5 Best Makoto Shinkai Anime Movies: To put it mildly, the career of anime director Makoto Shinkai has been fascinating. His first notable, nearly wholly self-produced animated cartoons launched his career in the field. While these side projects are admirable in and of themselves, when seen in the perspective of the director’s later work, they take on even greater significance.
It is encouraging to watch how Shinkai, who was self-taught at first, went on to create some of the finest anime movies ever, including Your Name. The stark disparity in output between his early and later works, as well as the common themes that connect them, are significant. As a result, each of Shinkai’s movies needs context to make sense because even the lesser-known ones have real, significant connections to the more well-known ones. In this article, let’s talk about the 5 Best Makoto Shinkai Anime Movies.
The Garden of Words
It is highly advised to view The Garden of Words if you haven’t seen Makoto Shinkai’s film, even if it was only shown in South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong on theater screens abroad. Of course, there are streaming services available everywhere now where you may watch anime. The Garden of Words provides an accessible introduction to Makoto Shinkai’s animation, which features stunning realism and the innocent “boy meets girl” narrative. The mid-length movie can be seen in approximately 45 minutes.
Main protagonist High school student Takao Akizuki, who is 15 years old, wants to work as a shoemaker. When it’s raining, he skips school and goes to the Shinjuku Gyoen garden, which is a real place in Shinjuku, Tokyo. One day, Yukari Yukino, a popular visitor to the Japanese garden, introduces herself to Takao. She struggles in various areas, such as her job and her romantic relationship, and retreats to the garden to forget about these issues. On cloudy days, they get together there and converse.
Voices of a Distant Star
Since Shinkai had only produced extremely small productions prior to Voices of a Distant Star, it is customary to refer to it as his first significant animation. Despite the fact that Voices of a Distant Star is merely a 25-minute-long anime, it is produced at a whole different level than Shinkai’s earlier works.
Here, one of our love interests is away fighting aliens in an interstellar conflict, and as she travels farther away from Earth, her messages to her partner become more and more difficult to deliver. This is one of Shinkai’s favorite themes, which frequently feature lovers separated by seemingly insurmountable distances. The fact that Shinkai developed this movie largely on his own, putting the plot aside, makes it interesting. This outstanding passion project was completed by the filmmaker early in his career, and it included writing, directing, animation, and even voice acting. Since it was independently made, it lacks some of the polish of some of Shinkai’s later movies, but being the first picture in his oeuvre, it is quite intriguing.
Children who chase lost voices
One of Shinkai’s films with the most obviously surreal elements is Children Who Chase Lost Voices. Even while Your Name and Weathering With You have supernatural themes, which are prevalent in most of his writing, the urban reality that grounds the location usually balances out the surreal flair. Children Who Chase Lost Voices lacks that component, giving it the feel of a fantastical coming-of-age story,
similar to those in a Hayao Miyazaki or Studio Ghibli film. Indeed, while examining Children Who Chase Lost Voices, critics regularly draw comparisons to Ghibli, typically not to the film’s advantage. With the release of Your Name, comparisons between Shinkai’s movies and those of Miyazaki would grow even more popular, but Miyazaki is the only one who can truly capture Miyazaki’s style. It’s one of the less well-known entries in Shinkai’s filmography because of the striking similarities between this movie and the Ghibli classic Laputa: Castle In The Sky.
Weathering with you (Makoto Shinkai Anime Movies)
A sort of spiritual sequel to the 2016 smash hit Your Name, Shinkai’s most recent film is Weathering With You. The similarities in their visual styles, plots, and upbeat tones have led to many comparisons between the two movies. Weathering With You didn’t have the same level of critical and financial success as its predecessor, maybe as a result of how similar they were. Even while Your Name was a success and a hit on its own,
it was always going to be difficult to top the sensation. In spite of this, Weathering With You is still a fantastic movie that has a few significant advantages over its predecessor, which has caused some people to think that Weathering With You is superior to Your Name. Comparisons are unavoidable, of course, and while Weathering may lack the grand drama and electrifying turns of its predecessor, it does provide a more personal—and occasionally more compelling—portrait of its primary characters.
Five Centimeters per second (Makoto Shinkai Anime Movies)
For the majority of people, Shinkai was first brought to the attention of anime lovers around the globe by the film 5 Centimeters Per Second. 5 Centimeters Per Second is unquestionably the work of a more skilled director than the director’s earlier films, and it is created with significantly greater skill and assurance. Character designs and animation are more refined, the recognizable thematic beats
and longing, estranged lovers are handled with more grace and thematic complexity than they previously have, and Shinkai’s renowned background work finally has the chance to shine.
The two movies Place Promised in our Early Days and Voices of a Distant Star resemble stepping stones leading to 5 Centimeters Per Second in several ways. It is still one of Shinkai’s most impactful and well-known films,
and it is the film he spent a remarkable portion of his early career trying to make. This movie continues to be among his best-looking ones, as well. It stands out from the more vibrant, energizing Your Name right away because of the darker color schemes and eerie locations, which are appropriate for the film’s lonesome, depressing vibe.
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