Indrapramit DasSo glad I watched SUZUME on IMAX: absolutely spectacular animation & sound design, as expected from Makoto Shinkai, in service of the kind of mythic-mundane epic (in road trip form, here) he favours, irresistibly weighting the fantasy with hyperreal evocations of our world (& beyond).
The romance and basic elements will seem familiar from his other films, but the texture, oversized emotional sincerity, and the spectrum of meditatively mundane to earth-shaking audiovisuals make it stand perfectly on its own (three) legs. Also, cute but fickle cat gods abound.
I read an American reviewer mention that the film focuses too much on characters trying local delicacies--but it's exactly that kind of thing that I loved. There's such a lovely longing to find beauty and joy in the mundane alongside the fantastical, refracted through the medium.