On the other side of the door, was time in its entirety...
Suzume (Suzume no Tojimari, lit. Suzume's Locking Up) is the eighth film from director Makoto Shinkai. The film was animated by CoMix Wave Films and distributed by Toho. RADWIMPS once again composed the soundtrack alongside Kazuma Jinnouchi. At a runtime of 122 minutes, it stands as Shinkai's longest film to date.
It had an advance IMAX screening in Japan on November 7, 2022, and was released nationwide on November 11. A limited North American cinema run with an English dub was released in April 2023 through Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures.
Suzume is a coming-of-age story for the titular protagonist, set in various disaster-stricken locations across Japan. After she unwittingly causes disaster by opening a strange door, Suzume must travel across the country to close the doors causing devastation, aided in her quest by a mysterious young man-turned-chair named Sōta.
Suzume provides examples of:
- Abandoned Area: Doors appear in abandoned areas because the disappearance of the emotions from those who previously lived there creates an imbalance with the Ever After. As a result the film involves visits to areas abandoned due to either natural or financial disasters.
- Action Girl: A Downplayed Trope example, but Suzume, despite being a high school student, proves quite athletic over the course of the movie. Most notably, whenever she has to get over a waist-high obstacle (be it a railing, a divider, or an A-frame trail barrier) she jumps it like a hurdle without ever missing a beat.
- Actionized Sequel: Compared to Your Name or Weathering With You, Suzume has far more action scenes and creative, mobile camera angles.
- Age-Gap Romance: A mild example compared to Shinkai's previous two movies. Sōta is about 5 years older than Suzume; contrast this to Mitsuha, who's 3 years older than Taki, or Hina and Hodaka who're about the same age.
- Agony of the Feet: Suzume loses one of her shoes when she jumps on the Tokyo Worm, 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 Alleged Car: Tomoya's red convertible looks nice at a glance, but it's a used car in fairly rough shape. Gear shifts cause it to shake, the roof doesn't properly extend, the driver's door falls off, and in the credits it's shown to have flat out broken down.
- Ancient Order of Protectors: The Closers, who are charged with keeping the doors to the Ever After closed so the Worm cannot escape to cause disaster. In the present, only Sōta and his grandfather seem to be left.
- Apocalyptic Log: Suzume kept a diary as a child where she'd draw something in crayon each day. After the tsunami destroyed her hometown, she blacked out a page for each day afterward. Only when she visited the Ever After did she draw something new.
- Author Appeal: Subverted. Surprisingly, in a Makoto Shinkai movie, trains don't take up as much screen time as his previous works. Instead, Suzume and Sōta (and Daijin, funnily enough) use a variety of transportation methods across Japan in their journey.
- Badly Battered Babysitter: Suzume ends up being one of these as she struggles to look after two kids, prompting Souta to help her by entertaining the kids himself, leaving her to come up with something to keep them from questioning the living chair.
- Bad Vibrations: Minor quakes throughout the film typically indicate a door is active and the Great Worm is attempting to enter the living world.
- Because You Were Nice to Me:
- 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. 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 Worm).
- One of Chika's crates of tangerines falls off the back of her scooter and spills all over the road, and Sōta and Suzume use a net to stop the oranges from rolling away down the hill. Chika is greatly appreciative and proceeds to be very helpful to them* , as she gives Suzume a lift to the abandoned middle school (allowing her and Sōta to close the second door), feeds and houses her at her family inn for the night, and gifts her new clothes.
- Behemoth Battle: The climax of the film is a battle between the Great Worm attempting to reach the door and Sadaijin in his true, enormous form.
- Bland-Name Product: Averted. McDonald’s and Lawson
are shown with no alterations. - Book Ends:
- Suzume meets Sōta while riding to school on her bike. At the end of the film, the scene repeats almost exactly when Sōta returns to Miyazaki to see Suzume.
- The first and last door of the movie are freestanding as the rest of the attached building is gone.
- Boring Return Journey: The journey home as seen in the credits is far less tense, though Tamaki makes a point of meeting and thanking the people who helped Suzume.
- But Now I Must Go:
- Not long after the reveal that Daijin was 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 Worm.
