Suzume’s ending revolves around a subtle Studio Ghibli reference

Fans of anime writer-director Matoko Shinkai could discover periodic nods to Studio Ghibli’s films in his latest work — they usually’re very a lot intentional. But these references aren’t simply homages to Japan’s most well-known animation studio: They serve a very particular goal.

Unlike Shinkai’s earlier two films, Your Name and Weathering with You, his newest, Suzume focuses on the influence of a real-life catastrophe: the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. These movies’ little nods to Studio Ghibli — cultural touchpoints viewers are prone to acknowledge — particularly root the world of Suzume nearer to our actuality, earlier than the film’s ties to the 2011 catastrophe are absolutely revealed.

One of Suzume’s Ghibli nods is overt — somebody on social media spots Daijin the keystone cat using a practice on his personal, and compares the picture to Whisper of the Heart. Another is subtler: Serizawa, a buddy of human-turned-chair Sōta, drives protagonist Suzume and her aunt Tamaki to their remaining vacation spot whereas enjoying “Rouge no Dengon” from Kiki’s Delivery Service on his telephone. But the film’s greatest Ghibli nod is its subtlest. In reality, it won’t even actually be a full reference — and but it resonates a lot extra when you learn it as one.

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the ending of Suzume — and for Studio Ghibli’s Howl’s Moving Castle.]

Suzume, a teenage girl with long dark hair in a ponytail, looks surprised

Throughout the film, unintentional companions Suzume and Sōta journey throughout Japan to shut magical doorways. It’s not too far of a leap to check these portals to the magical destination-switching doorway seen in Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle. This feels very true when Suzume first steps by way of a kind of doorways and sees a lush meadow coated in wildflowers — a panorama that might simply match alongside the beautiful discipline that Howl exhibits Sophie in Miyazaki’s film.

Viewers study that that is a doorway to the afterlife, and the explanation Suzume can see it by way of the doorway is as a result of she someway wandered into the realm as a little woman. Flashbacks reveal that Suzume did certainly enter a mysterious door as a little one, and was greeted by a determine she assumed to be her lifeless mom. Afterward, she discovered a chair she thought she misplaced, the one which Sōta finally will get cursed to turn out to be.

Suzume learns she should return to the door she initially entered if she desires to save lots of Sōta, so she returns to the ruins of her hometown. That sequence is paying homage to the climatic scene in Howl’s Moving Castle, through which, after Howl’s fortress is destroyed, Sophie finds its magical door resting on some rocks among the many ruins. Opening that door, Sophie stumbles into Howl’s childhood, and a previous model of the meadow he confirmed her, then watches him meet his hearth demon Calcifer, and make the deal that prices Howl his coronary heart.

As the scene begins to fade away, Sophie calls out to Howl, “Find me in the future!” and Howl and Calcifer each look her manner. It’s closely implied that that is the explanation Howl seeks her out later in his life, and can also be the explanation that Sophie is finally capable of save him.

Sophie, a young woman with silver hair, wearing a blue Victorian-era gown, stands in front of an old doorway. She presses one hand against it. In the background are some ruins.

So when Suzume enters her personal magical doorway and finds herself in that wildflower meadow, it looks like an echo of Miyazaki’s film. Suzume enters the afterlife to save lots of Sōta, simply as Sophie entered the previous to save lots of Howl. Admittedly, Suzume options extra giant-earthquake-worm battles, simply sufficient that the fast comparability fades away. But after Suzume saves Sōta — and in doing so, reclaims her personal will to dwell — she gazes on the discipline of wildflowers and notices a small determine within the distance. It’s herself, as a little one.

In Howl’s Moving Castle, reaching again to the previous connects the film’s two protagonists, weaving collectively the beginnings of each their tales. But Suzume isn’t the identical kind of romantic film as Howl’s Moving Castle. The focus is on Suzume’s progress, the best way she goes from apathy and self-destructiveness to somebody who truly desires to dwell. So, though she steps by way of the door to save lots of Sōta, she’s truly saving herself. She appears again on the previous and sees the youthful, despondent model of herself, and tells that crying little woman that it’s all going to be okay. It ties her story collectively completely, bringing the ending again to the start — simply as Miyazaki’s film does, in its personal manner.

Suzume is in theaters now.

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