Whenever Makoto Shinkai is brought up in discussion you’ll always hear at least one person accusing him of being a one trick pony. After only three features and still so early in his career I think that is a very unfair view to have of the man. Even if you do accept this opinion of his work to date, being a one trick pony is not in of itself a bad thing. So long as you’re making amazing works of creativity it doesn’t matter. And make amazing works of creativity is exactly what he has been doing.
From watching the trailer to Children who Chase Lost
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Voices I knew going into this movie that it would be a departure from his previous works. It was only after I’d seen the movie that I realised how much of a departure it was. So much so that if I’d seen this movie not knowing Shinkai directed it I wouldn’t have known it was one of his movies at all. Just as I look for the Miyazaki signature in his movies so did I look for Shinkai’s signature here, and it was a struggle to find it. I can’t help but think that this movie was less a natural creative process for him and more a response to the naysayers who think he can’t do anything else. Artists should produce work based on what naturally comes to them, not what comes about as a result of pandering to critics.
This movie feels so desperately like he wanted to show critics that he could do more than romance stories, and this concern with wanting to try something new was unfortunately to the detriment of the movie as a whole. I feel it’s quite sad that Shinkai felt he needed to make such a drastic change to his style when making this movie. As someone who is an avid fan of his works it pains me so much to say this but, this movie has problems and as a result I’m quite critical of it. I’ve always maintained the personal policy that to be fan of something, anything at all is to not be an apologist, to recognise and accept when something you like is waning. To put this movie on par with Shinkai’s first three features would be disservice.
I do wish to say out right that while I did enjoy this movie I would put it last if I were to rank his works to date. Also at the screening of the movie I actually had the honour of meeting Shinkai himself. I had a brief chat through an interpreter, got a signed poster and was glad to meet such a great artist and personable individual. I feel that this should be kept in mind while reading what I thought of it, and that even the excitement of briefly meeting the man whose works I’ve thoroughly enjoyed didn’t do anything to effect my objectivity nor stop me from noticing the flaws within this movie.
I’ve no problem with a director trying something new but it shouldn’t be at the expense of what makes them great at what they do, this should be true of all artists. For example I’m not sure why he felt the need to change his signature character designs and animation style and the musical pieces weren’t as instantly memorable as the others from Voices or 5 Centimetres. Ghibli movies manage to maintain signature character designs and music while trying all kinds of different stories. Shinkai didn’t need to change that aspect of his film making while working on this movie. If it were just cosmetic changes that would ok but its so much more.
What really matters and what it always comes down to is plot and characters. To sum up it plainly, this movie lacks focus. One thing I’ve always liked about Shinkai is his minimalist approach to story telling. You can still tell a different type of story while maintaining a minimalist style. While this style is somewhat present in the first act it disappears soon afterward. The unfortunate result is a movie that doesn’t know whose story it’s supposed to be. And with some minor rewrites there are characters and respective plot points that are simply not needed. The most glaring example of this is the brothers Shin and Shun, there’s no reason at all why these two characters couldn’t have been the one person. It completely breaks the follow of a movie when you have two characters filling what is essentially the one role in separate halves of a movie.
In Shinkai’s pervious works he has managed to convey beautiful stories with small casts, each character had a purpose and it worked. As part of the new direction for this movie he decided expand to a larger cast of characters. The problem is the most of these characters either serve no real purpose in furthering the plot or appear so briefly that you wonder why they were included at all. Like apparently Shun and Shin have a sister named Seri, who was included in a scene for some reason. Another example would be Asuna's mother, instead of being the background parent like is generally case and what works for these types stories, the point was made to focus on the fact that she is a nurse who works lots of hours.
There are also some plot decisions that didn’t really make any sense. About halfway through the movie Asuna gets captured by these shadow creatures. As it turns out they wanted to kill her. Ok, so why the elaborate kidnapping scene, why bring her to another location and wait for her to wake up if killing her was the end goal. Then we have Mimi, a cute little cat who accompanies Asuna on her adventure. Instead of keeping Mimi as a simple companion like Teto in Nausicaa, Shinkai decided to include a plot point involving the cat that was completely unnecessary.
As I mentioned before the movie seems to have a hard time deciding whose story it’s supposed to be. At first you would assume it’s Asuna’s story as the whole first act is setting her up to be so. Then in the second act we get this guy Morisaki who is travelling with Asuna to Agartha to find a way to reunite with his wife, when his story began to dominate the movie I began to wonder why Asuna was even on this adventure first place.
Depending on the kind of anime fan you are, there is potential to question the appropriateness these two characters travelling alone together given their age. It probably wouldn’t be so obvious if it weren’t for a slightly creepy scene at the conclusion of Morisaki’s quest. Given the kind of stories that can be found in anime I’m willing to bet that there are people that either didn’t question this or didn’t even notice it. But the very existence of the Morisaki character brings us back to my original point of Shinkai’s telling good stories with small casts. This movie really should have simply been Asuna travelling with Mimi and Shin across Agartha, and that would have worked. No brother Shun and no Morisaki and his wife storyline. The movie would have worked so much better and would have complimented Shinkai’s style had the script been written to not include either of these characters. It would have attained the focus the movie so desperately needed.
Unfortunately Children who Chase Lost Voices was just too ambitious in scope for the kind of storyteller Shinkai is and ultimately it doesn’t hang together. As I said before it pains me to be so critical of this movie because I’m such a fan of his previous works. And even though it’s the wrong approach to take when trying to be impartial about a movie, I went into the screening of this movie really wanting to like it. Part of being fan is to recognise when your favourite works are missing mark and to not be afraid to admit it when it does. Be it anime, movies, TV, music or video games. Sometimes they’ll create great works and sometimes they won’t, and sometimes they’ll never return to when they were at their best. It’s just the way things go.
To end on a positive note I do think Children who Chase Lost Voices is worth your time and I will definitely buy it at some point, and maybe my opinion of the movie will improve after a second viewing. Here’s hoping Shinkai’s next work will be a return to form for this amazing director.
Dec 18, 2012
Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo
(Anime)
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Whenever Makoto Shinkai is brought up in discussion you’ll always hear at least one person accusing him of being a one trick pony. After only three features and still so early in his career I think that is a very unfair view to have of the man. Even if you do accept this opinion of his work to date, being a one trick pony is not in of itself a bad thing. So long as you’re making amazing works of creativity it doesn’t matter. And make amazing works of creativity is exactly what he has been doing.
From watching the trailer to Children who Chase Lost ... Jan 26, 2012
Byousoku 5 Centimeter
(Anime)
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5 Centimetres Per Second tells a love story between Takaki and Akari, it’s about the circumstances out of their control which rips them apart from one another, about trying to move on and what happens to your life if you simply aren’t able to. I first saw this movie at an anime film festival and again about a year and half later when it finally came out on DVD. If I had written this review back then it would have turned out totally different from how this one did. Being able to watch this on DVD and having a second viewing upgraded my opinion of
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Aug 18, 2009
Kimi ga Nozomu Eien
(Anime)
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Rumbling Hearts (Kimi ga Nozomu Eien) is another anime that I checked out because of a recommendation on this very site. Right off the bat I’m going to say I have a sort of love/hate opinion of this anime. On the one hand I think the story is pretty good, the characters are for the most part written well and the music is excellent. However there are three underlining issues I had with this show.
First problem. Somewhere along the line in the making of this show the writers somehow got the idea into their heads that this story needed comedy for balance. Sometimes that is ... |