The Other Side of Animation 300: Suzume Review

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keep the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this review!)

Well, this is the 300th review I have written, so I decided to journey back to one of the animation world’s brightest stars, Makoto Shinkai. I’ve infamously been one of the more critical voices talking about Your Name when it was one of the most important animated films and films in general from 2016. Shinkai became a household name once that film connected with audiences even though he has been known and made films before that one. However, recently, I have been rethinking my thoughts about Your Name, and how I connect with it more than back then. Not that I still don’t have my own subjective viewpoints about the twist or some of the storytelling elements, but it did make me go out and buy the blu-ray of it and made me think more about why I like this director despite my more mixed thoughts on his filmography. Outside of his amazing visual presentation that is in all of his films, he tackles themes like romance, distance, relationships, feeling alone, and he captures a feeling of something that can be described as an emotional vibe. Sure, some of his film’s logic and storytelling may not be perfect, but if you can connect with the vibe of his films, then you may have a better time engrossing yourself into the worlds he crafts. Even if he isn’t my favorite Japanese director, like Naoko Yamada, Masaaki Yuasa, or Mamoru Hosoda, I still look forward to his films every time they get announced. With how much of a dry spell 2023 has been for animation so far, until we get flooded with them in June, seeing a film like Suzume makes you feel alive and love the animation experience all over again. 

Directed and written by Makoto Shinkai, we follow a teenager named Suzume Iwato, dubbed by Nicole Sakura. One day, as she is going to school, she encounters a young man named Sota Munakata, dubbed by Josh Keaton who is looking for some ruins that are around her hometown. A bit of the ol’ case of curiosity intrigues her, and she finds the ruins of the Onsen Resort herself. Upon opening a magical door standing in front of a ruined building, she ends up literally opening up a major can of worms in the form of a large magic worm-like entity that sprouts from the door that only she can see. As it turns out, the mysterious young man, Sota, can see it too, and when she leaves and returns to said ruins from where the giant worm thing is sprouting, she encounters him and helps him seal the door away. After tending to his wounds back at her place, she encounters a cat-like individual named or, well, nicknamed Daijin later in the film, dubbed by Lena Josephine Marano. She realizes that this cat was from the first encounter in the ruins, and before she or Sota can do anything, Sota is then turned into a chair! Yeah, the film doesn’t take any time to show off how fantastical this film is going to be. It then becomes a race for Sota and Suzume to travel across Japan to chase after Daijin to seal the doors so the entity doesn’t cause any major disasters and maybe return Sota to a human. 

Some of the reviews have pointed out that Suzume, as the newest film from Makoto Shinkai, is very different from his usual affair with what he likes to tackle in his films. You tend to get a lot about young love, distance in a metaphorical/literal sense, connection, and plenty of visually breathtaking skyscapes. This film definitely feels like one of the few times he went out of his way to avoid using his recurring story beats. Even though it could have been easy to do, this isn’t really a romance. Sure, Suzume somewhat falls for our male lead-turned-chair, but it’s very one-sided. The story is mostly about Suzume finding the strength to feel complete again after her life has felt broken and incomplete, which can be visually seen in the chair that her mother made for her. It’s all about forging the strong connections we make in life, whether it is with family members or with the people you meet along the way.

Even though much of this film’s runtime is the obviously high-stakes race across Japan to seal the doors, it is also about Suzume making connections with the random people she encounters through the journey. The other chunk of this film is also Shinkai taking a creative approach to deal with the trauma and pain brought onto Japan via the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. The worm-like entity is such a creative way to portray cataclysmic events. Other themes include fate/destiny that both of our leads go through, and Suzume coming full circle to terms with the loss she has been handed in life. It might be Shinkai’s most intimate film that while having grand-scale sequences seen throughout, lets our characters be more of the focus. Since it begins with the whimsical and fantastical stuff from scene one, you aren’t having to deal with the whiplash of something like Your Name or the third act of Weathering With You. Even though most people think of Miyazaki and Takahata as directors who focus on characters, Shinkai has a real charm and appeal with how he writes his character dynamics, as everyone works so well off of one another and doesn’t feel like overly archetypical anime characters for the majority of the runtime. Just because it’s an animated film doesn’t mean it can’t have grounded characters. The director even held back on going full-tilt anime in terms of the humor and expressions, which would have been distracting when the characters are already so full of life. Not that having hyper-expressive characters and wacky anime-style humor doesn’t work, since it’s still thrown into the film from time to time, but it all comes down to the execution of what kind of tone and story you are trying to create. 

