Ivan Tam

Seen it all, own it all save this one. Not Shinkai's best work. Most glaringly obviously dramatic drop in quality being the use of CGI. I did not expect to see a computer generated Toyota Prius in the movie. While everything else in the movie is well made, there was no establishing shots of any location that was memorable. The only scene that stood out was the opening sequence with both Suzume and Souta meeting each other for the first time. This is probably due to the fact that this scene had been very heavily advertised for the movie in all of social media. This music was alright, only really one memorable song and the score felt like it was held back by the tonality structure of the story. I don't really blame Radwimps for this. One can only score to the direction of which the narrative is told. The story felt like a rushed piece of content with a script on screen served to waste time on seemingly what might be interpreted as important shots of locations, but the bulk of the movie spends way too much time on the Suzume the traveling locksmith and her Disney companions. Not much actually happens through the mid-point of the movie, it feels like they were just trying to pad the run time. Only critical praise I can give it is one I always give to Anime, the voice acting. Not much to be said about it. Those people were fantastic at their jobs.