Introduction: The author watched Makoto Shinkai's new work "Your Name", some views are not unpleasant, but also hope to discuss with you, Makoto Shinkai in his first commercial film made changes, discuss why his works make some people feel stuffy, and the relationship between his works and otaku. No spoilers in this article!!
Presumably, everyone has recently been brushed by Makoto Shinkai's new work "Your Name", since the "Garden of Words and Leaves" 3 years ago, Makoto has once again entered our field of vision. "Your Name" is a fantasy story centered on the protagonist who lives in Tokyo and the heroine who lives in a township called Itosumo exchanging bodies with each other in their sleep. There are also many reflections of the "3.11" earthquake in this work.
As of September 14, "Your Name", which has been in theaters for 19 days, has grossed about 6.57 billion yen (about 426 million yuan), which is the same as the box office of "New Godzilla" that was released for 7 weeks! Both surpassed Detective Conan's "Nightmare of Pure Black", which once topped the box office with 6.3 billion yen!
Japan's Yahoo has a rating of 4.54 out of 5, while "Spirited Away", which is at the top of the japanese all-time box office, has a score of 4.02. Even if there must be a lot of evaluation bubbles during the release period, it also shows that the work is acclaimed and popular.
In fact, Ta Ta Jun's impression of ChengGe before this was not so good, and he did not even want to look forward to his new work. However, being confused by so many praises, Ta Ta Jun couldn't help but look at the SCR version of the DVD (non-pirated) that flowed out of the network a while ago. After reading it, I only have the following impressions:
Sleeper !!! I went to the cinema in Hong Kong to brush up ten times!!!
Of course, many people are reluctant to see the source of the clear version of the film, so this article does not contain spoilers, and the stills in the text are from the trailer and official stills. But Tatajun tried to explain as much as he understood "Your Name".
<h3>Makoto Shinkai's take-off: Toho Daddy Blessing</h3>
Chengge can have such a heat in our country, we should thank the "5 centimeters per second" in the past ten years of the birth of the new and old media free publicity, after all, a person a sentence "every second is wallpaper" word of mouth, Chengge's art is really not covered.
In fact, before "Your Name", Makoto was not well known in Japan. From 1997 to 2002, Chengge was a veritable man fighting, until 2004's "The Other Side of the Cloud, the Agreed Place" Chengge began to fight in groups. Until 2013's "Garden of Words and Leaves", Makoto's works were considered "non-mainstream" films in Japan.
The distributor of "Your Name" is Toho, Japan's largest film distributor, and also adopts the "production committee system". Although Chengge's 2011 work "Children Chasing the Stars" has a production committee, after the reputation of the work encountered Waterloo, 2013's "Garden of Words and Leaves" returned to independent production.
Note that the words "production" and "production" are different in Japanese, the former can be interpreted as production, and the latter can be interpreted as actual production.
The so-called "production committee system" is a system in which one or more sponsors provide funds and the profits obtained are divided according to the agreement, which is simply a system of carrying the pot together. The production committee of "Your Name" is listed in the film and television empire Toho Company.
This system was promoted by Hideaki Anno and producer Toshiyuki Tsukizuki in 1995's Evangelion, a system that revived the Japanese animation industry at the time, and is now used even in live-action films.
Hideaki Anno, who promoted the production committee system, no longer adopted the production committee system in "New Godzilla" this time, and obtained a higher independent creative right; while "Your Name" began to use the production committee system, both of which were released by Toho, achieved amazing results and became two beautiful landscapes of Japanese films this year.
But the production committee, which is dominated by Toho, has to pay a price, that is, Makoto Shinkai must compromise with commerce. However, this compromise created a box office like a tiger.
<h3>Shinkai Makoto's Great Leap Forward: Make up for shortcomings, and the pig advances suddenly</h3>
What do you get by joining Daddy Toho? Of course, there is also the publicity of the local tycoon level, and the scheduling of about 300 cinemas, which is unprecedented in the new Hai Makoto films. Such overwhelming publicity has made the box office rise wave after wave.
What are the benefits of Toho Daddy? That's certainly a better resource, and the best resource for animated films is to assemble a strong team. As we all know, Makoto Shinkai is famous for his art, but he is not good at painting characters, and the level of original painting is not high. Take his 2002 "Voice of the Stars", for example, the level of human design is like this:
…………………………
Excuse me?