It should be no shock to anyone that CoMix Wave Films and the other talented teams of animators that brought this film to life always put in some incredible work. The mix of CGI backgrounds, buildings, and vehicles blend extremely well into the 2D elements, Shinkai’s typical design philosophy is as recognizable as ever, especially with how every female lead now has that red string of fate motif that was from Your Name, and the character designs pop. However, the animation on the chair is incredible. Even with its limited moveset, you can absolutely tell how much personality was shoved into its movements. Even when he made Voices of a Distant Star, Shinkai has had this magic touch of making the world around you feel ethereal and vast. The constant wide shots of the landscapes and sky views really make the viewer look small. The world and universe around our leads look vast, and in context make them look so small compared to everything else in the universe. Due to how the film is executed, it makes one feel like the most important part of your life and so on and so forth. The voice cast is also very good. It’s one of the first times Crunchyroll has used a mix of character actors and the usual voice actors that you see in anime titles. Granted, it’s a Makoto Shinkai film, so they were going to get some slightly bigger names, but you expect that from distributors like ElevenArts and GKIDS, so it’s a little surprising to see Crunchyroll do it as well. Still, it’s very cool to see a successful animated film from overseas using a mix of actors. Nichole Sakura, Josh Keaton, Jennifer Sun Bell, Roger Craig Smith, Amanda C. Miller, Rosalie Chiang, Allegra Clark, Cam Clarke, Joe Ziegla, Lena Josephine Marano, and Mela Lee. They do good job with their respective roles and bring a lot of fantastic performances to one of the best films of 2023. This being a Shinkai film, he teamed up with the band RADWIMPS and Kazma Jinnouchi which offer another ethereal and delightful score that brings a whimsy that is a refreshing take from most film soundtracks these days. 

Honestly, even with all is said and done, Suzume is my new favorite Makoto Shinkai film experience. Seeing it on the big screen helped, but even on the smaller screen, this film feels the most focused on relationship dynamics between characters as they journey through the challenging world of relationships and find connections with those close to them. It helps that he has indeed moved away from what he has done in the past, and in interviews said he is done with making certain types of films that people love from him in order to branch out and craft new and exciting tales. It’s what’s fun when you journey through a director’s filmography to see how they change and grow as time goes on, from their own art style to what kind of stories they like to tell. It’s why animation is such a fun medium of storytelling. You can do anything with animation, and the only limits you have are the ones you put on yourself. If you can find a way to watch this movie, please do. If you want to see original 2D animated features on the big theatrical screens you all ride and die for, then you need to see them if they are in your area. Don’t go see the sequels, remakes, and whatever that you think flood every single screen. Actions speak louder than words, and your actions in supporting films like Suzume speak louder than complaining about it on Twitter. Now then, thank you all for 300 reviews, and I’m going to take a small break from reviewing films, (well, unless I get a screener of course), to work on some editorials, but I will see you all in June! 

Rating: Essentials

The Other Side of Animation 256: Turning Red Review

(If you like what you see, you can go to camseyeview.biz to see more of my work on video game reviews, editorials, lists, Kickstarters, developer interviews, and review/talk about animated films. If you would like, consider contributing to my Patreon at patreon.com/camseyeview. It would help support my work, and keeps the website up. Thanks for checking out my work, and I hope you like this review!)

