Suzume

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Suzume
movie's logo stylized
Revised Hepburn	Suzume no Tojimari
Directed by	Makoto Shinkai
Written by	Makoto Shinkai
Produced by	Kōichirō Itō Kinue Itō Wakana Okamura
Starring	Nanoka Hara Hokuto Matsumura Eri Fukatsu Shota Sometani Sairi Ito Kana Hanazawa Matsumoto Hakuō II Ryunosuke Kamiki
Cinematography	Ryōsuke Tsuda
Edited by	Makoto Shinkai
Music by	Radwimps Kazuma Jinnouchi
Production companies	CoMix Wave Films Story Inc.
Distributed by	Toho
Release date	November 11, 2022 (2022-11-11)
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Box office	US$314 million

Suzume (Japanese: すずめの戸締まり, Hepburn: Suzume no Tojimari; lit. 'Suzume's Locking Up') is an animated 2022 Japanese coming-of-age fantasy adventure movie. The movie was written and directed by Makoto Shinkai. It is the third and last movie in Shinkai's Disaster trilogy following Your Name (2016) and Weathering with You (2019).^[1] The movie follows Suzume Iwato and Souta Munakata as they travel around Japan to close doors to prevent an ancient worm from escaping that causes earthquakes if it hits the ground.

Work on the movie started in 2020^[2] and finished in October 2022. The movie's themes were inspired by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.^[3]

Makoto Shinkai came up with the concept while traveling through Japan, where he realized that buildings that open in Japan get a ceremony but not when they close or are abandoned. He also wanted the memories of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami to not be forgotten.^[3]

Suzume is a teenager in high school who lives with her aunt Tamaki in Kyushu. She has dreams of her younger self walking through a ruined city at night, before encountering a shadowy figure resembling her dead mother. On her way to school, Suzume meets a young man searching for abandoned locations with doors. Suzume tells him of a nearby abandoned Onsen resort. She follows him and discovers an upright door, which she opens to find a field which she cannot enter. She trips over a cat statue on the floor, which turns into a real cat and runs off. Scared, Suzume rushes to school.

While eating lunch, Suzume sees smoke coming out from the resort, which no one else can see. She rushes over and finds the man she met earlier, struggling to close the door which the smoke is coming out of. Suzume helps the man, but the worm ended up causing earthquake-like damage to the town and the man was injured.

Suzume takes the injured man to her house, where she treats the man's wound. The man reveals his name as Souta Munakata. He tells her that he is a "Closer" who finds doors around Japan in abandoned places. He locks them to prevent a supernatural worm from escaping which was what was coming out of the door Suzume helped close.

As they talk, the cat from the resort comes to Suzume's window and she feeds it. After finishing the food, it starts talking and turns Souta into a three-legged chair he was sitting on. Souta starts chasing the cat as Suzume follows. The three end up on-board a ferry heading to Ehime. Souta fails to catch the cat as it jumps on a boat beside the ferry. Afterwards, Souta tells Suzume that the cat is a "keystone" after Suzume tells him that she removed a statue at the resort, and that the worm probably broke free shortly after the keystone was removed.

Upon reaching Ehime, Suzume shows Souta social media posts of the cat, which the locals had named "Daijin". After helping a girl save oranges rolling down a hill, Suzume gets a ride from her to an abandoned school where the worm is escaping from. Suzume helps Souta close the door again after he realizes he cannot do it alone since he is a chair.

The next day, Suzume and Souta hitchhike to Kobe where Suzume helps at a local bar. She notices Daijin, gets Souta, and they head to an amusement park. The worm has already escaped. Souta fails again to catch Daijin so he helps Suzume close the door which was a Ferris wheel cart. Suzume asks Souta about a starlit field she saw while closing it. He explains it was the Ever-After, where souls go after death and where all of time exists all at once.

In the morning, Suzume and Souta track Daijin to Tokyo. They stop at Souta's apartment, where they learn more about the worm and how if it escapes in Tokyo, it can cause damage similar to the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. Suzume noticed the worm was emerging, and they jump onto the worm as it breaks. They meet Daijin, who tells Souta he is the keystone now as he had transferred the ability to him. Souta suddenly starts turning into a crystal and Suzume has to use him to stop the worm from falling.

After waking up, Suzume realizes that Souta is in the Ever-After, but she is unable to enter it. She visits Souta's grandfather in the hospital, hoping to find a way to rescue Souta. He tells her that since she is able to see the worm and the Ever-After, it means she had entered the place using one of such doors at some point of her life. She can only use that same door to enter Ever-After again. Suzume runs into Souta's friend and Tamaki, who wanted to bring her back to Kyushu. She convinces them to bring her to her hometown to find the door.

