It's been exactly 12 years since the Tôhoku earthquake and tsunami and I can hardly imagine how devastating a tragedy that has been. I can also only imagine how it would've been seeing this movie in a Japanese cinema all these years later, maybe even with ppl that were the age of Suzume when all this happened back then... As someone not from Japan that was not involved in the catastrophe 12 years ago, this is a beautifully moving work that tries to express and process a national trauma in its own way and I think it succeeded at that. One of Shinkai's best work and very well worth a watch.

Very high expectations on this, which were not fulfilled. It belongs of that kind of Japanese movies which looks for an explanation of natural disasters. The overall result is very pretentious and cumbersome, it does not deal with the background topic well, and leaves more questions than the ones it answers.

As expected of a Shinkai film, it's a visual and auditory feast and some of his best work in those regards. Unfortunately, it's held back by a bit of a scrappy narrative and some lazy & underdeveloped character writing and dynamics. Specifically, I felt there was a lack of significant development or establishment for any of the cast, with the only attempts at such coming way too late into the film, leaving most of them feeling bland but at least likeable. This could have been remedied with better utilisation of the supporting cast during the travel segments, but an unnecessary focus on 'the kindness of strangers' squanders what could have been a wonderful opportunity to actually explore Suzume's character in depth. However, the overall cohesiveness seems to feel more put together than in his previous films, even with the flaws mentioned earlier. It carries a bit more of a Disney or Ghibli sense to its tone - perhaps a sign of Shinkai further understanding and embracing his target audience of young adults and my overall feeling is that, in terms of his career, it's a bit of a 'two steps forward, one step back' moment, even if I didn't personally like it as much as some of his other works. Nanoka Hara and An Yamane absolutely nailed their debut roles as Suzume & Gaijin's VAs, respectively, though.

This was a really beautiful story that was able to keep me intrigued throughout, and you don't fully understand the entire story until the very end of this movie. This movie has so many intertwining plotlines playing simultaneously, and every character is so fleshed out no matter how little screen time they get. I highly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of Makoto Shinkai's other movies as this is another great example of his amazing creativity.

Possibly Makoto Shinkai’s masterpiece, and he already had a couple films in contention. Absolutely gorgeous and quite touching.