The fact of the matter is that there needs to be more diverse stories being told in film and animation, and there needs to be a bigger push for more diverse storytellers behind these projects as well. It’s absurd how stubborn some animation studios can be or have been in the past to rely on the same three or so directors for all of their films, and that’s detrimental to actually telling more ambitious and creative stories. Do you think we would be where we are now with films like Into the Spider-Verse, The Mitchells vs. The Machines, Encanto, and today’s review of Turning Red if we had the same people in charge of greenlighting every single project? We need this change in the US animation scene, because having the same five or so directors with the same familiar but distinct to their own respective studios’ art styles gets tiring quickly. This is why much of the time, the best animated films that come out every year are from overseas, because they are willing to talk about stuff and do different animation and visual styles that most US studios aren’t willing to tackle. It’s frustrating, because now with studios like Pixar and Sony breaking down the walls that were limiting studios back then, they are now able to let artists and studios go in new directions. I mean, did you see that new Puss in Boots trailer? It looks amazing. Anyway, we are going to talk about Pixar’s newest animated venture with Domee Shi’s Turning Red. 

Directed by Domee Shi and written by Domee Shi and Julia Cho, we follow the story of Meilin Lee, voiced by Rosalie Chiang. She’s an ambitious, proactive, and extremely realistic teenager living in Toronto with her family and circle of friends. After an absolutely embarrassing moment caused by her mother, Ming Lee, voiced by Sandrah Oh. When she reacts to some drawings in Meilin’s notebook, something changes within Mei overnight. The next morning, she finds out that she has turned into one of the world’s cutest animals, a red panda. After understandably freaking out, she then goes on a journey to find out how she can deal with this new and apparently familial “curse”, and still go on with being a newly appointed teenager and life around her. 

Let’s start with the themes and overall story, because, for some reason, quite a few people, mostly uneducated, had some notoriously bad takes before and after this film’s release. Now then, to the people who said “I can’t relate to the main character.”, let me ask you a question, were you ever a teenager? Unless you are under 13, then you have been a teenager. Do you remember how many corny things you have said and done? How you have tried to be overly perfect in everything you do? What about some embarrassing drawings that you know don’t look good now, but you were super passionate about? Don’t you remember seeing a concert for a particular artist that you thought would be the biggest and most important thing in your life at that point? What about how you thought it would be the end of the world if you didn’t see that one concert, movie, show, or play that one new video game? What about that moment in time when you found your sexual discovery of finding other boys or girls cute and or hot? To the artists who are reading this, do you not remember drawing fanart or writing fanfiction of characters you loved and you “Frankenstein” them together into a story because you could? Turning Red does a fantastic job of capturing the messy era of time that is puberty and becoming a teenager more so than shows like Big Mouth. It’s an extremely awkward time, and one when you are finding things out about yourself that you never quite got until that point in time. The fact some people find this film unrelatable either means they have completely blocked out that part of them growing up, just found the execution of being said teenager not perfect, or are absolutely lying, because just because the character may not be 100% specifically you, that doesn’t mean that you can’t find characters relatable. I have reviewed films and shows that are 100% not relating to me, but I find ways to be invested with the entire story or experience. Don’t tell me you can relate to something like a walking toy, a bug, a car voiced by Owen Wilson, and then not a more relatable character like a pre-teen going through puberty and her period. The film’s story also tackles themes of pressure from the toxic familial drama that trickles down through generations, as Mei’s mother Ming also had to deal with that from her mother. Yes, we now have two animated films in a row from Disney that deal with toxic family ideals about perfection and the unhealthy pressure that is put upon the rest of the family. When Mei’s father, Jin talks with her in the third act, you can tell that while he had a more backseat approach to the overarching narrative, his talk with Mei is one of the most crucial story beats about loving yourself, and that means loving the side that’s great and all of the corny dorky awkward sides to it as well. Domee Shee and her team were able to weave such a tapestry of a story that, while it gets bonkers in the third act, was still executing it all with such precise accuracy and everything from the rest of the family members and friends has such nuance to them that it results in one of the most intimate stories ever made at the studio. 

