The magic of animated filmmaking creates many opportunities for characterization and storytelling that are unavailable in live-action.
As a chair, Sota can still talk and even move.
“We initially did some experimenting and development using 2D, hand-drawn techniques to bring him to life.
Poster for the film ‘Suzume’ by director Makoto Shinkai.Crunchyroll
It felt almost too soft, too alive and, in some ways, too full of soul.
What I wanted to do was invoke that feeling of being trapped inside of something very rigid and cold.
The 3D animation techniques were better suited to convey that on screen through animation.”
The character Sōta is turned into a chair in Makoto Shinkai’s anime film ‘Suzume’.Crunchyroll
Sota’s chair transformation is not the first time Shinkai has played around with his character’s physical bodies.
His 2016 filmYour Namerevolved around two teenagers, a boy and a girl, who keep switching bodies.
Those body transformations were about the excitement and promise of youth.
“There was a huge transformation, both in my body as well as in my mind.
I was full of both excitement and fear of what was to come from the result of that.
I thought it was a very fantastic metaphor to physically swap the body and mind of those two characters.
I think it is very representative of that experience that we all went through in puberty.”
Sota’s experience as a chair is a little less positive, alas.
So it was perhaps a metaphor for that."
Suzumeis in theaters now.
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