History Anime / Suzume

* AnAesop: '''''Memories.''''' Specifically, our tendency to remember just the bad things of the people we know or anything happening to us.
** The multiple doors seen in-movie represented how we keep unwanted memories under lock-and-key, which is also what Sōta and Suzume literally use to seal up the doors where the Great Worm is trying to go through.
** The abandoned places where those doors are located hold the happy memories the people who used to go there experience, and ''only'' the happy memories. Hence, Suzume, [[spoiler:who by the second part of the movie is mostly sad, angry, and hateful at the little things around her, can't even find it in her to do Sōta's job when he's indisposed.]]
** [[spoiler:Only when Suzume, under Sōta's urging, remembers the small, little happiness exchanged by the Tohoku residents who died in the tsunami (true to form, it's represented by greeting scenes around ''doors''), instead of only seeing the death and destruction the disaster brought, can she seal the Great Worm properly.]]

* ClothingDamage: Suzume gets pretty badly banged up, with her jacket having multiple holes in it, by the midpoint, including [[LosingAShoeInTheStruggle losing her shoes]]. Rather than being for fanservice, it showcases her physical harm without blood.

** [[spoiler: The Great Worm]] resembles the [[spoiler:sky dragons]] seen in ''Anime/WeatheringWithYou'', even making the same vocal call.
** The Ever After resembles the Netherworld of Agartha seen in ''Anime/ChildrenWhoChaseLostVoices'' with its depiction as a grassy plain with a star-filled night sky.
** A character named Miki, resembling Miki Okudera from ''Anime/YourName'' makes an appearance as an employee of the karaoke bar.

* DraconicAbomination: The [[spoiler:Great Worm]] is named like a dragon and depicted as one in old Closer documents, but its true form is a mass of seething reddish tendrils seemingly infused with fire. It has a long and sinuous body like a Japanese dragon, but its "head" and "tail" lack any distinctive features and operate in the same manner.

*** And finally, once [[spoiler:she realizes that Daijin, despite his selfishness, was actually helping her and Sōta all along by leading them to the doors (rather than releasing the Wyrm himself like they'd feared), Suzume warmly thanks Daijin in a way that indicates that she's well on the way to forgiving him, and he turns back into his healthy-looking form again]].
* GoodAllAlong: Downplayed with [[spoiler:Daijin. He's certainly not fully "good", as he ''does'' curse Sōta by turning him into the chair and selfishly offloads his Keystone duty onto him so that he himself can be with Suzume as her cat. However, the two of them spend much of the movie believing that Daijin was the one who was opening the doors and letting the Wyrm out, but as it turns out, he just wanted to spend time with Suzume, and was actually ''leading'' them to where the doors would open so that they'd get there in time to close them. Suzume realizing this is what gets Daijin back into her good graces.]]
* HappyRain: When a door is shut, the [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]]'s severed length explodes into a shower of rainbow-hued rain.

* InvisibleToNormals: The [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]] is invisible to everyone except Suzume and Sōta. Sōta can see it due to being a Closer while Suzume [[spoiler:was lost in the Ever After as a child and retained a connection to it]].

* {{Kaiju}}: The [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]] is an absolutely massive being. Its full body is able to cover most of [[spoiler:Tokyo]], and [[spoiler:Sadaijin]]'s [[MegaNeko true form]] is tiny by comparion.

* LeakingCanOfEvil: The [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]] is sealed in the Ever After, but naturally appearing doors allow it to try and reach into the living world.

* LosingAShoeInTheStruggle: Grabbing onto Sōta when he's [[spoiler:on the Great Wyrm in Tokyo]] yanks Suzume off the ground so violently that one of her shoes falls off.

* MustMakeAmends: Enforced. [[spoiler:Sadaijin]] states that Suzume must correct things because it was her mistake that [[spoiler:freed the Wyrm]].

* NotQuiteTheRightThing: Suzume is forced to [[spoiler:use Sōta as a new Keystone to save Tokyo]]. However, she quickly regrets this and it becomes clear that [[spoiler:having only one Keystone in the center of the Wyrm's body is resulting in even more minor earthquakes as its head and tail are now free to move]].