Before we move on though, isn’t it refreshing that an animated film actually acknowledges that periods are a thing? No real sugar coating of it either. This film makes it known that yes, this stuff happens in real life, and there are no attempts to walk around it since everyone is going to deal with it. It’s like how refreshing it is to hear a show or film about zombies actually call them zombies and not some generic marketable word like walkers, or when food competition shows can’t use branded food items and the show has to come up with the bargain bin generic title of those items, but then are actually able to say them. This whole element of the overarching plot due to the metaphorical puberty and period themes is a good sign of how far we have come to talk about this subject in shows and films without it being a weird and frankly gross/punching down punchline. For example, did you know that Disney originally didn’t release Isao Takahata’s masterpiece, Only Yesterday, into the states because one part of the story in a coming-of-age drama talks about the main characters getting periods? It’s a natural element of growing up or something! It only makes that fact so much more aggravating, because Disney was sure as heck glad to get those films over here, but apparently not all of them for some reason. 

Now that we talked about the story, let’s gush about the animation. While it might be similar to last year’s film Luca, Turning Red takes Luca’s art style and amplifies it up to over 100%. This is hands-down some of Pixar’s most expressive animation. It’s ridiculous how much blood, sweat, and possible satanic goat rituals the talented animators have to go through at Pixar to really push the envelope with how expressive their characters can be. It has a really fast-paced snap to how Mei reacts to everything alongside the other side characters. There is definitely some of that Sony Pictures Animation snap to the movements, and the ease with which it puts you into the mindset of Mei when her mother either embarrasseds her in front of everyone at the convenience store or when her mom brings pads to school, even simply seeing the food on the family dinner table. They even add so many small 2D elements to the CGI models, like the sparkly anime eyes trope. When they get to the spiritual bamboo forest sequences, they look less like CGI forests and more like beautifully lush painted environments. It brings such an alluring and out-of-this-world atmosphere. All of Toronto really reminds me of the pastel colors you would see in a Kirby game and how full of character and life it is. It’s so cool to see that we are now in a space where CGI can have these new techniques and tools to bring the next step in CGI animation up to the plate. Sure, The Peanuts Movie and Into the Spider-Verse got the ball rolling, but to see how everyone has taken notice and want to do the same thing is such a nice change of pace, when back in the day and even as early as the last decade, everyone wanted to try and be that one studio when they should have been doing their own thing. Now, studios are doing their own thing and being the best they can be at what they do, but everyone gets to have more fun with taking the animation game to the next level! Who cares at the end of the day who started it first, let’s just enjoy the fact the US animation scene is growing. 

Anyway, the voice cast is fantastic! The people in charge of casting at Pixar tend to always pick who would best fit the character, instead of who would get the most buzz for marketing and social media. Not to say they get no big-named actors, because a lot of the actors in this film are recognizable, but the fact they aren’t slammed in your face via the marketing is always going to feel refreshing. The actors they did get though, do a fantastic job with their characters. You get Rosalie Chiang as Mei who brings this delightful energy and driving force to the plot. Sandra Oh is always amazing in whatever she is cast, Orion Lee brings a nurturing and quirky nature to the dad, it’s always a good time when you bring James Hong into the equation, Wai Ching Hu is complex and captivating as Mei’s grandmother, and Ava Morse, Hyien Park, and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan do such a pitch-perfect job as Mei’s friends. The music that is composed by Ludwig Goransson was able to perfectly capture the films’ tone and the world of early 2000s Toronto. The boy-band tunes that are played throughout the film were composed by Billie Eilish and her brother, and they are shockingly good. They really capture the era of boy-bands the world was enjoying at that point in time. 

There are a few story beats that could have been resolved better in the third act, but they are minor nitpicks, since this reviewer personally found that it hits the landing to make up for some of the small story beats and some clunky writing moments. Turning Red is a new step in the evolution of Pixar storytelling. Hopefully, they hire more new talent among their already immensely talented teams of animators to keep pushing the envelope of animated storytelling because as we have seen, when studios do that, others tend to follow with their own takes. It’s an early frontrunner for the best animated film of 2022 so far, and this year is stacked, so we will have to see where things go from here. Now then, let’s talk about an anime franchise film! The next one up will be the brand new and hugely successful Jujutsu Kaisen 0. 

Thanks for reading the review! I hope you all enjoyed reading it! If you would like to support my work, make sure to share it out, and if you want to become a Patreon supporter, then you can go to patreon.com/camseyeview. I will see you all next time!

Rating: Essentials