Makoto Shinkai wants Suzume to build a bridge of memory between generations

In Suzume, Your Name and Weathering with You director Makoto Shinkai’s latest film, an ordinary highschooler finds herself pulled into a life of chasing down otherworldly creatures and sealing portals that would otherwise unleash catastrophic tectonic devastation across Japan. Out of all of Shinkai’s animated features, Suzume’s one of his most direct in the way it draws upon Japan’s real-world history with natural disasters to tell an…