psocoptera

Suzume, 2022 animated film directed by Makoto Shinkai who directed Your Name. Ordinary girl stumbles into magical adventure involving mysterious older boy, talking cat, and doorways to elsewhere, while roadtripping through different parts of Japan and contemplating abandoned and destroyed places. I really liked it, although not quite as much as Your Name - visually gorgeous, interesting in little glimpses of Japanese life, some unexpected plot directions. I wasn't sure I had the cultural literacy to understand the significance of some ritually-spoken lines that kept repeating, and I had only a vague guess (which turned out to be right) about some referenced events that would probably be basic to any Japanese person, so doing a little reading afterward deepened my appreciation of the movie, but I enjoyed it a lot even without that, recommended if you ever like this sort of thing at all.