The film (02H02) is released Wednesday in French theaters after a triumphant run in Japan, where it has garnered more than $ 103 million in revenue and more than 10 million admissions after its release in 2022.

Only "Top Gun: Maverick" and the hit manga "One Piece" did better that year in the archipelago.

The director has been a regular record holder since "Your Name" (2016) and "Children of Time" (2019), which represented Japan at the Oscars. "Suzume" was also one of two animated films in competition at the Berlinale in February.

Her film follows Suzume, a 17-year-old orphan who meets a strange man, tasked with closing mysterious doors, scattered in abandoned places of the archipelago.

She herself will pass through one of these gates, and learn that they prevent formidable gigantic worms from coming out of the bowels of the earth to sow chaos by triggering seismic tremors.

Suzume finds herself on a road trip like a race against time across Japan to try to prevent earthquakes before they happen, surrounded by fantastic creatures including a talking and running chair and a kitten as "kawai" (cute) as evil.

"Universal"

Suzume "is an entertainment film that talks about serious things, like (the earthquake and) tsunami that hit Japan twelve years ago," director Makoto Shinkai said at the film's Berlinale screening.

At 50, he imprints the philosophical-ecological style of the Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki ("Chihiro's Journey", "My Neighbor Totoro"...), by adding a touch of humor and modernity, where social networks and mobile phones play an important role. Above all, disasters, whether man-made or natural, are at the center of his work.

Japanese filmmaker Makoto Shinkai during the presentation of his film "Suzume" at the Berlinale, February 23, 2023 © Stefanie Loos / AFP/Archives

"Animation makes it possible to reach a very wide audience: elderly people who watch it with their grandchildren. And we can show them deep subjects," he said.

"Children of Time" was inspired by the bad weather related to climate change, when "Suzume", like "Your Name" before, weaves a teenage love story around a story inspired by the triple disaster of March 11, 2011.

On that day, one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the world caused a deadly tsunami, leading to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. These disasters left nearly 18,500 dead or missing.

"Suzume" is an opportunity to take the heroine, raised by her aunt since the death of her mother, to travel in a Japan still traumatized and living waiting for the next earthquake. "I put a lot of emphasis on abandoned places," resulting from natural disasters but also from the depopulation of the country, Shinka said.

The film, with impeccable graphics, progresses from the peaceful life in the northern island of Kyushu, to the north and the region of the Fukushima earthquake, successively crossing Kansai and the Tokyo agglomeration.

Makoto Shinkai first thought of Japanese audiences while making his new film: "We didn't have our eye on the global market for this film and yet I think this approach can allow us to address topics that are truly universal."

© 2023 AFP