- Downplayed in the denouement with Sōta. He does have to leave Suzume for a while so he can continue his Closer duties and also return home to Tokyo, but does so with a Reunion Vow. The last scene of the credits shows that he keeps this promise.
- Bystander Syndrome: After she seals the Tokyo door, a lot of people stare and whisper about Suzume's torn clothes, bloody socks, and general filthiness, but nobody actually steps forward to check if she's okay.
- Catch a Falling Star: Twice, Daijin saves Suzume's life as she's falling by launching himself onto her and then temporarily growing to his true size.
- Cats Are Mean: Daijin takes the form of a very Cute Kitten, but comes across as mean to people who have to deal with his true nature, which is something between a Jerkass God and a Sadist Teacher. He abandons his duty to run off around Japan, and turns Sōta into a chair while forcing him into the role of the Keystone. The latter may be more in the nature of an accident, but Daijin’s refusal to explain what is going on feels much like a cat playing with its prey. Also, Sadaijin's introduction has him possess Tamaki and make her admit her buried resentment of Suzume so the two can finally talk about their problems.
- Central Theme:
- The connections people form between them. While the movie of course centers around Suzume's relationship to Sōta and her aunt, just as important are the many people she runs into along her journey, all of which help her in small and big ways, from the friendly people who help her out of the goodness of her heart, to the people she befriends without getting anything in return. Even the method used to close the doors reflects this, as it relies on the locker to reflect on the people who once lived where the portal is located.
- The trauma of people who survive great catastrophes. The villain of the movie is an Eldritch Abomination 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 Worm when she 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.
- Character Title: Suzume is named after its main protagonist.
- Cheshire Cat Grin: Daijin has a grin that stretches across his entire face when he's up to something, such as when he transforms Sōta.
- Clothing Damage: Suzume gets pretty badly banged up, with her jacket having multiple holes in it, by the midpoint, including losing her shoes. Rather than being for fanservice, it showcases her physical harm without blood (aside from her feet).
- Commonality Connection: Soon after meeting once Suzume and Sōta have saved Chika's oranges from being lost, the two girls bond over the fact that they're both high school juniors, and find even more in common from there.
- Conveniently Interrupted Document: Sōta and Suzume review books written by past Closers to try and locate either the second Keystone or the Tokyo door. However, the information was deliberately blotted out in all the books.
- Cool Key: Sōta carries a special primitive-looking key which is used in the door-shutting ritual.
- Cosmic Keystone: The Eastern and Western Keystones are anchors which prevent the Great Worm from entering the living world by pinning down its head and tail. As new doors open and the Worm shifts, the Keystones must sometimes be moved.
- Cute Kitten: Daijin looks like an adorable kitten and is more than happy to strike adorable poses, which results in him receiving a substantial social media following during his trek across Japan. Observe◊.
- Delaying Action: Sadaijin fights the Great Worm in order to delay it reaching the door while Suzume and Daijin rescue Sōta.
- Disappeared Dad: Suzume makes no mention of her father and Tamaki says her sister Tsubame was a single mother. Based on this, he was likely not involved with the family even before the tsunami.
- Doomed New Clothes: Suzume receives a new set of clothes from Chika so she won't stand out quite as much in her school uniform while trekking across Japan. However, the outfit is ruined while sealing the Tokyo door and she dons her uniform again.
- Down the Rabbit Hole: Late in the film, Suzume learns that her dream at the start of the film was a memory of her unknowingly entering the Ever After through a door in her hometown. While she returned, she retained a connection to the supernatural and must return there.
- Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Chika suggests the best way to wake somebody up if they're a Heavy Sleeper is with a kiss. Suzume tries this with Sōta at first but he wakes up before she figures out where his "face" is. She does kiss him when Sōta is about to freeze and later she does it again in the climax in order to restore his human form and stop becoming the Keystone.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Great Worm, a living disaster that threatens Japan every time it escapes through a gate.
- Emergency Broadcast: Done via smartphones whenever an earthquake occurs. Worth noting is that the official website warns viewers that the in-movie alarms sound slightly different from their real counterparts.
- Exact Eavesdropping: Tomoya complains to Suzume about how he's pissed with Sōta for missing his teaching exam and declares their friendship is over, unaware that Sōta is in the room as a chair.
