The world and you, I choose you.
Written by | Wang lin
Edit | Zhou Xiaoxiao
Original production of "Look at the World" magazine
Recently, Shinkai Makoto has been busy and running around the world with a three-legged children's chair.
This children's chair is the male protagonist of the new film "Journey to the Bell Buds". Yes, you read that right. In the movie, the male protagonist "Kusata" is turned into a chair that can say that he can run, and leads the heroine Suzuya to travel to various parts of Japan to prevent disaster from coming. Following "Your Name" and "Child of the Weather", the final chapter of the "Disaster Trilogy" "Suzuya Journey" successfully broke 10 billion yen at the box office in Japan, and also set a pre-sales record in China.
On March 17, Xinhai Makoto came to Beijing with Caota, worked on the premiere for two days, and carried it all the way to Shanghai. Makoto Shinkai was also surprised that he had so many followers in China, and he shared the gifts he received on Twitter to express his gratitude to the Chinese audience.
Makoto Shinkai, who just celebrated his 50th birthday last month, is still a big boy at heart. He is deeply influenced by Japanese otaku culture, has a sensitive personality, acts low-key, and looks very "otaku". The first woman he fell in love with was a comic book character.
Many people refer to him as "the next Miyazaki", but he feels that he does not want to make those grand narratives and cannot make "national films for all ages". He is obsessed with his audience, young people in their teens and twenties, or middle-aged people with youth regrets, even if the movie is said to be "a little childish".
Like his dreamy and bright painting style, Makoto Shinkai's stories always have a particularly pure romance: passing encounters, heartbeats at first sight, love across time and space, persistence to save the world...
Makoto Shinkai is the "god of pure love and war" of this era, clinging to something that has been lost for a long time.
Justifying pure love
In the cyber world, there are people who fall to the ground for pure love every day, so what is pure love?
According to the interpretation of "Moe Niang Encyclopedia", pure love comes from the Japanese "pure love", which refers to an idealized, utopian love, not mixed with any evil thoughts and lusts, absolutely loyal and single-minded and unconditionally paid - "love that is pursued at all costs, love that is not carnal, and love that does not ask for anything in return." ”
The purity of pure love is pure sugar, pure single-mindedness, pure mind, no blood, no collapse, no meat. It's like the crazy joke on the Internet, condensing the essence of pure love: a handsome boy comes to buy menstrual pain medicine, the clerk asks the girl if she has a cold physique, and the boy "blushed and said with a mosquito voice that 'I haven't held it yet'..."
Using these standards to watch Makoto Shinkai's movies is indeed too pure.
Most of the protagonists of Makoto Shinkai are high school students, and the ignorant first love between boys and girls in the flower season is pure love. The age gap in "The Garden of Words" is slightly larger, a 15-year-old high school student falls in love with a 27-year-old working woman, but the heroine's identity is a Guwen teacher who has never left the ivory tower on campus, and even the voice is a cute voice of Hanazawa coriander.
Makoto Shinkai revealed in an interview that "Your Name" originally wanted to design the heroine to have a crush, and then slowly develop a good impression of the male protagonist in the process of soul exchange. But this idea was rejected at the script meeting, "Let the heroine have someone she likes from the beginning, such a setting will be hated by the audience."
The way of encounter must also be pure love, and the destined encounter is the best way to interpret the uniqueness of a partner. "Your Name" is a soul swap between male and female protagonists; "Children of the Weather" is a wonderful chance encounter in the crowd; "Journey to the Bell Buds" also began with a brush of shoulders.
On her way to school, Suzuya, a female high school student, meets a stranger from a foreign country, the male protagonist Kusanasa, who is very handsome and exudes an indescribable sense of familiarity. Kusanagi's two or three brief questions for directions made Suzuya blush nervously, and the budding spring spirit rippled her thoughts.
Kusata's profession is "Closed Master", a profession similar to a magician that has been passed down from generation to generation. According to the setting of the film, there will be a gate to the "Tsunes" (past worlds) in the ruins of all over Japan, and if the gate is opened, giant beasts will be released, causing earthquake disasters. The job of the Closed Master is to find and close these abnormal and dangerous doors.
Although his status is special, in the ordinary days when he does not go out of tasks, Kusanagi is just an ordinary college student. He is preparing for the teaching certificate exam and wants to become a teacher. Wrapped in fantasy elements, "Journey to the Bell Buds" is still a story of pure love about boys and girls attracting each other.
This is Shinkai Makoto's most simple understanding of love: "Our lives are always in a state before encountering others. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, or a year from now, we will meet the very important person in our lives. ”
After Kusata is accidentally turned into a triangular bench, Suzuya's journey begins, and she needs to find a way to restore Kusata - such a big handsome man, being a bench is too wasteful! For this reason, she dared to risk her life to enter the "ordinary world" to face her most fearful and vulnerable memories.
The heroes and heroines do their best to go both ways, and pure love reaches the moment of highest concentration. "Your Name" is a salvation across time and space, even if a meteorite falls, it must change its trajectory. "Children of the Weather" is that even if Japan is flooded and there will be no sunny days in the future, I will not let go, "I need you more than a clear sky." The weather or something, it's okay to go crazy like this. The world and you, I choose you".
And "Journey to the Bell Buds" also made a loud confession: It's okay to step into another world and never come back, it's okay to disappear from here, I just want to meet someone I like.
