Suzume Plot Summary

Suzume (Suzume no Tojimari) is a fantasy adventure movie helmed by the same creator of the iconic Your Name (Kimi no Na wa). Makoto Shinkai’s third anime film begins with Suzume, a 17-year-old girl accidentally setting off a chain of events that could pretty much destroy Tokyo.

In a world where a giant worm rests under Japan, she and the Closer Souta must get together and close all the gates that can serve as an exit for it. But when he is cursed by one of the keystones to turn into a chair, Suzume must do her best to help him turn back human while capturing the keystone to permanently lock away the worm.

What is the worm and where is it from?

Feeling responsible, Suzume joins Souta in his hunt to find the keystone and close the gate. As they travel together, he tells her about the black roaring cloud-like worm that only they can see. Turns out, it is a giant force that lies beneath Japan. It attacks randomly and when it does, it causes huge disasters like earthquakes.

It can temporarily be stopped with a Closer’s key locking the gates that exist in abandoned places. But there are two keystones made of Gods that fortify all the gates, the western and eastern pillars. A century ago, the worm had escaped and destroyed all of Kanto. 

When Suzume picks up the keystone near the gate in her town, Kyushu, it turns into the cat Daijin and escapes. As she and Souta chase Daijin, they realize that the second keystone, Sadaijin is located in Tokyo where the head of the worm rests.

But just as they reach the city, the worm escapes as Sadaijin is unable to control it on its own. It envelopes the sky of Tokyo and slowly starts descending with Daijin revealing that if it falls, the Earth will shatter. To stop the worm, they must pierce its body with the missing keystone.

Why do Souta and Suzume start chasing the cat Daijin?

The cat Daijin is the western keystone Suzume accidentally frees. When it goes to thank her, Souta tries to catch it but Daijin turns him into the chair he is sitting on. It is the 3-legged chair that Suzume’s mother had made for her. They start chasing it in hopes of locking it at the gate again and getting it to turn Souta back into a human.

They also suspect that the cat will open the gate in Tokyo as it keeps leading them to all the open doors on the way. But unbeknownst to them, it keeps leading them there with the intention of helping them close it.

What happens to Souta?

After Souta turns into the chair, every time he sleeps, the light and the voices get colder. He is stuck in front of a gate and he can’t get off the chair as his human body slowly crystallizes. It takes longer to wake up every time but he does with the help of Suzume’s voice. In Kobe, he almost disappears but she kisses him and the crystallization stops.

But when they face off against Daijin in Tokyo when the worm escapes, the chair becomes inanimate for a moment. Daijin then reveals that when Souta became the chair, the role of the keystone passed onto him. The crystallization rapidly increases and just before he turns into the keystone, he says he is grateful to have gotten to meet Suzume.

She is upset and tries to wake him up but he doesn’t. Finally, giving up, she stabs the body of the worm with the newly-made keystone of Souta. Souta and the worm both disappear while Daijin and Suzume fall near the Tokyo gate. She sees that Souta in the form of the chair is stuck on top of a mountain in the Ever-After but she is unable to reach him.

What is Suzume’s plan to save Souta?

With Souta’s grandfather being a Closer, Suzume asks him how she can enter the Ever-After. He at first tries to deter her as it is the land of departed souls. But he then reminds her that she once accidentally entered the Ever-After when she was a child. The gate which allows her to enter is in her hometown where Suzume lived with her mother before she died. 

As Suzume decides to go to her first home, she ends up meeting her aunt, Tamaki, and Souta’s friend, Serizawa on the way. Ready to help, they all pile up in his car and take a road trip to her hometown. But with the two adults being unsure of what is going on, chaos ensues as Suzume refuses to explain it to them.

The car breaks down, arguments take place, Sadaijin decides to join them randomly and its power causes Tamaki to bring up forgotten and regretful feelings but in the end, they make it to her hometown. As Suzume finds the diary she had kept when she was 4, she gets a flashback to the day her mother went missing. She remembers seeing the gate near a telephone pole and finds it.

She is finally able to enter the Ever-After but sees that the land is on fire due to the worm being trapped there. The moment she opens the door, the worm tries to escape and Sadaijin fends it off, buying time for Suzume. As she runs through the burning land, she sees the mountain and rushes to Souta.

Daijin warns her that there needs to be a keystone and she is ready to sacrifice herself for Souta. Touched, Daijin helps her free Souta and in turn, starts getting crystallized instead of Suzume. As they pull out the chair, she touches it and sees Souta’s memories that he has of her and how he wants to live. She kisses the chair and he wakes up from his sleep and turns human.

How does the trio defeat the worm?

While Souta turns back to human, Suzume is sad to see Daijin go. It says that it is sad that it couldn’t be her cat and turns back into a keystone. With Sadaijin unable to hold off the worm any longer, Souta prays to the souls in the Ever-After to help them defeat the worm. He understands that while the worm which represents death exists side by side with life which is fleeting, he wishes to live a little longer.

The Closer Key starts illuminating and he asks for the two keystone gods to help him. Sadaijin runs to him and the two humans are flung towards the worm. Both he and Suzume pierce the worm with the two keystones fulfilling Sadaijin’s command of returning the worm to the departed souls with their hands. The worm turns into dust and the fire in the Ever-After is quenched. Suzume and Souta then leave the realm and lock the door with the Closer key.

Does Suzume see her mother in her dream?

The movie begins with Suzume dreaming about her mother. She is 4 and she is lost in a beautiful, starry land (later revealed to be Ever-After). As she searches for her mother, someone walks up to her. Right before she can see that person’s face, she wakes up from her dream.

Suzume’s mother went missing 12 years ago and since then she lives with her aunt, Tamaki. The only thing she has of her mother is a small chair she had made for Suzume as a birthday gift. One day, it goes missing (due to the Tohoku earthquake) and when she finds it again, it only has 3 legs. Over the course of the film, we see dreams and flashbacks of what really went down. She confuses them and thinks that she entered the Ever-After and her mother gave the broken chair back.

When she finds her diary while trying to save Souta, she remembers the fateful day her mother went missing. She realizes her dream is a memory and she did in fact enter the Ever-After. As she enters the realm again, she notices that it is the same landscape from her dream. After she and Souta defeat the worm, they see a young girl searching for her mother. Suzume realizes that it is her 4-year-old self when she got lost.

As her past self turns, we see that the woman from her future dreams is not her mother but the 17-year-old Suzume. As her younger version cries for her mother, the current Suzume gives her the 3-legged chair that was abandoned after Souta became human. She tells her younger self that all will be fine and that she is her tomorrow. As the younger self is about to exit, she turns and sees Souta and Suzume watching her.

Turns out this is why the current Suzume thought Souta looked familiar when she first saw him at the beginning of the movie. As for her mother, while we get hints that Suzume’s mother may be a Closer who is stuck in the Ever-After, they are just red herrings. In the end, it turns out the mother is a victim of the Tohoku earthquake and is presumed dead. 

Do Suzume and Souta reunite?

After defeating the worm, Souta and Suzume return to Serizawa and Tamaki who are waiting for them. Suzume asks Souta to return home with her but he refuses. He explains that it is people’s feelings that keep the peace and stops the worm. Since there are still some abandoned places with no human feelings where the gates may open, he needs to keep closing them.

He hugs her and thanks her for saving him while promising to meet her one day. After the ending of the movie, we get an epilogue. A few years later, Suzume is on her way out when Souta shows up and she welcomes him back.