- Exact Words: Tamaki is worried that Suzume has run off with a strange man. Suzume tells her she's not with a man, which is technically true given Sōta is currently a chair.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Japanese title, Suzume no Tojimari, literally means "Suzume's Locking Up". Guess what the movie is literally and symbolically about.
- Feral Villain: The Great Worm 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.
- Forced Transformation: Sōta is forcibly transformed into Suzume's three-legged chair at the hands of the cat Daijin.
- Foreboding Fleeing Flock: Birds take the sky whenever the Great Worm begins to emerge, with an enormous number of birds appearing when it emerges from the Tokyo subway tunnel.
- Foreshadowing:
- During Suzume's dream at the start of the film, the woman who approaches her is obviously wearing the boots Suzume borrows late in the film.
- As Suzume speaks with Sōta's grandfather in the hospital, he describes the Ever After to her as, among other things, "a Place Beyond Time". When Suzume and Sōta are in the Ever After once she's saved him and they've defeated the Worm, 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 the "woman" she remembered seeing there as a child was actually herself in the future.
- When she removes the Keystone, Suzume notices it's incredibly cold just before it transforms into Daijin. The cold that Souta experiences during his sleep is the result of becoming the new Keystone.
- During their fights, Daijin tells Sōta that he can't go back to being the Keystone. He had already transferred the role to Sōta at this point.
- Suzume and Sōta quite understandably believe that Daijin is running around Japan opening doors to set the Worm lose, and are trying to stop him as well as close the doors. 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.
- The Yamato Transport logo can be seen at one point, depicting a black cat carrying a kitten. Sadaijin, the second Keystone, is a massive black cat which treats Daijin like an unruly kitten.
- Glamour: Daijin, in multiple in different ways:
- He at one point joins a group of customers drinking at a bar. While Suzume can clearly see he's a small cat, everyone else apparently sees a human.
- He also gets this in his cat form:
- After Suzume unwittingly sets him free from being the Keystone, when he first appears to her again at her bedroom window, he appears skinny and starving, but once she feeds him and he becomes fully attached to her, he instantly changes into looking like a healthy Cute Kitten.
- When she is later furious with him for turning Souta into the new Keystone and leaving him apparently trapped in the Ever After for eternity, and tearfully yells at Daijin that she hates him for it, he turns back to his emaciated appearance out of sadness and heartbreak that Suzume doesn't love him.
- And finally, once 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 Worm 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.
- Good All Along: Downplayed with 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 Worm 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.
- Happy Rain: When a door is shut, the Great Worm's severed length explodes into a shower of rainbow-hued rain.
- Heavy Sleeper: Sōta seemingly falls into a deep sleep every night and Suzume gets increasingly annoyed at how long it takes him to wake up. He isn't asleep but slipping into a coma as his new nature as a Keystone takes over.
- Heroism Won't Pay the Bills: Suzume is shocked that Sōta is a graduate student and planning to become a teacher despite the importance of what he does. Sōta flat out tells her while being a Closer is an important job it doesn't pay the bills and he, at least when not a chair, has to eat just like everybody else.
- I Just Want to Be Loved: Daijin just wants to be with Suzume, who freed him from being a Keystone and was kind to him, even if it means turning Sōta into a replacement Keystone. The little cat is shaken when he realizes that Suzume doesn't love him because of this and she's furious with him for his actions.
- Invisible to Normals: The Great Worm is invisible to everyone except Suzume and Sōta. Sōta can see it due to being a Closer while Suzume was lost in the Ever After as a child and retained a connection to it.
- Jerkass Gods: Downplayed, but both Daijin and Sadaijin have their moments. Daijin has grown bored with his role and wants to spend time with Suzume, so he runs away and turns Sōta into his replacement as the Keystone. Sadaijin possesses Tamaki and makes her confess her darker feelings towards Suzume, though this seems to help their relationship. This is in keeping with the behaviour of Japanese kami; they are more living forces of nature than Western-style gods, and while they may be petitioned for help (as when Sōta prays at key moments), they don't always favour human beings.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Daijin is selfish and traps Sōta as the Keystone but he rescues Suzume from harm twice and ultimately willingly returns to his duty as the Keystone.
