The apocalypse rarely looked so appealing as it does in Makoto Shinkai’s latest anime – a painterly coming-of-age tale that’s back-shadowed by the spectre of the 2011 tsunami. Suzume (voiced by Nanoka Hara) is the schoolgirl heroine on a mission to close various portals to hell, wafting cross-country through a world of pink sunsets and cherry blossom. She’s on the trail of a talking cat, accompanied by a haunted three-legged chair. Her mother is dead; she needs whatever friends she can find.
Shinkai has fun with his big fantasy set pieces, but he’s brilliant with the little details too, conjuring up a vivid sense of modern-day Japan, right down to the lobster traps and the level crossings and the snaking freeways outside Tokyo. His film’s at its best when it keeps its feet on the ground. The director won rave reviews for 2016’s Your Name, a rapturous body-swap romance that tackled similar themes. Suzume, though, finally feels less nuanced, less grounded, and its winsome fairytale script doesn’t entirely add up. Shinkai casts a spell in the moment, but the magic fades away.
