Suzume Has A Shout-Out To Kiki's Delivery Service You May Have Missed (But Shouldn't Have) [Exclusive]

Makoto Shinkai has been called the new Hayao Miyazaki from the moment he arrived on the scene — and not entirely without reason. The filmmaker has made some of the most successful anime movies of all time, employing stunning visuals that bring tear-jerking stories to life. Like Miyazaki, Shinkai blends traditional Japanese folklore with modern stories to tell fantastical yet intimate coming-of-age stories.

Shinkai's latest, "Suzume," is a movie he's been slowly building his whole career up to. This serves as the end of his unofficial natural disaster trilogy that started with "Your Name," this time directly tackling the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in the plot. In "Suzume," we follow the titular character, a young woman living in a small town in Japan who is tasked with closing a series of magical turns across the country before it falls into another disaster. Along the way, Suzume and her companion (who is now a chair) come across abandoned places all throughout Japan — places abandoned by urbanization or natural disasters.

The film borrows from Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli in its tone and some of the themes, but there are actually plenty of proper Easter eggs for fans to see. This includes a great reference to "Kiki's Delivery Service," which you probably missed, even though you shouldn't have

Speaking with our own William Bibbiani, director Makoto Shinkai talked about his homage to the Ghibli movie (which we named as one of the 100 best films ever made):

"When [the characters are] in the car with Serizawa, he goes to the next track, which is in the Japanese title, "Rūju no Dengon" — ["Message in Rouge"] or "Lipstick" in this case. And it's a song that almost the entire Japanese population has heard of, and it's a movie, "Kiki's Delivery Service," that almost the entire population has seen."

Indeed, the song "Rūju no Dengon" is perhaps best known as the opening theme song for "Kiki's Delivery Service." But that's not the only Easter egg. As Shinkai explains, in that same scene there's a truck with a black cat just as the song plays — a reference to Jiji, Kiki's cat companion. Except the cat is not there by random, as it's Easter egg that runs deeper. The cat is the logo of the Japanese shipping company Kuroneko Yamato, whch served as a sponsor of "Kiki's Delivery Service." Shinkai confirmed:

"So that one scene has a little bit of an Easter egg [for] the die-hard Ghibli fans who know what's happening."

Though "Suzume" has other references to Ghibli movies, including a small shoutout to "Whisper of the Heart" and a parallel to "Howl's Moving Castle," it is "Kiki's Delivery Service" that feels like the most direct reference. For Shinkai, it was important to make it clear that "Suzume" is set in a world where "Kiki's Delivery Service" exists. Speaking to Looper, Shinkai said he added these Easter eggs to make "Suzume" an extension of our reality.

"Most if not all of the Japanese population, and younger kids especially, saw Ghibli films," Shinkai said. "So they would've seen 'Kiki's Delivery Service' in the same way that in that film Suzume [has] seen that movie. Saying that Ghibli exists inside the world of 'Suzume' brings her own world much closer to our own reality and makes that very relatable."