Suzume review: A ‘gorgeous, touching and reliably bonkers fantasy’ | Films | Entertainment

Girl meets boy, boy is turned into a three-legged chair, girl falls in love with three-legged chair…The new eye-popping animation from Japanese director Makoto Shinkai (Your Name, Weathering With You) isn’t a typical teen romance.

Suzume (pronounced Suz-oom-eh), is cycling to school when she notices a breeze caressing the flowing locks of a handsome young pedestrian and nearly crashes off her bike.

The lad, called Sota, saves the 16-year-old’s blushes by asking for directions to the nearest ruins.

“I’m looking for a door,” adds the cryptic dreamboat after Suzume points towards an abandoned village.

Turns out the door is a portal to another world. And Sota is a Closer – someone secretly tasked with shutting similar doors whenever giant earthquake-causing worms escape to level a Japanese city.

Intrigued (who wouldn’t be?), Suzume bunks off school to catch up with the lad at the abandoned village. She finds the door first, opens it and allows
a mischievous god to escape and take the form of a cute kitten.

Before said kitty starts opening other portals across Japan, he turns Sota into a broken child’s chair. So Suzume and the talking, wonky-walking item of furniture have to follow the cat across Japan, shutting doors to stop the ginormous worms.

All this probably makes a lot more sense in earthquake-ravaged Japan. But British anime fans will be moved by this gorgeous, touching and reliably bonkers fantasy.