- Kaiju: The Great Worm is an absolutely massive being. Its full body is able to cover most of Tokyo, and Sadaijin's true form is tiny by comparion.
- Karaoke Box: Suzume ends up helping out at the karaoke bar Rumi owns.
- Leaking Can of Evil: The Great Worm is sealed in the Ever After, but naturally appearing doors allow it to try and reach into the living world.
- The Lonely Door:
- The first door is the only remnant of the building it was attached to aside from a few lines of brick at ground level.
- The last door is found lying on a pile of rubble, but was freestanding like the first door when Suzume entered it as a child.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Grabbing onto Sōta when he's on the Great Worm in Tokyo yanks Suzume off the ground so violently that one of her shoes falls off.
- Masquerade: Closers like Sōta do their best to keep the supernatural world from being revealed to the rest of the population. Both Sōta and his grandfather tell Suzume that she should just return home and forget everything about the doors.
- Maybe Ever After: Suzume is openly attracted to Sōta. While he is clearly fond of her and appreciates what she did to save him, it's not entirely clear if he feels the same way (or if he'd just prefer that she graduates from high school first). He gently rebuffs her offer for him to return to Kyushu with her, and although the end credits show that he keeps his word to come visit later, it's not clear if he's interested in starting a romantic relationship.note
- Mega Neko: Daijin is a minor example, as his true form is a black cat roughly the size of a lion. Sadaijin is a full example, as his true form is a mini-kaiju.
- Mistaken Identity: Suzume's younger self initially mistakes her older self for their mother.
- Must Make Amends: Enforced. Sadaijin states that Suzume must correct things because it was her mistake that freed the Worm.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Daijin the cat is named such by social media due to his resemblance to an ancient Japanese minister. His counterpart identifes as Sadaijin, or "Minister of the Left".
- The Needs of the Many: Suzume is forced to use Sōta as the new Keystone to save Tokyo.
- Nephewism: Following her mother's death, Suzume has been taken care of by her aunt Tamaki. It proves to be a source of each other's issues, with Tamaki feeling annoyed and stressed by Suzume's behaviour and refusal to open up to her while Suzume feels suffocated by Tamaki's care and doesn't want her to waste her adulthood taking care of her.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The second trailer makes Daijin look like the Big Bad causing the disasters. In the actual movie he is revealed to be a kami, and therefore as being largely benevolent.
- Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Daijin roams around Japan, seemingly causing multiple doors to open and nearly cause earthquakes as he does so. It's only late in the movie that Suzume realizes Daijin was actually guiding her and Sōta to open doors. All he wanted was to spend time with Suzume.
- Not Himself: At the height of the argument between Suzume and Tamaki, Suzume realizes that Tamaki's vitriol is completely out of character and asks who she is. Tamaki replies "Sadaijin" as the second Keystone appears.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: Suzume is forced to use Sōta as a new Keystone to save Tokyo. However, she quickly regrets this and it becomes clear that having only one Keystone in the center of the Worm's body is resulting in even more minor earthquakes as its head and tail are now free to move.
- Oblivious to Love: Tamaki seems to completely miss that her co-worker Minoru has a crush on her, which is ironic given one of her concerns is that nobody would date a single mother.
- Old Maid: Both Tamaki and Suzume are concerned that Tamaki is getting too old to find romance (perhaps becoming a "Christmas Cake" in Japanese terms), despite the fact that she is depicted as quite attractive, with at least one admirer.
- Parents as People: During the argument between Tamaki and Suzume, Tamaki reveals she has some regrets about taking in Suzume as she lost a lot of freedom as a result. She can't go on dates and feels like she has to tred carefully to not upset Suzume. All of these emotions are however tempered by her genuine love for Suzume.
- Place Beyond Time: The Ever After is a realm where the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. Suzume is able to meet her four year-old self as a result, creating a Stable Time Loop.
- A Place Holds Memories:
- Abandoned areas still hold echoes of those who lived there. Part of the ritual for closing a door is to draw out those memories and let them flow through you.
- Suzume returns to her childhood home and for a brief moment sees it as it once was, before we see that in the present, nothing remains but the foundation.
