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I was disappointed in this from Shinkai. Ever since Your Name, each subsequent film has been a hollow shell of the one before it. He found a formula that worked and he really isn’t straying from it in any significant manner. This installment had all the elements of a solid piece of media but failed to deliver on each and every one of them.

First, what I liked: The concept was good. An overarching plot of a looming threat coupled with the day-to-day character growth moments in a SoL setting was classic Shinkai. I really liked the journey around Japan, meeting people and doing various types ... of work along the way. The scenes with Souta as a chair were funny, and Serizawa’s character at the end was a highlight. The animation was also on point, as was expected. Unfortunately, however, that’s where the pros stopped.

What I didn’t like: What was a great concept had poor execution, and I will bullet point my thoughts from here:
- The movie was too long. It absolutely didn’t need to be 2 hours; he could have easily fit everything into a 1h30m film. It dragged scenes out and even included unnecessary ones. Because of that, I found myself being taken out of the moment and becoming frustrated. This leads me to my next point…
- …not enough RADWIMPS! They had like 2 songs in this movie, both of which were just the end credits. Like the previous films, a lot of the early content could have been much more fun and exciting if they had had a montage of it with an upbeat RADWIMPS song playing in the background. A more emotional track should have also been played during the climax of the film.
- Lack of a real threat. The worms were a threat in theory, but there was absolutely no real element of danger with them. Having them destroy a town early on and seeing the aftermath of that would have done a much better job of upping the stakes for Suzume and cementing a duty to everyone. Especially given the fact that I assume the cause of the earthquake that killed her mother in the first place was a result of the worm that came about from her opening the door as a kid, but this was not touched on whatsoever. That would have been a great plot point.
- On that point, the mechanics and reason behind the worms, the 'ever-after' and all of that wasn’t explained properly, or at all really. We just know it happens and that it has to stop, but more exposition on it was necessary. Why didn’t they take the chance to do that when Suzume met Souta’s grandfather in the hospital?
- The emotional weight behind Suzume & Souta’s relationship was precisely 0. There was no real build-up to it. What started as a mentor-mentee type relationship was suddenly romantic out of nowhere from both parties. How and why, exactly? I didn’t care about it in the slightest and so it fell completely flat. It just felt weird and out of place, like it was shoe-horned in to appeal to fans expecting romance from the Shinkai formula.
- Useless characters. The aunt wasn’t needed. The storyline with her was working but ended up not resolving her character arc at all about living her own life and finding someone intimate. Thus, the emotional weight behind any interaction between her and Suzume fell flat too. The scene where she spills her guts was also completely unnecessary and didn’t change anything about the story or character motivations, or even resolve in the end either (possibly with Suzume giving her more space to bring guys home).
- What was the point of the cats? They had something going with Daijin and maybe him wanting to be free after being a keystone for so long, but to make him seem literally evil and then suddenly have him do a 180 near the end, only to go back to being a keystone was completely pointless and redundant. He could have just been a lifeless keystone flying about Tokyo and the story would have been the same. And why was he so obsessed with Suzume anyway? Just because she released him and gave him some fish? What I thought was going to be a deep connection going back to her childhood ended up as something shallow and arbitrary. Plus, Sadaijin. Just why? It shows up as a villain manipulating the aunt, has one line in the whole film, then suddenly just tags along no questions asked and turns into some fuck off cat monster fighting the worm as a good guy at the end? It was created to serve a single plot point and then abandoned because they didn’t know what to do with it. I guess the implication was that it was the second keystone, but that raises a number of other questions: When was it released? How was it released? How did it know the grandfather and why wasn’t that a plot point that led to explaining it? Also, why did it show up as evil for no reason?
- The ending was just confusing. Suzume went back to the door to find her younger self and it turns out she was the mysterious stranger all along? That cliche trope can be done well, but it certainly wasn’t here. Most of all because there wasn’t a precedent for it. What was the point? It didn’t add to the story - the conflict was over. And how could she even do that? The 'ever-after' was said to be for the departed, but never once does it state that it connects time. It was just an absolutely unnecessary addition to the film and changed nothing about the story or characters. What may have made sense was to have that scene before the resolution of the battle, as an internal conflict for Suzume to overcome her trauma with, that then tied in to her ability to defeat the worm, but having it after was pointless.
- There was a complete lack of an epilogue. So after the longest runtime of any Shinkai film ever we don’t even get to see what happened to everyone? Suzume & Souta’s relationship is implied but never articulated. Does he become a teacher? Does the aunt find a man? How has Suzume’s life changed going forward? Is she going to become a Closer now too and find a calling in travel and exploration? Nothing was finished.


All in all, this film felt like a really cool-looking silhouette of a boss character that, once unlocked, you realise has an underwhelming design. It was all style and minimal substance. Felt like Shinkai phoned it in this time. A mostly forgettable film. I really wanted to like it, and for completion's sake and for his resume I’d say fans of Shinkai should probably go and form their own opinion, but it’s not a film I would ever recommend people go and watch.

NB: I wasn’t planning on writing a review. I don’t usually do so. The above is just the stream of consciousness that spewed out of me when adding notes to the entry on my personal list, which, through doing and articulating its flaws, made me drop my rating of it from a 6 to a 4. It got so long that I thought I may as well make a review of it for others to see and agree/disagree with. I haven’t proofread it, and, as a result, the spelling and grammar may suck. I may go back over it and edit it at some point, or I may not.

Pros:-
• Games follow rules. While I loved series like Kaiji and Kakegurui (actually, that was just OK), there was sometimes/often some ass-pulling and cheating that led to the victory, which often relied on luck and wouldn’t work in real life. This took away some of the satisfaction of the ‘win’ for me, but with Akiyama being the super genius that he is, the games he wins are all because of strategy and sure tactics.
• The show is grounded in its morals and messages, and in particular the main character is less over the top like Light in Death Note with his holier-than-thou attitude.
• I was ... thrilled to see actual game theoretic and psychological principles cited correctly rather than taking a concept and bastardising it - often the case with strategy manga. This is another reason why the show is more grounded.
• Just very clever and believable writing all around. When it comes to strategic and tactical manga, Shinobu-sensei is by far the best.

Cons:-
• There is a clear lack of character development. With the show focusing more on the games themselves, almost 100% of screen time pertains to that, and especially Akiyama gets little human development (bar a couple of pages of flashback) as they focus on his brilliant mind.
• Whilst the games are all extremely clever and well written, with no breaks in between each round the format of the manga gets very repetitive.

***Spoiler***:
• Villains are set up to be very menacing and threatening, however, this is undermined by the fact that Akiyama ALWAYS gets the win, so the credibility & consequences of an opponent’s strength is left unknown (looking at you, Yokoya). If the antagonist got even one win it would have increased the stakes of the games in general.

• The ‘fodder’ characters are not consistent in their intellect. One moment they’ll have a really good epiphany but then the rest of the time they’re almost retardedly stupid.

• Bad Ending - Rushed and Inconclusive. It’s been said already tons of times and other people have explained it better than me.

Conclusion:
All in all, I absolutely adored this manga because of the clever and believable writing and the suspense that was built. Yes, the ending is rushed and inconclusive but every game had me binging it without even realising.