Anime hit ‘Suzume’ debuts in German theaters
On her way to school, Suzume races down the mountain road on her bicycle and encounters Souta, a young man looking for a door. The 17-year-old high school student is immediately drawn to the mysterious stranger. She later discovers that he has been traveling to abandoned places across Japan to find and lock doors to prevent a giant supernatural worm from causing earthquakes. The two join forces to lock the doors and keep the terrible creature at bay.
In his latest visually stunning film, director and screenwriter Makoto Shinkai explores the social effects of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The anime hit Japanese theaters last November and became a box office success, becoming the fourth highest-grossing film in the country in 2022. The film competed at the Berlinale last February and opens in German cinemas on April 13. and several other European countries on April 14.
Like Shinkai’s other works, “Your Name and “Weathering With You”, it is a coming-of-age story. We learn that Suzume lost her mother in the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Raised by her aunt, she repressed the trauma of her death from the mother.
gender roles in anime
Suzume shows off her long, shiny hair during her journey of self-discovery. She has elegant features and an incredibly slim figure. Same goes for her beautiful counterpart. Even her aunt Tamaki looks like a teenager. The film fulfills clichéd ideals of beauty.
“In these big, expensive productions, it’s inevitable to question what appeals to the masses,” says Katharina Hülsmann, research assistant in Japanese studies at the University of Cologne.
Her research includes cross-cultural phenomena in manga and representations of gender and sexuality. However, the beauty ideals seen in “Suzume” are not always found in the genre. “Manga usually has a stronger subversive potential because there’s not as much pressure to succeed in a single release,” says Hülsmann.
Anime is a collective term for Japanese animated films; they are the cinematic equivalent of the manga, the Japanese comic book.
The Japanese comedy scene helped break down classic gender roles and is celebrated around the world for its androgynous characters who challenged traditional images of macho men and women as accessories. They fight the traditional gender and family roles that are still prevalent in Japanese society.
Source: DW
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