- Please, Don't Leave Me: Suzume pleads with Sōta to answer her and not give in to the Keystone transformation, but gets no response.
- Poor Communication Kills: The relationship between Suzume and Tamaki is strained because neither is willing to actually discuss their issues. Suzume feels smothered by Tamaki's attention and pulls away from her as a result, which makes Tamaki feel like she has to tred carefully around her niece. Ironically, both of them worry that Tamaki is denying herself the chance to enjoy her own life due to this. This finally leads to a bitter argument spurred on by Sadaijin.
- Portal Door: Doors in abandoned areas can seemingly open to the Ever After, the realm where the Great Worm resides. However, the Ever After cannot be entered through these doors as it is not a place for living humans. 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.
- Production Throwback:
- The Great Worm resembles the sky dragons seen in Weathering With You, even making the same vocal call.
- The Ever After resembles the Netherworld of Agartha seen in Children Who Chase Lost Voices with its depiction as a grassy plain with a star-filled night sky.
- A character named Miki, resembling Miki Okudera from Your Name makes an appearance as an employee of the karaoke bar.
- Real Event, Fictional Cause: The Great Kantō earthquake in 1923 was the result of an abnormally large door opening. While it was closed, the door remains buried beneath Tokyo.
- Recycled Soundtrack: Itomori High School from Your Name and First Visit to K&A from Weathering With You are heard when Daijin is seen crossing the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge in a news broadcast.
- Removed Achilles' Heel: The Great Worm 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 Tokyo door is buried deep underground which prevents the protagonists from finding its location before the Worm fully emerges, forcing Sōta to seal it as the new Keystone.
- The Reveal: Three big ones:
- About two-thirds of the way through the movie, Daijin reveals that the reason he can't return to being the second Keystone to stop the Worm is because 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 Mr. Munakata in the hospital so he can tell her how to save Sōta, his grandson, and he tells her that the reason she's able to see the Ever After, and thus the Worm, 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. When present-day Suzume, after returning to the Ever After to rescue Souta and defeat the Worm, sees her childhood self there, she realizes that the woman she saw as a kid was her older self in a Place Beyond Time.
- Riddle for the Ages: How did Suzume's childhood chair (and, by extension, Sōta) lost one of its legs? During Tsubame's flashback, its four legs are clearly intact, then we skip several years where it's already missing one leg. The Stable Time Loop didn't help in the end, since what adult Suzume gave her younger self was the already-damaged chair.
- Road Trip Plot: Most of the film has Suzume and Sōta, trapped as a chair, travelling to several places across Japan (with Suzume making some friends along the way) in order to catch Daijin and prevent the gates in each area from opening up.
- Reunion Vow: Sōta has to part ways for Suzume for some amount of time in the denouement to continue his work, but thanks her for saving him and promises to come see her in her hometown. The final scene of the credits sees him returning to her.
- Rule of Symbolism: Doors and keys. The doors represent not only the barrier between the Ever After and the real world, but also the mental barrier between the memories we repress and what we express outwardly. The keys—or, rather, Sōta's ornate one—hold the authority to either lock or open up the aforementioned doors, either literal or metaphorical.
- School Uniforms are the New Black: Suzume starts her journey while wearing her school uniform, but that's only because she'd just left school. She wears a casual outfit loaned to her by Chika for the second act, before swapping back to the uniform for the climax.
- Shout-Out:
- A couple to Studio Ghibli with Whisper of the Heart being referenced in a social media post of Daijin, and Serizawa playing "Rouge no Dengon" from Kiki's Delivery Service during the car trip. There's also a truck that goes by bearing the logo Yamato Transport (a black cat carrying a kitten), which was the official sponsor of Kiki's Delivery Service. An early scene even has a helicopter with 'Miyazaki' written on it, although this is because it belongs to the Miyazaki Prefectural government.
- Another song that Serizawa plays during the car trip is "Sweet Memories", a song by Seiko Matsuda famously used in 80s Suntory Beer commercials and would be prominently featured in Penguin Memories. Serizawa in fact plays the Re-Mix version of "Sweet Memories" from Penguin Memories's soundtrack.
