This sort of cartoonishly oversimplified heuristic thinking reminds me of a particular gag from The Big Bang Theory. If you’re unfamiliar, TBBT features an Indian (dots, not feathers) character, Raj, who has a crippling fear of women, to the point that he literally becomes mute when in their presence. However, if he ingests alcohol, however little, he becomes very relaxed and able to speak freely. On one such occasion, when Raj is competing with another main character for the good graces of a woman they were both trying to seduce, he is troubled and at a disadvantage until he finds some alcohol. Once he has had a drink, he immediately starts to successfully flirt with the girl and develop great chemistry with her. To that, the guy he was in competition with bitterly remarks: “Do you believe him? Normally, around women, he has the personality of a boiled potato. Put one beer in him and he’s M. Night Charmalarmalan.”
See, in spite of the show’s harsher critics, I’ve long defended it as not being the superficial mockery they purport it to be, and I’ve always been able to have a decent time with it and found it, dare I say, funny. It was this gag, however that changed things for me. It just hit me over this one joke. Why? Why is that funny? Why does that joke work? What do Raj and M. Night Shyamalan have in common to make that joke work? Is M. Night known for being a smooth talker? Is he known for being a ladies’ man? Is he known for being an alcoholic? No to all of the above? So, then the only connection is that they’re both Indian? That’s it? M. Night’s name was the only famous-enough Indian one you were reasonably sure your audience would recognize? That’s all there is to it? Yes. This dude is Indian and, uh, that guy is also Indian, so they’re like, uh, kind of the same, right? Sounds good enough to me. Run it!
It's the same kind of cultural ignorance that Makoto Shinkai’s comparison to Hayao Miyazaki is borne of. They’re both Japanese and they both write and direct feature length animated films that make a lot of money. It comes down to nothing more than that. It’s as deep as a puddle. It would be the equivalent of calling every single Hollywood director who makes a moderately successful movie “the next Kubrick” or “the next Coppola”.
That being said, to Shinkai’s credit, he’s seemingly always tried to distance himself from the Miyazaki comparison. It’s easy to find interviews in which he states that he not only is no Miyazaki, but that it’s foolish to try and copy him. He has stated in an interview that while Castle in the Sky was the first movie he paid to see at the cinema, and that he’s both a fan and admirer of Miyazaki-sensei, his style has always been pointedly different and not really comparable at all. Just in case we’re keeping track, he is indeed correct in saying that.
Which then begs the question, why did he renege on all of that and make a Miyazaki rip-off? I mean, Children Who Chase Lost Voices is still arguably a Shinkai film at the end of the day, seeing as trains and shots of feet have made it into this movie, as well, but his signature identity is so faint, it’s nothing more than window dressing for an off-brand Miyazaki creation. The amount of direct references to Miyazaki’s work, both in the visuals and narrative, reaches an extent that greatly exceeds tribute and enters the realm of plagiarism, but with very little understanding of what to do with the elements it plagiarizes. We have Asuna, our archetypal Ghibli girl protagonist à la Chihiro, who we learn is generically kind, hardworking, curious, and adventurous, as all Ghibli girls are. That’s it. That’s her entire character description and development for the whole movie. She then meets, Shun, her classic mysterious and handsome Ghibli boy, à la Haku or Howl, whose entire point in the story is to be handsome and mysterious. We also learn she has a cute animal pet as a mascot à la Kiki’s Delivery Service, because of course she does. She also has a magic glowing rock à la Castle in the Sky. Then we have the dumb bad guys in uniform representing state violence à la Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Then we have the weirdly unnerving supernatural creatures à la Princess Mononoke. And then we have the aforementioned bad guys in uniforms senselessly destroying that which they do not understand and cannot value à la… basically all of the above. It’s virtually impossible to even enumerate all the little animations and facial expressions which are lifted straight from Ghibli films.
However, just because you have access to all the same ingredients as Gordon Ramsey and all the same tools as Gordon Ramsey, son, that don’t make you Gordon Ramsey. The whole thing feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of Hayao-sensei’s work. Sure, Miyazaki films can be quite dark and violent for the standards of family entertainment, but they don’t exactly contain huge blood splatters from some dude chopping monsters in half with his sword, and the dudes with modern military gear and weaponry and helicopters clashed so badly with the film’s fantasy aesthetic, it just took me out of the experience entirely. To be clear, I believe the aesthetic clash was intended, but that does not obviate the calamitous effect it had. I may be harping on the Ghibli comparison a lot, but I feel it is incredibly misguided to wholesale copy the style of a man literally regarded as a god in the domain of animation.
As an adult, I would posit that it’s entirely possible to have a decent time with the movie. For one thing, the background art and a lot of the visuals are breath-takingly beautiful, and for another, there’s really nothing offensively bad in it. I didn’t hate it. It just did not speak to me – at all.
The closest thing I can liken it to is Tales of Earthsea. That movie was written and directed by Gorou Miyazaki, Hayao-sensei’s son. It is Ghibli’s worst rated film, but I wholeheartedly disagree with that consensus. It’s just as long and similarly slow, but Tales of Earthsea is a Ghibli film made by someone who understands the essence of Hayao-sensei’s work and decided to take it a different direction. Children Who Chase Lost Voices is a Ghibli film gone wrong made by someone who does not understand the essence of Hayao-sensei’s work, but attempts to imitate it anyway.
All of that is to say that if you’re in the camp that hated Tales of Earthsea, you’ll hate this even more.
Still, the film was a critical and commercial success, even if it doesn’t come up often when people talk about Shinkai-sensei’s work, so maybe you’ll see in it the same entertainment value that so many of his fans clearly did.
