Suzume's Ending Explained: How The Power Of Memories Connects People

Like the other movies by Makoto Shinkai, Suzume has a complex ending that encapsulates all the themes presented in the story and delivers a powerful message. While the ending of Suzume may seem a bit cryptic at first, it’s actually easy to interpret once the movie is put in perspective through the author’s previous works.

Suzume is the latest movie by modern anime maestro Makoto Shinkai, who rose to prominence for Your Name (2016) and Weathering With You (2019).

It’s the coming-of-age story for the 17-year-old protagonist, Suzume, set in various disaster-stricken locations across Japan, where she must close the doors causing devastation.

The Story of Suzume

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Suzume’s journey begins in a quiet town in Kyushu (the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan) when she encounters Souta, a young man who travels Japan, searching for mysterious doors located in the ruins of places abandoned by humans. When Suzume finds one of such doors near her hometown, she unwillingly releases a guardian deity, freeing the supernatural force it was guarding, called “the Worm”. After Suzume and Souta seal the first door, more begin to open one after another all across Japan, which must be closed before the Worm can unleash an earthquake in the surrounding area.

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Unfortunately, Souta is cursed by the guardian deity, Daijin, and transformed into the kid’s chair that Suzume keeps as a memento of her mom, making her task even more difficult. Despite that, she bravely embarks on a journey across Japan, meeting different people and collecting meaningful experiences that help her grow up and overcome her tragic past.

Suzume’s only parent, her mother, was killed in the Great Sendai Earthquake that hit Japan on March 11, 2011, which understandably left her emotionally scarred, despite being raised by her loving and caring aunt, Tamaki. Suzume’s journey finally leads her to Tokyo, where Souta makes the ultimate sacrifice and becomes the Keystone needed to seal the Worm again.

What Happens in Suzume’s Ending

What Happens to Suzume & Souta?

Suzume‘s story doesn’t end with Souta’s sacrifice, however. Suzume refuses to abandon the young man she has grown to love, and with the help of Tamaki and Souta’s friend, Serizawa, she travels to her hometown and the ruins of the house where she lived with her mother. Souta is trapped in the Ever-After, which is essentially the realm of souls where the mysterious doors lead to, and the only door that Suzume can travel through as a living person is the one that she crossed as a kid, when she got lost while desperately looking for her mother.

In the Ever-After, Daijin has a change of heart and decides to help Suzume in freeing Souta. However, the Worm is raging and trying to escape to the world of the living, where he will cause massive destruction. Daijin turns back into the Keystone and, together with his twin deity, Sadaijin, they let Suzume and Souta use them to seal the Worm in the Ever-After again.

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After that, Suzume sees her younger self wandering into the spirit realm and goes to comfort her, giving kid Suzume the chair that her mother had built for her before dying, and reassuring her that she will grow up and meet many people who will love her and make her happy. Then, Suzume and Souta return to their world and their lives.

Suzume’s Ending Explained

What Does it All Mean?

To understand the actual meaning of Suzume‘s ending, it is important to remember that the characters and the story are vehicles to convey a message. According to an interview Shinkai did for Hollywood Reporter, the Great Earthquake of 2011 changed his life radically. He realized that he could no longer create entertainment for the sake of it, but his mission had to be to use his art to share that traumatic experience with the world, and perhaps find some meaning in it. This is where Suzume comes from, and what inspired Shikai’s previous movies too.

Fundamentally, it was the 2011 earthquake that hit the east side of Japan that inspired me to make this film. And it was that incident that made me want to take these themes of disaster into my work and translate them into animation

In the movie, the Worm represents the destructive power of nature, which lays dormant until it’s unleashed. The doors open in abandoned places because, according to Souta, the weight of people’s feelings quells the land. Through Suzume’s journey, the movie shows the natural beauty of Japan, but also the tragedies natural disasters leave behind.

The only thing that people can do when faced with them is accept their role as part of something larger and move on, looking at the future with hope. The doors that Suzume and Souta close literally connect the past to the present and the future, thus the gesture of closing them is a metaphor for coming to terms with the past, no matter how tragic it is.

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Time is also an important element of Shikai’s works that returns in Suzume‘s ending. When she wandered through the door as a kid, Suzume met someone who she believed was her mother, even if the memory faded with time. However, the finale reveals that the person was actually grown-up Suzume herself, something that was possible because, as explained by Souta earlier in the movie, in the Ever-After all time exists simultaneously. Meeting one’s future self is somewhat of an overused cliché, but it worked better than usual in this specific case.

What Suzume is Really About

Ultimately, Suzume is a movie about the power of memories and feelings to connect people, exemplified by the fact that, to close a door, Suzume and Souta have to think about the people who lived in that place and their feelings. The ending of Suzume may not be as shocking as that of Your Name, or sad as that of Weathering With You, but it’s really effective in transmitting the message that Makoto Shinkai strived to communicate to his audiences.

Suzume’s Full Japanese Title Explains the Movie’s Ending

Suzume no Tajimari’s Real Meaning Explained

Though Makoto Shinkai’s latest movie was released as just Suzume in the United States, the movie’s original Japanese title is Suzume no Tajimari, which can roughly be translated to Suzume’s Locking Up. That full title has many obvious applications to the movie’s plot, as it directly relates to the main narrative thrust of Suzume and Souta locking doors to prevent natural disasters from ravaging Japan. In addition to the obvious literal interpretation, there is also the obvious implication that Suzume may be locking her emotions away and not dealing with them.

On another level though, Suzume Locking Up is also a good summary of where Suzume is at emotionally by the film’s ending. Suzume spends much of the movie weighed down by trauma, preventing her from moving on with her life. However, when Suzume finds the younger version of herself in the ever-after and gives her the chair, the heroine is finally able to move forward with her life. In this way, Suzume Locking Up effectively summarizes how Suzume is able to finally able to move past her trauma to live a more fulfilling life after the events of the film.

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Though it’s not like viewers of the English version of Suzume necessarily lost out, it’s clear that the original title was meant to work on multiple levels. As evidenced by the many complexities of Suzume’s ending, Makoto Shinkai is clearly the kind of creator who puts a great deal of thought into every aspect of his movies. The fact that Suzume’s title is able to convey so much about the plot and characters while being relatively short and catchy is a testament to Shinkai’s brilliance.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Suzume is available now on Crunchyroll!

Suzume

The third film from writer/director Makoto Shinkai, Suzume, is an animated action-adventure fantasy film that revolves around seventeen-year-old high school student Suzume Iwato. Suzume, who has the power to see supernatural beings and events, discovers that strange doors keep opening across Japan that will inevitably lead to the world’s doom. Joined by a mysterious young man, Suzume will embark on a journey to close the doors and save her home.

Director

Makoto Shinkai

Release Date

March 5, 2023

Studio(s)

CoMix Wave Films , Story Inc.

Distributor(s)

Toho , Sony Pictures Releasing , Crunchyroll

Writers

Makoto Shinkai

Cast

Nichole Sakura , Josh Keaton , Cam Clarke , Roger Craig Smith , Amanda Céline Miller , Rosalie Chiang , Allegra Clark , Joe Zieja

Runtime

122 minutes

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