Makoto Shinkai

Director of 5 Centimeters per second, and characterized through moving art, insane attention to detail and slight facial expressions, Makoto Shinkai is quickly becoming known as "The next Miyazaki" despite claiming himself unworthy of the title. He does not have very many movies to his name just yet with his debut 5 minute "She and Her Cat" and a 30 minute "Voices of a Distant Star". By the way, Voices was done entirely on his macontosh in 1999-2000 and was originally dubbed with his wive's and his own voices. It baffles me how small his animation group is and how close he is to the core of his work.



In all his pieces there is some sort of narrative from a character's perspective that delivers powerful insight and emotion to there position. The art and color schemes that are used always cover absolutely every spectrum and some how light up the entire screen with remarkably smooth frames. Particularly what awes me is how water and clouds are done. Metal and other things can be inspected enough so you know the abouts of how to make something look like them. Clouds and water in particular are very difficult to draw let alone animate. They way these narratives take place in almost an art in itself. A single bad voice actor will destroy any of these movies. What makes these special apart from the breathtaking visuals, is how emotionally attached Shinkai can make you feel toward his characters through such a narrative. You hear the feelings of their very soul as they think their way through life. What he seems to excel at is the writing for how one thinks when they are in "like" with someone or even in a relationship. I am very well aware that this mind perspective is different than other levels of thought. You become more receptive to the world. More aware. Everything connects, and live is either floating, or hell. The way Shinkai does this is beyond my ability to write. His work is nearly a direct expression of pure emotion. I was going to just do one big director page for the movies, but it looks like the more I write this the more I need to have separate posts on each movie within a director. Having only a few movies out at the moment this is someone to pay close attention to.



At the moment the longest movies he has out are 5 Centimeters per Second and The Place Promised in our Early Days.