We have already reached a little to the point that when you go to see a movie of makoto shinkai, you more or less expect what will happen on various fronts, and one of them is romantic.’ Your Name ‘made us cry our eyes out and perhaps the director also put sticks in the wheels for his future films, because when he wanted to go in another direction, expectations came crashing down on him.
For ‘Suzume’ (‘Suzume no Tojimari‘) even originally wanted two female characters and perhaps even getting rid of the romantic component entirely or giving it a less hackneyed twist, but its producers gave it a reality check.
Neither chairs nor handsome university students
‘Suzume’ It is a story coming of age centered on a teenage girl who travels across Japan. After an encounter with a mysterious young man, Suzume opens a strange door in the middle of some ruins and a series of natural disasters begin to happen throughout the country, so Suzume must close them to prevent more misfortunes like the one that marked her. his family for over a decade.
“At first I wanted this to be a story about Suzume and another girl traveling together. Why I wanted to go in that direction is because I felt a little tired of telling a traditional romantic story in the first place,” Shinkai revealed to Looper. “I felt that with ‘Your Name’ I had already gone all out with the terms of ‘boy meets girl’ and ‘will they or won’t they.’ That romantic element resonates with the masses, so it’s a song that worked with the great public”.
So to avoid falling into the same thing at some point in the development of the story, Shinkai wanted two girls as leads. And it turns out that he wasn’t completely ruled out of romance either, because he “wanted to switch to a more sisterly type of romance” and explore other types of romantic stories.
In the end, his producer ended up convincing him that even if the director was tired, his audience loves that kind of romance. That’s how he ended up being born soutaSuzume’s partner, though Shinkai found a small loophole and turned him into a chair to prevent romantic tension from completely engulfing the film.
And if we hope that at some point the director gets fully involved in the subject of romances queerYou shouldn’t completely lose hope either. Because according to Shinkai, Even though it’s not actively trying to make an LGTBI+ story, ‘Suzume’ would have worked just as well if the romantic interest had been another girl.
“I think it would have worked if [Suzume] it would have been a guy or a non-binary person. There’s no need for the concept of male and female, it’s about a human being overcoming something,” Shinaki explained. “Also for my future films, I want to focus on that human story instead of too many comments on gender and sex.”
In Espinof | The suggestive and hyperreal worlds of Makoto Shinkai