cannot stand by in this time of crisis. We feel the ineffable attraction that draws her to Souta and in both we see a mutual sense of responsibility, one that feels so crushing for two as young as they are but that neither feel they can brush aside so long as the fate of the world hangs in the balance (the shadow of climate change looms heavily on this picture). Whatever craziness the movie wishes to throw at the viewer, it has done the groundwork and therefore we are prepared to follow it to the ends of the earth.

And the journey is really quite spectacular. The choice to turn the love interest into a chair is as inspired as it is weird, making way for an unconventional dynamic that is played and animated wonderfully. Together the couple has to travel across Japan and along the way we see more of the impending adult life that awaits Suzume in her coming of age; at one stop she makes a new friend, helps care for some little children, and assists as a waitress in a bar, and these tangents feel less like diversions than they do set-ups for the arc that the movie wants to draw for the character’s maturity. And it’s all so very sublime right until it starts to feel a little… dimensionless. It’s not easy to pinpoint where exactly the movie goes wrong. It’s not that the third-act is bad, but it doesn’t feel like the right climax for the movie that preceded it. Threads are set up that don’t off and instead it feels like the movie is paying off on other threads that it hasn’t taken the time to establish prior. For example, Suzume’s aunt goes after her niece upon learning that she’s left town and, when the two are reunited, there is a confrontation that leads to harsh words being exchanged, setting up the need for a reconciliation. This is good stuff, but it happens so late in the game that it feels more tacked on and rushed than it would have had this exchange occurred in the first act, before Suzume set off on her quest.

It’s a shame because as superb as the individual scenes are and how absurdly beautiful the animation is, it doesn’t quite cohere. Shinkai set the bar high with Your Name, a truly incredible picture where every element clicked together just right and reaped such great rewards, and so perhaps for that reason Suzume can’t help but feel just every so slightly underwhelming. The feeling and passion is all there and you can see the shape of what Shinkai is trying to do clearly enough. At the heart of it all is a young woman mourning her mother and trying to find some way to heal, but the physical and emotional journey she embarks upon with her boy-chair-friend just doesn’t feel like the culmination of that story. There are emotions flying all over the place and for most of the runtime you cannot help but get swept away, but there comes a point where you’re waiting for the throughline to snap into focus, only that moment never really comes. The feelings are there and so is the beauty, but the viewer never gets their catharsis. Suzume is far from a bad movie, it is an often breathtaking picture filled to the brim with affection and stunning images, but it still feels like this movie could have been great in the same way that Your Name is great.

★★★★

Belle

Cast: (voiced by) Kaho Nakamura, Nyō Narita, Shōta Sometani, Tina Tamashiro, Lilas Ikuta, Kōji Yakusho, Takeru Satoh

Director: Mamoru Hosoda

Writer: Mamoru Hosoda

The Internet is so often a place of such misanthropy and toxicity, it’s easy to lose sight of the infinite potential and possibilities it lends to the world. People all over the world are more connected than they’ve ever been and, as Hosoda sees it at least, there is room for those same people to discover and display the most authentic and idealised (yes, I know that’s an oxymoron, but so are many things on the Internet) versions of themselves. There are as many dark sides to that possibility as there are light, and the film has no illusion about that. The Internet it depicts is a place where trolls roam about in mobs and choirs, where the amount of data and information is so abundant it can be almost impossible to sift through the chaos and the noise, and where most users fear nothing more than being exposed for the plain, ordinary people that they are. And yet, even with all of that, there is still immense beauty to be found in the idea that a shy, sad girl can become the beautiful, beloved songstress she lacks the confidence to be in real life, that her music can speak to and resonate with millions of people from all walks of life, and that two souls who share a profound mutual pain and loneliness can find and save each other in the middle of all the chaos. Belle is, simply put, a beautiful film.