* PortalDoor: Doors in abandoned areas can seemingly open to the Ever After, the realm where the [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]] resides. However, the Ever After cannot be entered through these doors as it is not a place for living humans. [[spoiler:There is one exception - one may enter the Ever-After through the ''first'' door they ever opened, which for Suzume is the one in her hometown.]]

* RemovedAchillesHeel: The [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]] is entirely reliant on doors to enter the living world, so all it takes is one or two humans with a key and a prayer to stop it. The [[spoiler:Tokyo]] door is buried deep underground which prevents the protagonists from finding its location before [[spoiler:the Wyrm fully emerges, forcing Sōta to seal it as the new Keystone]].

** About two-thirds of the way through the movie, Daijin reveals that the reason he can't [[spoiler:return to being the second Keystone to stop the Wyrm]] is because [[spoiler:he's already passed the role of the Keystone to Sōta, which is why the latter has been having dreams where he's freezing to death and having trouble waking up]].
** Suzume visits [[spoiler:Mr. Munakata in the hospital so he can tell her how to save Sōta, his grandson]], and he tells her that [[spoiler:the reason she's able to see the Ever After, and thus the Wyrm, when others can't is because she entered it once before (when she got lost there as a child), and that the only way she can go back there is through the same door where she accessed it the first time]].
** The very first scene in the movie is a young Suzume becoming lost in the Ever After and seeing a woman in white there who approaches her. She doesn't remember much about the encounter in the present because she was only 4 at the time, but believes it was her mother because the woman gave her the chair that Tsubame made for her as a birthday present, and the exact details about what occurred there are the biggest mystery of the movie. [[spoiler:When present-day Suzume, after returning to the Ever After to rescue Souta and defeat the Wyrm, sees her childhood self there, she realizes that the woman she saw as a kid was her older self in a PlaceBeyondTime.]]

** [[spoiler: The Great Wyrm]] resembles the [[spoiler:sky dragons]] seen in ''Anime/WeatheringWithYou'', even making the same vocal call.

* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: Though it can affect the real world average people cannot see [[spoiler: the Great Wyrm]] unless they're Closers like Sōta, or [[spoiler:Suzume due to visiting the Ever After as a child]], they can only notice its after effects as "earthquakes".

* AgonyOfTheFeet: Suzume loses one of her shoes when she [[spoiler:jumps on the Tokyo Wyrm]], and soon after removes the other shoe. Her socks are soon stained with red from the damage her feet take until she can get a chance to wash and bandage them.

** The multiple doors seen in-movie represented how we keep unwanted memories under lock-and-key, which is also what Sōta and Suzume literally use to seal up the doors where the Great Wyrm is trying to go through.

** [[spoiler:Only when Suzume, under Sōta's urging, remembers the small, little happiness exchanged by the Tohoku residents who died in the tsunami (true to form, it's represented by greeting scenes around ''doors''), instead of only seeing the death and destruction the disaster brought, can she seal the Great Wyrm properly.]]
* AncientOrderOfProtectors: The Closers, who are charged with keeping the doors [[spoiler:to the Ever After closed so the Wyrm cannot escape to cause disaster]]. In the present, only Sōta and his grandfather seem to be left.

* BadVibrations: Minor quakes throughout the film typically indicate a door is active and the [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]] is attempting to enter the living world.

** Daijin quickly becomes attached to Suzume because she (accidentally) freed him from his Keystone form and then fed him when he appeared to be a starving kitten. [[spoiler:He decided he wants to become Suzume's cat and his main motive for his less-than-savory actions in the movie is to spend time with her, even transferring his duty as the Keystone to Sōta so he can be with her. He's quite shaken and saddened when he finally realizes that doing so has caused her to hate him (not helped by the fact that she mistakenly believes that Daijin was the one opening the doors and releasing the Wyrm).]]

