A few days off work have eased a bit of the writer’s block but I must admit that my K-On! post stubbornly refuses to leave Draft Rewrite Hell. Anyway. A little late given that Global Shinkai Day was last weekend, I feel the need to hammer out more strings of words to mark the event. It’s pretty neat to have a special time set aside to raise awareness for a filmmaker…we should have a Global Kon or Oshii day sometime in the year too.
Given the context, “What she said.”
I’ve rewatched the various bits of the Shinkai back catalogue but it was nice to have an excuse to marathon them all in one go (She and Her Cat, Voices of a Distant Star, Place Promised in our Early Days, 5cm Per Second and Neko no Shuukai, in that order). This time the anchor point for my scattered thoughts was a truly stellar AMV (link after the jump).
She and Her Cat
The simplicity of this piece makes it a nice introduction to his style and subject matter, born from necessity rather than artistic reasons, but nevertheless the monochrome artwork and short length serve their purpose just fine. I can see the ideas he uses later on – communication, love, loneliness, a feeling of wonder at the ordinary world around us – on a smaller scale, like a songwriter’s first demo tape. He’s setting out his signature style right from the get-go – some directors try out a number of topics and techniques before settling on what works for them but what strikes me here is how Shinkai knew how he wanted to express himself from the start, found his individual aesthetic and stuck with it.
And of course, this is when we meet good old Chobi for the first time. Considering how he makes a cameo in most of the later features, I wonder if he’s a subtle self-insertion on the part of the director.
Voices of a Distant Star
I don’t mean this to sound like negative criticism here but Hoshi no Koe is probably his most derivative work in that its inspirations are more obvious. Although the mobile phone concept it’s based around is original, the time dilation thing was a central theme to Anno’s Gunbuster OAV and other details, such as the later battles between the humans and the Tarsians, remind me a lot of a certain female mecha pilot who leaves her friends behind to fight alien monsters in space. I’m guessing Shinkai grew up on the 80s sci-fi anime shows like many of his contemporaries so it’s hardly surprising. As well as being a genuinely heart -rending little story (I still get a lump in my throat from it) it feels like a tribute to the old classics, such as…
This. Good to see he remembers love. Maybe it’s the Macross fanboy in me speaking here, but there’s one franchise that’s the last word in interplanetary romance stories. I also noticed the attention to detail in the rendering of Agharta – the Miyazaki influence hit me there with the alien buildings and surrounding landscape. Part of me wants to see a sequel that explores this but the biggest limitation of the movie – the length and details merely alluded to – are part of the charm.
Place Promised in our Early Days
I often cite this as my favourite of his, although objectively I’m probably mistaken. The science fiction element is woolly and poorly-explained but I love how it all takes the influence of Arthur C Clarke and Haruki Murakami – two very different writers, but also two of my own personal favourites – and ties their influences together in one place. The tower of the title and its high-tech composition remind me of The Fountains of Paradise and the alternate universes, this time employed in a sci-fi rather than metaphysical context, are a common plot device of Murakami’s novels.
The screenplay is probably only one rewrite away from employing its constituent parts to their full effectiveness but the story works for me on a more subconscious level – glossing over minor inconsistencies and plot holes to give a more general feeling on the events that transpire and how they shape the characters’ lives. Tenmon’s piano- and violin-driven music score is the most effective so far in my opinion, being more varied and emotive than previously but not thematically tied to a particular song (namely the tune that formed the finale of 5cm/s).
5cm Per Second
This movie poses an interesting question: how much more polished can Comix Wave make their artwork when this is already hyper-realistic? I absolutely love the Shinjuku cityscape but even on a bright summer’s day in good weather, it never looks as good as this. Perhaps the fact that the environs look better than a photograph is part of the message of the film: memory and reminiscence sometimes give a rose-coloured tint to everything that no real-time impression can match.
It even makes a branch of MacDonalds look pretty, for crying out loud!
While the previous works deal with the distance and longing thing, 5cm/s offers a different ending that’s a departure from the brave declaration of Hoshi no Koe or the idealised ‘movie ending’ of Place Promised; it’s more realistic in that sense. If I’d seen it at the age of, say, 18 I wouldn’t get it: thanks to experiences that I’m not comfortable with sharing right here and now, the 5cm/s ending is more mature and easy to relate to. It feels like it’s made by a more mature writer (even though Shinkai probably grasped the idea of moving on and ‘getting over it’ in personal relationships much earlier in his life) and the use of the song at the end, despite its domestic popularity being lost on me, is unusual yet wonderfully powerful.
Which brings us to the next film, currently in production after the director spent a spell in London, realised how much he missed his cat and returned to the sunny high-rise cityscape of Tokyo. I must say I find the little bits of news so far encouraging because three feature films based around one set of themes is a nice number and a fourth one would be a little…monotonous? from a viewer’s point of view. Even though he is one of my favourite directors I still see him as a rookie filmmaker who still has more to say – of course, he’d be the first to admit this because the quiet-and-sensitive types are prone to modesty (a trait which Japanese people seem to exhibit in public anyway).
I believe the man himself has shown a bit of bemusement in the past and is surprised that so many people are making a fuss over an inexperienced director. For this reason I feel a bit hesitant to repeatedly draw attention to someone who is, in person, uncomfortable with the limelight and is more happy being at home with his cat and making films.
So, yeah. The AMV that got me out of hiatus mode and made me want to write about Shinkai movies again. I’ve said in the past that the vague, serene and sentimental atmosphere of his films reminds me of the music of Explosions In The Sky (a fantastic instrumental guitar band from Texas that you should all listen to) if their vibe were set to a film. They’ve done a bit of soundtrack work in the past but somebody had a flash of inspiration and married the first part of 5cm/s, the Oukashou segment, with the closing track of their third album (which I stole for the post title).
It’s funny how two pieces of completely unrelated media work so well together. Anyway, enjoy.