Suzume

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Suzume is filmmaker Makoto Shinkai’s vision of Japan 12 years after an earthquake and tsunami strike the country’s northeast, including a nuclear plant. Watching this anime, which visually outshines Disney and Pixar, is often like staring into mesmerizing watercolor paintings.

High schooler Suzume inhabits a world in which earthquakes are caused not by tectonic plates shifting but by gigantic worms emerging from mysterious doors. She is oblivious to that—until she meets Souta, a young man responsible for closing those doors. Also keeping Japan safe are two cat deities who confine the worms within an otherworldly dimension.

But when Suzume unwittingly frees Daijin, one of the deities, from being a guardian stone, all worms and earthquakes break loose. Together with Souta, Suzume embarks on a journey to stop the calamities.

While this anime film—a box-office hit in Japan and China—delves into the weighty issues of natural disasters and grief, it stays light-hearted with humor that includes the antics of the Instagrammably cute Daijin. Souta, who becomes an anthropomorphic chair under Daijin’s curse, also brings comic relief.

Daijin is emblematic of Shinto, which translates literally as “the way of the gods” and in which sacred spirits reside in nature. This worldview is, of course, un-Biblical, but the film does valorize love and self-sacrifice.

For a story that uses romance to drive much of its plot, Suzume and Souta’s relationship isn’t all that compelling. Viewers are also left on their own to make sense of Daijin’s frenemy relationship with Suzume, and the movie ­contains a handful of moderately offensive words.

Still, Suzume is a dazzling window into Japan.