Our heroine is Suzu Naito, a lonely 17-year-old who loved singing as a young girl, but has not been able to utter a note since losing her mother years ago. Today she has a strained relationship with her father, pines for her protective childhood friend Shinobu, and wishes she could be like the popular and pretty Ruka. Her closest friend is genius hacker Hiroka, who points her towards U, a virtual metaverse of 5 billion subscribers that gives each user a unique avatar based on their biometric information. In the virtual world of U, Suzu can become Belle, a beautiful anime princess with flowing pink hair and an angelic voice. She sings and becomes a viral sensation, her millions of followers enraptured by her stunning performance and desperate to learn who she could possibly be. During one of her shows, Belle encounters the Dragon, a beastly figure with a wrathful temper on the run from the Justices, the self-appointed authority on matters of law and justice. They wish to expose the Dragon’s real identity and banish him from U, but Belle sees in the beast (do you see where this is going?) the same kind of alienation and sorrow that she feels in her own life and tries to encourage him to confide in her.

Belle then is clearly inviting itself to be read as a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast, specifically the Disney iteration with many images and motifs that recall sequences from the 1991 animated classic, such as the rose petals and the ballroom dance. But it’s also, on some level anyway, a reimagining that Disney could never make today, bringing fresh emotional material and new readings to the sturdy foundation and making something far more interesting than a straight retelling could ever have been. In this rendition of the tale as old as time, it is empathy, not true love, that brings Belle and the Dragon together. You see, a person’s avatar is created by U’s algorithm as a manifestation of their true selves, bringing their hidden strengths to the forefront. Belle’s beauty then is an extension of her compassion while the Dragon’s beastliness is less of an affliction or a curse that it is an extension of the personal troubles and inner demons that conflict him. Upon finding each other and discovering how similar they are despite their aesthetic differences, both learn from the other how to make their inner strengths external and they inspire each other to overcome their greatest turmoils. Belle is a love story, but viewers should understand that it is not a tale of romantic love. Love comes in many forms.

Many recent films have attempted to visually depict the Internet in a similar fashion to this film, from Ready Player One to Ralph Breaks the Internet; Belle outdoes them all. The lush colours and playful shapes that make up the world of U are spectacular throughout. The fanciful images that Hosoda and his team dream up, from the Dragon’s gothic castle in the night sky to the thousands of differently shaped and sized avatars that make up this world to the humpback whale fixed with hundreds of speakers like barnacles that Belle sings atop while wearing a luminous dress made of flowers, are staggering in their intricacy and liveliness. The creative use of imagery, such as the barrage of notifications that dominate the screen when Belle goes viral and the sheer abundance of bodies that take up the infinite spaces of U, convey to us the sense of a massive, sprawling multiverse of connection and communication that is constantly moving and evolving. In many scenes, chaos reigns supreme in a way that feels familiar to those who spends large segments of their day online. If this it how it actually looked and felt to use the Internet, it might not be such a consistently terrible place for so many of its users!

Of course, the scenes that take place in the real world aren’t to be discounted. The art in these scenes is comparatively more naturalistic, in keeping with Ghibli’s usual style. A moment that stood out in particular revolves around a romantic subplot and comprises a prolonged motionless shot of three characters in a train station. Stillness is an underrated quality in animation, and here it is used exquisitely. That this sequence can co-exist in a film that also contains such a lively, sparkling depiction of the virtual world is a testament to Hosoda’s mastery of tone. Though the film treads familiar grounds in its depictions of adolescent romance, familial trauma, and even online culture, the way it goes about them is so dazzling and inventive that it feels revelatory. Belle is a film that leaves you feeling elated and hopeful, even in the face of the hardship that it concedes. Suzu is, of course, disheartened at first when she sees some of the negative feedback Belle has received, but then Hiroka is on hand to remind her that for every disparaging comment, there are a dozen and more praising her and encouraging her to pursue her calling. The movie is a reminder that for all the bile it generates, the Internet is a net-positive good for the world for the way it gives people their voices and the ability for others to listen to their voices.

★★★★