Of course, the level of the original painting is not good, and it is not impossible to pile up art and post-technology, and it is not impossible to learn from each other's strengths. If you are interested, you can watch his early short film "Distant World", shaking the lens + blur effect Isn't it simply a ufotable of the "Empty Realm Overlooking the Landscape" period? (No I'm really not black)
The original painting team of "Your Name" this time can almost be regarded as very strong, and the painting supervisor Masashi Ando once worked at Ghibli and was honed by Miyazaki. Makoto Shinkai learned a lot from Masashi Ando's rigorous work ethic. He believes that the production team of each work is "one period and one meeting", and even if the next work is no longer cooperative, it will bring Masashi Ando's work attitude to the new work.
Among the "three major divine original artists of production company Production I.G" who are revered by painting fans, "Your Name" accounts for two, Keiyuki Okiura and Kazuya Huangse. Of course, there is also the character setting of Shoka Tanaka, who was invited to be a character because Makoto Shinkai liked his anime "Dragon and Tiger" very much, and felt that his style could both cater to the tastes of the public and draw cute characters.
Makoto Shinkai's 2014 advertising short film "Crossroads" first featured Shoga Tanaka's personality
In addition to the visual and of course the aura, the theme song and soundtrack this time were played by the rock band RADWIMPS, and Makoto Shinkai was a fan of this band. The soundtrack to the film received rave reviews. RadWIMPS provides a total of four vocal interludes in the whole film, and Makoto Shinkai has never abandoned his level of MV.
In addition to better conditions, there are also changes from Makoto Shinkai. It is no exaggeration to say that in this work, you can meet Makoto Shinkai, who is completely different from before. During the viewing process, Ta Ta Jun did not expect to be amused by Makoto Shinkai's works one day. Makoto Shinkai said that he has done a lot of works that make people cry and deeply, but he has never made people laugh, and this time he wants to try it.
In addition to the laughter, what really makes people laugh should be such a joyful and tearful work made by Makoto Shinkai.
After the male and female protagonists exchanged bodies, they invariably wrote "stupid" and "stupid" on their faces, which is really a pair...
The most obvious point is that the amount of information in this work is much more than that of makoto Shinkai, which was previously produced by Makoto Shinkai. Although Makoto Shinkai is not good at complex narratives (but this time he broke the ground and came to a not too complicated two-line narrative, and also used some montage cleverness to deceive the audience), but he can be more detailed in the picture, which makes the picture have a sense of reality.
Ta Ta Jun was thinking that the picture details are the best examples in the animation industry to use Imatoshi as an example. Below is the original poster that Imatoshi gave himself to direct for Tokyo Godfather. This picture is full of so many details, no matter how many times you look at it, you can find something new, and the seemingly endless amount of information is actually controlled by the benefits and not disorder.
Original manuscript of Mr. Toshi Imamoto's Tokyo Godfather
Only when the details are sufficient and the amount of information is properly controlled can the audience be persuaded and the picture and time will not be wasted. Of course, the details of Makoto Shinkai this time also lie in the use of foreshadowing. Don't look at it, I don't know, this time there are many foreshadowings, and sometimes a very ordinary thing may be a foreshadowing.
For example, the picture below first appeared in the opening of the film, but I did not expect that this was also a big foreshadowing. Tatajun re-watched and found that Makoto Shinkai retained his best poetic inner confession at the beginning of the film, but throughout the film, he found that every card at the beginning of the film was a foreshadowing. In addition to the extension of space, Makoto Shinkai also cleverly uses the time difference to hint at the audience, as for what is implied, it is better to let the audience see it for themselves.
Many viewers are even more unexpected, that the small fresh supervisor who will only narrate in the audience's impression will actually use so many volt lines and plot turning points, which can be described as wave after wave. This is the progress of Makoto Shinkai.
I believe that many Japanese viewers want to brush several times because the amount of information this time is sufficient and can withstand heavy viewing. Perhaps the biggest contributor to this comes from Genki Kawamura, Toho's ace producer. Makoto Shinkai confessed that Genki Kawamura taught him when to climax in his work, when to turn around, and how to superimpose the narrative to look good.