Upon reaching her hometown, Suzume finds a tin with a childhood notebook where she remembers parts of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. She remembers the location of the door from a drawing she found in the notebook. She finds the door and goes through it. Inside the Ever-After, which is covered in fire and ruins from which the worm is trying to escape, she notices Souta and gets him back to his human form. He then helps seal away the worm and restore the Ever-After. Suzume notices a young girl walking in the Ever-After. She realizes the girl was her younger self, and that the younger Suzume had mistook her older self as her mother. Suzume calms her down and gives her the chair Souta was in. Her younger self goes back to 2011 and the older Suzume gets out of the Ever-After and locks the door. Suzume heads home with Tamaki, and Souta gets on a train to close more doors but promises to meet with Suzume again.

A year later, she meets Souta again at the place where they first met.

The movie's soundtrack was released on November 11, 2022. The songs were composed by Kazuma Jinnouchi and Radwimps. Japanese Tiktoker Toaka sang the first theme song "Suzume".^[4]

Music in soundtrack

Song	Artist(s)	Time (minutes)
The First Encounter	RADWIMPS	1:02
Abandoned Resort	Kazuma Jinnouchi and RADWIMPS	3:58
First Aid	RADWIMPS	1:25
Cat Chase	RADWIMPS	2:16
At Night in Ferry	RADWIMPS	1:53
Cat Me If You Can	RADWIMPS	1:34
Abandoned School	Kazuma Jinnouchi	3:12
Time for Two	RADWIMPS	2:57
Hitchhike	Kazuma Jinnouchi	2:18
Two Little Terrors	Kazuma Jinnouchi	1:23
Dreaming Ferris Wheel	Kazuma Jinnouchi and RADWIMPS	4:51
Soldiers Break	RADWIMPS	2:52
Shinkansen Super Express	Kazuma Jinnouchi	1:33
History Of Minizu	RADWIMPS	1:27
Significant Precursor	Kazuma Jinnouchi	3:05
Sky Over Tokyo	RADWIMPS	4:15
Suzume's Departure	Kazuma Jinnouchi and RADWIMPS	5:30
Possessed	Kazuma Jinnouchi	1:25
Double Ring	RADWIMPS	1:43
It Wasn't A Dream	RADWIMPS	1:52
The Other Side Of The Door	Kazuma Jinnouchi and RADWIMPS	1:09
Aftermath	Kazuma Jinnouchi	1:44
To Be With Souta	Kazuma Jinnouchi and RADWIMPS	2:24
Prayer	Kazuma Jinnouchi	3:06
Closing The Door	Kazuma Jinnouchi and RADWIMPS	3:53
Kanata Haluka	RADWIMPS	5:56
Suzume	RADWIMPS and Toaka	3:59
Tamaki	RADWIMPS	4:56
Tears Of Suzume	RADWIMPS	4:36

Shinkai decided to make the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami a main theme of Suzume after his previous two movies, Your Name (2016) and Weathering with You (2019), had only used the event as an influence. He wanted to express his experience and what he felt during the event instead of only making it a metaphor.^[1][5]

Shinkai decided to make the main character for the movie female since the main character in Weathering with You was male.^[1] He also felt that the main character needed a "buddy", so he first thought of another female character and having a "sisterhood type romantic story". He believed he had used the "girl meets boy" formula enough, but his producer told him not to, saying that viewers liked the typical romantic aspects of his movies.^[6] While thinking of characters, he thought of a buddy that turns into a monster throughout the movie, or objects such as a milk carton. Shinkai ended up deciding on a chair, which he came up with the idea when he saw an abandoned chair at a bus stop and found its "foreign feeling" to be better than his other ideas.^[1] He also felt that it would be good to explore other relationships in the movie, like with Suzume's aunt Tamaki who adopted her after her mother's death.^[1]

The voice actor for Suzume is Nanoka Hara. She was selected by Shinkai in an audition with 1,700 people. Hara is a fan of Shinkai's movies and said that she couldn't imagine being the one to share the "unforgettable, heart shaking sensation" she felt when first seeing one of Shinkai's movies.^[7][8] Hokuto Matsumura was picked as the voice actor for Souta. He said Souta wasn't like any other character from Shinkai's other works, so he did a voice that he had never done by doing a lower voice. Shinkai found it impressive and fits the character.^[9]

Voice actors and who they play

Voice actor (JP)	Voice actor (EN)	Character
Nanoka Hara	Nichole Sakura	Suzume
Hokuto Matsumura	Josh Keaton	Souta
Eri Fukatsu	Jennifer Sun Bell	Tamaki
Ann Yamane	Lena Josephine Marano	Daijin
Nanoka Hara	Joe Zieja	Tomoya
Kotone Hanase	Rosalie Chiang	Chika
Shota Sometani	Roger Craig Smith	Minoru Okabe
Sairi Ito	Amanda C. Miller	Rumi
Akari Miura	Bennet Hetrick	Suzume (young)

The movie was released in Japan on November 7, 2022,^[10] and on April 13, 2023 in the United States with the Japanese subtitled version playing along with it.^[11]

In Japan, Suzume was released on September 20, 2023 on Blu-Ray and DVD. A collector's edition version was also released, which has a 4K Blu-ray disc of the movie and bonus features including audio commentary, storyboards, cast and crew interviews, and a making of documentary of the movie.^[12] The movie was also shown on Nippon TV on April 5, 2024.^[13]

Crunchyroll started streaming the movie around the world on November 16, 2023. The movie was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on March 12 in the United States and April 1 in the United Kingdom.^[14][15] Netflix also started streaming the movie on April 5, 2024 in selected countries.