- Single Parents Are Undesirable: Tamaki laments at one point that nobody would want to date a single mother. She is apparently oblivious to her co-worker who is absolutely smitten with her despite knowing about Suzume.
- Sleep-Mode Size: Daijin spends most of the film in a kitten-sized form, but is able to assume a form larger than a human. Sadaijin's sleep mode varies from human sized to simply massive for a cat, while his true form verges on kaiju-sized.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Way over on the idealistic side, particularly by the standards of Shinkai's works; despite being a high school age girl trekking across Japan accompanied only by an animated 3-legged chair, Suzume meets nothing but kind, friendly people who go out of their way to look after and help her. Absolutely nobody attempts to trick, rob, exploit or assault her for the entire movie, despite Tamaki's constant worries that she's in trouble.
- Solo Mission Becomes Group Mission: Sōta planned to pursue Daijin alone and insisted that Suzume go home. Suzume not only ignored his suggestions, she became vital to actually completing the mission since it's hard for a chair to buy train tickets.
- Stable Time Loop: As the Ever After, the world beyond the door, exists outside of time and space, Suzume is able to meet her child self, who stumbled in by accident while looking for her mother following the earthquake and tsunami. She comforts her and gives her the three-legged chair, thus ensuring the events of the story play out.
- Struggling Single Mother: A recurring trope in the film. Suzume's biological mother Tsubame was apparently single, though her financial circumstances aren't mentioned; Tamaki has taken over raising Suzume, and money seems to be tight in their household, though not to the point of outright poverty; and another character who Suzume meets along the way turns out to be another single mother, who works what is clearly a moderately stressful job in a bar to make ends meet.
- Time Capsule: When Suzume moved away from her childhood home, she buried a tin containing items she loved. This included a diary she drew in every day which shows her the location of the door she entered as a child.
- Tragic Keepsake: The three-legged chair that Suzume's mother made for her is one of the things she has to remember her by, and was even found holding onto it when she nearly got lost looking for her mother following the earthquake. Doubles as a Memento MacGuffin as teen Suzume giving the chair to her child self is pivotal to making sure the entire story happens.
- The Un-Reveal: It's never revealed what happened to the missing leg of Suzume's chair. The Stable Time Loop leaves it even more unclear since it's established that Suzume gave the chair with three legs to her past self.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Though it can affect the real world average people cannot see the Great Worm unless they're Closers like Sōta, or Suzume due to visiting the Ever After as a child, they can only notice its after effects as "earthquakes".
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By opening the door and unknowingly releasing the Keystone that becomes Daijin the cat, Suzume unleashes a series of disasters on Japan.
- Urban Fantasy: The film is set in modern Japan, with a lot of carefully depicted realistic details (including plenty of urban scenes), while mixing in fantastical elements out of Japanese Mythology.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Tomoya tells Suzume he's pissed with Sōta for missing his teacher exam and the only reason he's checking in on him is that Sōta owes him money. Eventually he admits he's genuinely concerned about Sōta's disappearance and the money was just an excuse, since it's actually Tomoya that owes Sōta.
- Wall of Text: After Suzume hangs up on her and sends a few texts to apologize for doing so, Tamaki responds with a text message so long Suzume has to scroll through it. Which is followed by another equally long message.
- Weirdness Censor: When Daijin talks in front of Tamaki and Tomoya, Suzume assures them that obviously the cat did not say anything. They accept this and move on until Daijin and Sadaijin talk again, at which point they can no longer ignore it.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Sōta's grandfather is apparently quite strict and isn't approached for help earlier in the film because Souta doesn't want to disappoint him.
- Wham Line: Daijin finally reveals why he won't resume his job in an unnaturally deep voice.Daijin: [to Sōta] You are the Keystone.
- Wham Shot: When Suzume finds the diary from her childhood and reveals the date her mom died was twelve years ago on March 11, AKA during the Tohoku earthquake.
- Where It All Began: Suzume realizes that to save Sōta she must return to her hometown as it was where she entered the Ever After as a child.
- The World Is Just Awesome: After all of her adventures, Suzume tells her younger self that no matter how bad things may seem, eventually she will discover just how wonderful the world and its people are.
- You Can Talk?: Daijin and Sadaijin both elicit this response when speaking in the presence of others.