* BehemothBattle: The climax of the film is a battle between [[spoiler:the Great Wyrm attempting to reach the door and Sadaijin in his true, enormous form]].

** Not long after the reveal that [[spoiler:Daijin was [[GoodAllAlong actually helping Suzume and Sōta find the doors]] and him again saving and helping Suzume in the climax, he ultimately accepts that he cannot become her cat and takes back the role of Keystone from Sōta so he can be human again, reverting back to his inert Keystone statue form to allow Suzume to use him to pin down the Wyrm]].

** The trauma of people who survive great catastrophes. The villain of the movie is an EldritchAbomination that causes earthquakes, and Suzume herself has a great deal of trauma from the Tōhoku tsunami that destroyed her home and implicitly killed her mother. Earthquake alarms are a prominent motif throughout the movie, and Suzume is only able to save Sōta and defeat the Wyrm when she [[spoiler:returns to her home and reflects on the happy memories of the people who lived there, giving the place a positive connotation where she before only had bad memories]].

* CosmicKeystone: The Eastern and Western Keystones are anchors which prevent the [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]] from entering the living world by pinning down its head and tail. As new doors open and the [[spoiler:Wyrm]] shifts, the Keystones must sometimes be moved.

* DelayingAction: [[spoiler:Sadaijin]] fights the [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]] in order to delay it reaching the door while Suzume and Daijin [[spoiler:rescue Sōta]].

* DraconicAbomination: The [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]] is named like a dragon and depicted as one in old Closer documents, but its true form is a mass of seething reddish tendrils seemingly infused with fire. It has a long and sinuous body like a Japanese dragon, but its "head" and "tail" lack any distinctive features and operate in the same manner.

* EldritchAbomination: [[spoiler:The Great Wyrm]], a living disaster that threatens Japan every time it escapes through a gate.

* FeralVillain: The [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]] never shows any sign of intelligence. It takes every opportunity presented to cause disaster in the living world and doesn't seem aware of the two humans fighting it.

* ForebodingFleeingFlock: Birds take the sky whenever the [[spoiler:Great Wyrm]] begins to emerge, with an enormous number of birds appearing when it emerges from the [[spoiler:Tokyo subway tunnel]].

** As Suzume speaks with Sōta[[spoiler:'s grandfather in the hospital]], he describes the Ever After to her as, among other things, "a PlaceBeyondTime". [[spoiler:When Suzume and Sōta are in the Ever After once she's saved him and they've defeated the Wyrm, she sees her child self appear there, and realizes that, because this is a place where time has no meaning, her younger and older selves can coexist there simultaneously, and that [[TheReveal the "woman" she remembered seeing there as a child was actually herself in the future]]]].

** Suzume and Sōta quite understandably believe that Daijin is running around Japan opening doors to set the Wyrm lose, and are trying to stop him as well as close the doors. [[spoiler:And yet, Daijin appears many times on other people's social media in places that make it very obvious where he's going next, which seems counterintuitive since it's what allows the two of them to find and close the doors in time to avert disasters. It's actually because Daijin is ''not'' opening the doors, and is in fact leading Sōta and Suzume to them as a way to spend time with the latter.]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/suzume.png]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mv5bodhhy2m5njetztc0oc00mde5lwjimwqtytzkmtmwmta0nmzjxkeyxkfqcgdeqxvymtewmjgymziz_v1_fmjpg_ux1000.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350: On the other side of the door, was time in its entirety...]]

** The trauma of people who survive great catastrophes. The villain of the movie is an EldritchAbomination that causes earthquakes, and Suzume herself has a great deal of trauma from the Tōhoku tsunami that destroyed her home and implicitly killed her mother. Earthquake alarms are a prominent motif throughout the movie, and Suzume is only able to save Sōta and defeat the Wyrm when she [[spoiler:returns to her home and reflects on the happy memories of the people who lived there, giving the place a possitive connotation where she before only had bad memories]].

-->'''Daijin:''' ''[to Souta]'' [[spoiler:You are the Keystone]].