Ah, pure love warrior, fall to the ground in response.
The ideal for otaku
Makoto Shinkai is also a pure love for movies. If the movie is compared to a "sweetheart", then Makoto Shinkai is the male protagonist who is no longer pure.
Many people may not know that Xinhai Makoto's real name is "Xinjin Makoto", and he is a real rich second generation. His father was the president of the Shintsu Gumi, a century-old architectural company, and was quite prestigious in Japan. As the eldest son, Makoto Shinjin was placed on high hopes for his successor from an early age. So many people joke that if he can't make a name for himself in the animation industry, he will have to go back to inherit the family business and become the president!
But Makoto Shinkai did not want to be president. When his senior year was about to graduate, Makoto Shinkai called his father and uttered a line that only a hot-blooded male protagonist has: "Sorry, I have a job that I had to do when I was young!" ”
This job is animation. After graduating from the Faculty of Literature of Chuo University, Shinkai Makoto successfully joined the well-known game company Falcom, and spent five years working as a grassroots animator every day, working until midnight every day, taking the latest train home, while still insisting on creating his own animated short films.
He wanted to convey his love to more people, so he resigned at the dawn of the new millennium and turned to independent creation. In 2002, Makoto Shinkai released his first animated short film "Voice of the Stars" after leaving his job, in addition to the soundtrack, the director, screenwriter, drawing, editing, all the work was done by Shinkai Makoto himself.
Today, this stunning 25-minute short film in the Japanese animation industry has included all the elements of Makoto Shinkai: a high school heroine, a beautiful art style, a science fiction theme, and pure love to save the world.
Makoto Shinkai has the nickname "screensaver director", and his scenes are beautiful and delicate, and every frame can be used as wallpaper. Rich layers of clouds, colorful starry sky, and a sunset with extremely strong colors, the painting style is close to realism, but more beautiful than the real scene. When making "The Garden of Words", he wanted the audience to see the clarity of each raindrop, perhaps this "picking details" did not have a direct impact on the expression of the theme, but he was intoxicated by the process of delving into it.
In such a beautiful scene, even regret and sadness can be healed. Makoto Shinkai knows the greatness of these things, because these scenery come from his hometown of Nagano Prefecture: the altitude is high and the sky is close, and "when I ride a bicycle, I often feel like I am chasing each other with the clouds, which makes me feel one with the world at that time."
And those sunsets, seashores, railway tracks, and starry skies are all memories of his youth. On the way home one evening after high school, he was moved to tears as he watched the slowly falling sunset in the distance, dyed into a warm red dusk. Makoto Shinkai couldn't explain the emotions at the time, but he remembered that deep feeling and repeatedly drew it into his own story in the future. This is his pure affection for his hometown.
However, the style of emphasizing emotions and light narrative has also made Shinkai Makoto questioned for a long time that "the pattern is small", sticking to small loves and youthful sorrows. But Shinkai Makoto did not cater to these critics, but instead filmed "Children of the Weather", which is more contrary to the value of the individual and society, and the protagonist will leave the heroine even if there is no sunny day in Tokyo from now on, "I just need the world between you and me".
Shinkai Makoto said a little rebelliously: "Let those who hate it hate to go even more." "The childish middle two speech, like his films, is always a little childish but sincerely moving.
Although he said so, compared with the early days, Makoto Shinkai's creation has grown significantly, adding the portrayal of supporting characters, and the narrative and structure are more complete and full.
The bigger difference is in the ending. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake struck Japan, and the devastation changed Makoto Shinkai's mentality, "Before the earthquake, I was a writer who did not write happy endings, like the sad ending in "5 Centimeters Per Second". But after the earthquake, I changed my mind and I felt I had to paint a strong picture of hope in my story."
This is why starting from "Your Name", Makoto Shinkai's stories are always set against the background of natural disasters, and he wants to present the process of pursuing joy and happiness more than the story of failed first love in the past. The new film "Journey to the Ringbuds" is directly aimed at the earthquake itself: "On the morning of the Great East Japan Earthquake, countless people left a message of 'I'll go back' and went out, but about 20,000 people could not go home or fulfill their promises. ”
However, in terms of presentation, Shinkai Makoto has not changed. His detail-oriented depictions dilute the grief of the disaster with a lighthearted and witty journey. On Suzuya's journey, the danger is only a point, and the strangers you meet are always full of kindness.
Makoto Shinkai is destined to be different from Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki was born in the era of war, and peace and development were his eternal themes. Makoto Shinkai, who was born in the "second generation of the clump", witnessed the collapse of Japan's bubble economy, the saturation of the job market, the strengthening of individual expression by information technology and the acceleration of social alienation... Compared to grand narratives, he cares more about individual values and details of life.
This is the world as he sees it.
"Daily life is not like in Miyazaki's works, where you have to take risks every day, go to war every day, and save the world every day. In the life I saw, only going to the convenience store to buy something, or accidentally having a few spits with the people next to us when we squeezed the train, although it was a small thing, but the emotional ups and downs in our hearts were the same as those wars and saving the world. ”
Even if there are not so many dramatic episodes of winds and waves in life, there are precious moments worth telling in ordinary life day after day, "just saying a word to someone you like while commuting will also produce ups and downs of feelings." This is the gentleness of otaku people.