Suzume earned US$314 million dollars worldwide, including ¥14.94 billion in Japan.^[16] The movie became the fourth highest grossing anime movie at the time of its release.^[17]

On the review website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of the 135 critics said they liked the movie, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The website's overall critic opinion reads: "Suzume sees director Makoto Shinkai falling just a bit short of the bar set by previous outings – but when the results are this visually thrilling and emotionally impactful, it's hard to find much fault."^[18]

On the Japanese review site Filmark, Suzume has an average rating of 4.00/5 based on 6,585 user reviews.^[19] Matt Schley of The Japan Times gave the movie 4 out of 5 stars, calling it "the director's most satisfying work yet" and felt that the movie was "a bit more mature" than Shinkai's previous works.^[20]

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4} "映画『すずめの戸締まり』公開記念インタビュー。新海誠が「いまでなければ間に合わないと思った」、作品に込めたテーマを語る【アニメの話を聞きに行こう！】 | ゲーム・エンタメ最新情報のファミ通.com". ファミ通.com (in Japanese). 2022-11-17. Retrieved 2026-04-06.
2. ↑ "Makoto Shinkai Reveals New Anime Film Suzume no Tojimari". Anime News Network. 2026-04-26. Retrieved 2026-04-26.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Sekihara, Noriko. "Makoto Shinkai's new film 'Suzume' mourns Japan's deserted towns". Nikkei Asia. Retrieved 2026-04-26.
4. ↑ Mateo, Alex (2022-09-20). "RADWIMPS, Kazuma Jinnouchi Score Music for Makoto Shinkai's Suzume Anime Film". Anime News Network. Retrieved 2026-04-29.
5. ↑ "Makoto Shinkai's new film 'Suzume' mourns Japan's deserted towns". Nikkei Asia. Retrieved 2026-04-01.
6. ↑ Baron, Reuben (2023-04-12). "Director Makoto Shinkai On The Anime Artistry Of Suzume - Exclusive Interview". Looper. Retrieved 2026-04-06.
7. ↑ "Makoto Shinkai's Suzume no Tojimari Anime Film Casts Nanoka Hara as Heroine". Anime News Network. 2026-04-27. Retrieved 2026-04-27.
8. ↑ "18-year-old Actress Nanoka Hara to Voice The Main Heroine of Makoto Shinkai's New Film Suzume no Tojimari". Crunchyroll News. 2022-07-05. Retrieved 2026-05-02.
9. ↑ "Makoto Shinkai's Suzume no Tojimari Anime Film Casts Nanoka Hara as Heroine". Crunchyroll News. 2022-09-06. Retrieved 2026-05-02.
10. ↑ "Suzume, 3 More Makoto Shinkai Films Get IMAX Screenings in Japan". Anime News Network. 2026-04-13. Retrieved 2026-04-13.
11. ↑ Grobar, Matt (2023-03-21). "'Superstore's Nichole Sakura To Lead English-Language Voice Cast Of Crunchyroll's 'Suzume'". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 2026-04-13.
12. ↑ "アニメ映画『すずめの戸締まり』BD＆DVDが2023年9月20日(水)遂に発売！". アニメイトタイムズ (in Japanese). Retrieved 2026-04-13.
13. ↑ "すずめの戸締まり：新海誠監督の最新作 金曜ロードショーで地上波初放送 原菜乃華、松村北斗出演も話題に". MANTANWEB（まんたんウェブ） (in Japanese). 2024-03-01. Retrieved 2026-04-13.
14. ↑ "North American Anime, Manga Releases, March 10-16". Anime News Network. 2026-04-13. Retrieved 2026-04-13.
15. ↑ "U.K. Anime Home Releases for Early 2024 Listed". Anime News Network. 2026-04-13. Retrieved 2026-04-13.
16. ↑ "歴代ランキング - CINEMAランキング通信". www.kogyotsushin.com. Retrieved 2026-04-10.
17. ↑ Harding, Daryl (2022-11-15). "Suzume Sails Past One Piece Film Red to Be 4th Highest-Grossing Anime Film of All Time Worldwide". Crunchyroll News. Retrieved 2026-04-29.
18. ↑ "Suzume". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2026-04-10.
19. ↑ Komatsu, Mikikazu (2022-11-15). "Japan Box Office: Makoto Shinkai's Suzume Beats Black Panther Sequel in Its Opening Weekend". Crunchyroll News. Retrieved 2026-04-29.
20. ↑ Schley, Matt (2022-11-10). "'Suzume': Makoto Shinkai reigns supreme as master of visuals". The Japan Times. Retrieved 2026-04-29.