Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Can Makoto Shinkai Only Make One Movie?
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q_3
Posts: 166 |
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A Gathering of Cats remains Shinkai's best work. I'd love to see him branch out into comedy more often. And/or more focus on cats.
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Folcwine P. Pywackett
 Posts: 99 |
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"Can Makoto Shinkai Only Make One Movie?"
Certainly the answer is NO, he has in fact made several master works, and you mention "Garden of Words" which is his current best. Not as commercial as "Your Name." but for just the sheer beauty of it all, Garden is incredible. Falling in love with your teacher is such a cliche yet the work possesses such powerful emo powered by poetry in motion both in sight and in sound and in motion and in the raw feels of an adult teacher whose intense loneliness is almost painful to watch while suffering the brutality of her own students. spoiler[You might have mentioned that the teacher, Yukari Yukino, at the end of Garden leaves both Takao Akizuki and the School in Tokyo, and is shown packed up waiting for the train. We see her next in "Your Name." teaching at Itomori High School to Mitsuha's class where she establishes the dynamic portrait of twilight which sets the very plot of Name into motion. ] Good discussion! |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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The dual take of "Garden of Words good, Lost Voices bad" is a combination as common as Shinkai and trains, but I've never understood either half of it. The former felt like a (very pretty) showcase of all his oddly specific interests with basically no plot or purpose; the latter is still one of my favorites, a weirdly fascinating blend of Miyazaki and Shinkai aesthetics. The plot of Lost Voices is kind of chaotic, but meandering messes of emotional isolation and getting lost both literally and metaphorically are core elements of his brand. Your Name is an anomaly in that respect.
He does have a bad habit of damsel-izing the female lead, even in Your Name, which does a much better job of letting her do stuff than previous movies. spoiler[Ultimately, it's her hometown that gets wiped out by the comet, leaving it up to Taki-in-Mitsuha's-body to figure out how to save her via time travel.] I'm interested to see how he handles Suzume, the ads for which at least give the impression that the lead girl gets treated like a protagonist. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2663 |
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My thumbnail tells you I can't let this commentary go without comment as I have heard this same criticism way too much. To answer question #1, that is from The Place Promised in our Early Days and it is distinctive if you watched it and most of his movies. I am not sure where this reductiveness comes from but one might as well accuse all writers of romance stories of only regurgitating the same story over and over.
I guess the commentators would say "nu-huh, they are all different" and indeed it is those differences that make them different stories but when it comes to Shinkai some insist on all being classified as the same "romance". I at least applaud mention of Garden of Words but find little mention of 5cm/s curious as those are most dissimilar to other Shinkai movies. So, yes he can and is making different stories, some with more commonality to each other than others. I would have appreciated this take more if the latest movie were viewed and compared. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4792 |
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It's funny, I own most of Shinkai's catalog but have only watched about half of it, and those are all his earlier films. All of his work is obviously incredibly pretty, but much of what I have seen and a lot of what I know about what I haven't has left me feeling...well, I don't think "cold" is exactly the right word, but it's somewhere in that ballpark at least. I think the biggest hurdle by far is that I can't think of many themes that I personally connect less with than Shinkai's bread-and-butter "wistful unrequited/unfulfilled teenage love." And while relating to a movie isn't necessarily a requirement for enjoying it, the fact that so much of his work feels like it's bittersweet just for the sake of being so is a bit of a turn-off. He's an incredibly talented director from a visual standpoint; I just wish he'd use those talents to expand his horizons a bit more.
It's been a good while since I've sat down and watched any of his films, but I remember enough of the details to pick out what worked for me and what didn't. Out of what I've seen, Voices was a cool little high-concept short film, and it's astonishing to think that Shinkai essentially made it single-handedly. Place Promised is probably my favorite out of what I've seen, as even though I remember the plot being kind of messy, it was a unique concept and I thought the ending was very satisfying. Children Who Chase Lost Voices was undeniably Shinkai trying his best to make a Ghibli movie, but I enjoyed it well enough, even though it wasn't incredibly memorable. What might get me crucified in some circles is saying that 5 Centimeters per Second is what mostly cooled me on Shinkai's work. I think the first segment is a fairly strong little doomed romance story, as well as a bit of a fun time capsule of just how impractical long-distance relationships were before the last 15 years or so. I liked the girl in the second segment, but that part as a whole has only a tenuous connection to the other two and almost feels like it was dropped in from another story. And the final segment...hoo boy. "Grown-ass man still can't get over his middle-school crush for some resaon" is not how you get me to remember your movie fondly. All of that being said, I do want to sit down and watch Your Name, if for nothing else than to see how it compares to all of the massive hype surrounding it. The Garden of Words is also intriguing, since it seems more grounded than Shinkai's more recent works. |
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SaneSavantElla
 Posts: 250 Location: Philippines |
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I could've sworn before Your Name, Your Name 2, and Your Name 3, people tend to side-eye Garden of Words more and line it up along Lost Voices as one of Shinkai's worst. However, it was and still is the only Makoto Shinkai work that truly touched me, because the female lead was so relatable -- to skip your train, walk away and hide in one corner of a park staring at nature, sipping your coffee while reading poems to escape your troubles even for a few moments. The romance part? Eh, not so much, which is why other than the visual spectacle, I am indifferent towards his other stuff.
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meiam
Posts: 3450 |
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Personally I quite liked that section because it seemed to portray him as a loser who was stupid for not moving on, especially when he catch a glimpse of her who clearly as long moved on. This is where the second section is useful, it shows that he missed something because of that. It's fun to have a story that acknowledge that teenager feeling are really strong, but not very smart. Not very original but I'll also echo garden has his best film. I can't think of many story that build up an "illicit" relationship, just to actually acknowledge there's some big problem with it and actually have the character move on. Again, echoing 5cm, its a story about enjoying strong feeling while ultimately acknowledging that there's more to the world than feeling, which in a lot of way is pretty bold and goes against the usual romance story, where love conquer all. I don't find the sci fi element really add anything to his work, except his first one since it used the concept of long range communication with faster than light transportation (although I always find it funny to think that cellphone communication would work across the galaxy). |
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MagicPolly
 Posts: 1623 |
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I guess I'm kind of weird because my favorite movies from him are Weathering With You (was also my favorite movie for a good while) and Children Who Chase, and I wasn't a huge fan of Your Name either! I can't even say why either, I just enjoyed WWY much more then YN. I also might need to give Children a rewatch and my opinion might change.
I really don't agree with the "he can only make one movie" criticism because it comes across as something that someone would only think if they only watched Your Name and Weathering With You, and then took a quick glance at Suzume's poster. Suzume looks like it's much different judging by the trailers and I'm all for it, hopefully I'll get a chance to see it in theaters. All his other movies are very distinct too, so I really don't get it. Also with everyone who loves Garden of Words, I recommend the novel adaptation he wrote. It adds a ton of side stories and fleshes out characters that didn't get any screen time like the mom, brother, and bully. Though it has the downside of not including any of the gorgeous animation obviously. |
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PumpkinMouse
 Posts: 82 |
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This has been my experience with what little I've seen of Shinkai's work and the general reputation preceding all his older movies, which is probably why Garden of Words and Your Name are the ones I've liked the best so far out of what I've tried. I'm not sure if I'll continue to follow his newer releases since so much of his work isn't really to my taste, but even so I really hope he continues to release movies that do well. |
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