Suzume’s best Studio Ghibli reference is its final, subtlest one

Fans of anime writer-director Matoko Shinkai may notice periodic nods to Studio Ghibli’s films in his latest work – and that’s quite intentional. But those references aren’t just a tribute to Japan’s most famous animation studio: they serve a very specific purpose.

Unlike Shinkai’s previous two films, your name And Weathering with you, his last, Suzume focuses on the impact of a real-life disaster: the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. These films’ little nods to Studio Ghibli — cultural touchpoints viewers are likely to recognize — specifically root the world of Suzume closer to our reality, before the film’s ties to the 2011 disaster are fully revealed.

One of the SuzumeGhibli’s nod is overt – someone on social media sees Daijin the keystone cat riding a train alone and compares the image to Whisper of the heart. Another is more subtle: Serizawa, a friend of Sōta turned human, drives protagonist Suzume and her aunt Tamaki to their final destination while playing. “Rouge no Dengon” by Kiki’s delivery service on his phone. But the movie’s best Ghibli kink is the subtlest. In fact, it may not even be real are a full reference – and yet it resonates so much more when you read it as one.

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

Throughout the film, accidental companions Suzume and Sōta travel across Japan closing magical doorways. It’s not such a big leap to compare those portals to the magical doorway that changes destination in Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s moving castle. This feels especially true when Suzume first steps through one of those doors and sees a lush meadow covered in wildflowers – a landscape that could easily coexist with the beautiful field that Howl shows Sophie in Miyazaki’s movie.

Viewers learn that this is a doorway to the afterlife, and the reason Suzume can see it through the doorway is because she somehow wandered into the realm as a little girl. Flashbacks reveal that Suzume did indeed enter a mysterious door as a child and was greeted by a figure she assumed was her dead mother. Afterwards, she found a chair that she thought she had lost, the chair that Sōta will eventually be cursed.

Suzume learns she must return to the door she originally entered if she is to save Sōta, so she returns to the ruins of her hometown. That sequence is reminiscent of the climatic scene in Howl’s moving castle, in which, after Howl’s castle is destroyed, Sophie finds the magic door on some rocks among the ruins. Opening that door, Sophie stumbles into Howl’s childhood, and an earlier version of the meadow he showed her, and sees him meet his fire demon Calcifer and make the deal that takes Howl’s heart.

As the scene begins to fade, Sophie calls out to Howl, “Find me in the future!” and Howl and Calcifer both look her way. It is heavily implied that this is the reason Howl seeks her out later in life, and is also the reason Sophie is able to save him in the end.

Image: StudioGhibli

So when Suzume enters her own magical doorway and finds herself in that flower meadow, it feels like an echo of Miyazaki’s movie. Suzume enters the afterlife to save Sōta, just as Sophie entered the past to save Howl. Admittedly, Suzume features more gargantuan earthquake-worm battles, just enough that the direct comparison blurs. But after Suzume saves Sōta – thus regaining her own will to live – she stares at the field of wildflowers and sees a small figure in the distance. It’s herself, as a child.

In Howl’s moving castle, harking back to the past, connects the film’s two protagonists and interweaves the beginnings of both their stories. But Suzume is not the same kind of romantic movie as Howl’s moving castle. The focus is on Suzume’s growth, the way she goes from apathy and self-destruction to someone who really wants to live. So even though she steps through the door to save Sōta, she actually saves herself. She looks back to the past and sees the younger, despondent version of herself, telling that crying girl that everything will be fine. It ties her story together perfectly, bringing the ending back to the beginning – just like Miyazaki’s film does, in its own way.

Suzume is in theaters now.