Suzume is another pretty and imaginative film from director Makoto Shinkai, whose name has rapidly risen to the rank of household name for many anime devotees around the world.
Certainly it was not awful, and it's worth a watch. There's a very funny sequence involving some out-of-body magicking that had us laughing out loud.
Let's not be unrealistic, though. Sadly, the reviewers are correct: Suzume is by no means Shinkai's most original project to date. After the initial novelty of a few magical gimmicks wears off, we are left with a starkly modern (and consequently starkly unattractive) world - Japan's major cities, inhabited by armies of iPhone-wielding drones. Realistic, but miserable. Commonplace.
I think we watch Spirited Away because it spirits us away from what we know. Suzume feels all-too-familiar - and the glitz of an alternate dimension featuring Shinkai-staple pinky-blue skies studded with stars, is not enough to prevent us drowning in the empty mediocrity of a world of shallow characters and soul-crushingly ordinary glass temples (skyscrapers) we are all too well acquainted with already.
Certainly it was not awful, and it's worth a watch. There's a very funny sequence involving some out-of-body magicking that had us laughing out loud.
Let's not be unrealistic, though. Sadly, the reviewers are correct: Suzume is by no means Shinkai's most original project to date. After the initial novelty of a few magical gimmicks wears off, we are left with a starkly modern (and consequently starkly unattractive) world - Japan's major cities, inhabited by armies of iPhone-wielding drones. Realistic, but miserable. Commonplace.
I think we watch Spirited Away because it spirits us away from what we know. Suzume feels all-too-familiar - and the glitz of an alternate dimension featuring Shinkai-staple pinky-blue skies studded with stars, is not enough to prevent us drowning in the empty mediocrity of a world of shallow characters and soul-crushingly ordinary glass temples (skyscrapers) we are all too well acquainted with already.