What Lies Beneath Shinkai's Skies

What Lies Beneath Shinkai’s Skies An openhearted romantic adventure about inheriting a broken world.

- ALISON WILLMORE

TO MAKE ANIMATED movies in Japan is to dwell in the shadow of Hayao Miyazaki, and Makoto Shinkai has been ducking comparisons to the legendary artist since his 2016 hit, Your Name., surpassed Spirited Away at the global box office. In his new film, Suzume, Shinkai surrenders to the inevitable by putting his teenage heroine in pursuit of a magical talking cat named Daijin. Daijin is wide-eyed, adorable, and decidedly Ghibli-esque—like a sinister sibling of Jiji from Kiki’s Delivery Service, given that wherever he goes, disaster seems to follow. But if Daijin is a nod to the king of Japanese animation, he’s also a reminder of just how different Shinkai’s work is in how it blends magical adventure with contemporary details. Suzume takes place in a universe where people have watched Miyazaki’s films and write “OMG, I feel like I’m in Whisper of the Heart!” as a caption on a picture of Daijin on the train, leaving a trail of social-media posts for Suzume (Nanoka Hara) and her companion Souta (Hokuto Matsumura) to follow across the country. That grounding in the present is one reason Shinkai is such an unbeatable purveyor of untrammeled youthful emotion. Suzume isn’t timeless— it’s very much about its moment, about coming of age in a contracting Japan whose future is unclear.