Who is Kawamura Genki?
Kawamura Genki
Ten years ago, he took advantage of the hit Japanese drama "Tram Man" to single-handedly win the movie version of "Tram Man", which earned a high box office of 3.7 billion yen. Later, the "Confession" he planned was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. When Hosoda Mori came out of the original production company MADHOUSE to set up his own studio "Studio Map", Kawamura took him another step and asked Toho to launch "Wolf's Child Rain and Snow" as the producer - this is the same as Makoto Shinkai now!
Interestingly, last year, Hosoda's "Monster Son" became the hit of the year, and Hosoda Mori was trumpeted by the media as "Miyazaki's successor". Of course, Japanese journalists also listen to the wind and rain, which is not, this year they have blown Makoto Shinkai into "Miyazaki's successor", always want to make a big news. However, Kawamura's own novel "If the Cat Disappears from the World" was also adapted into a movie this year, and it also achieved good results. By the way, this work is the same as "Your Name" with world color.
The movie version of "If the Cat Disappeared from the World"
Many people say that Makoto Shinkai does not tell stories, and his stories are prose and fragmented. In his previous works, he sometimes regarded the audience as an insider, he thought that the audience knew the whole story of his story, on this basis he would leave the audience behind no matter how imaginative, he would let the characters in the work wander with their own consciousness, with the help of strange poetry to express their hearts, without the slightest comprehensive explanation of the story and setting.
With the emergence of "Your Name", Makoto Shinkai has made a regression in the "literary atmosphere" and added more commercial elements. He used his strength to prove that he could tell the story well, the film could be made wonderfully, and his most proud skills in the past would become his most powerful seasoning and sublimate the story.
<h3>Makoto Shinkai's Wild Hope: Let the world series of masterpieces enter the mainstream vision</h3>
Makoto Shinkai said that whether it is production or pomp, this work is his strongest work, and it will be his masterpiece. He said confidently, "This will be my masterpiece." "The masterpiece is not something to say. For example, Makoto Shinkai's favorite symmetrical composition of the male and female protagonists, this composition in "Your Name", with the plot, let people dream back to "The Other Side of the Cloud, the Agreed Place".
"The Other Side of the Cloud, the Agreed Place"
"Your Name"
Remember the teacher in "The Garden of Words and Leaves", who finally moved back to her hometown? In "Your Name", Makoto Shinkai also playfully asked Yukino Sensei to appear as the heroine's teacher, and the voice was still Hanazawa Kaori. Makoto Shinkai said that although this is a work that wants to be shown to more people who don't know me, it also has some "small services" for my fans.
By the way, Makoto Shinkai is a person with a very classical complex, and his love for classical love and separation is also expressed in his works. In "The Garden of Leaves", the verses of the Japanese classical poetry collection "ManyoJi" run through the whole film. The story of "Your Name" was inspired by a short song written by Kono Komachi in the "Ancient and Modern Waka Collection": When you meet in a dream, you don't see anyone, if you know it's a dream, why do you have to wake up. Even if you often meet in your dreams, how can you see it again than if you really saw it again. (原文:思ひつつ寝ればや人の見えつらむ梦と知りせば覚めざらましを。 Makoto Shinkai expresses his view of time through "knot", which in Japanese is homophonous with "musubi", which means to produce and generate. The "knot" connects people and people in space, and ancient and modern in time. Thus the bonds of the world are formed. This is also one of the most crucial hints in Your Name. (Rest assured, viewers who have not seen it cannot guess it)
The term "world system" mentioned above, what is the world system?
Simply put, the works that directly link the protagonist to the upheaval or survival of the world, in the deeper sense, most world works are from the people around them to the cognition of the world, and then back to the cognition of the self. This is a type of science fiction derived from the Japanese ACGN culture, "The Melancholy of Haruhi Ryogu", "The Sky of Irino, The Summer of UFO", "The Final Weapon", as well as Makoto Shinkai's "Sound of stars", "The Other End of the Clouds, The Agreed Place", and the new work "Your Name" are all world works.
The world system has always felt to Tatajun as lonely, because a character has become independent of this human society, and has become a being that maintains the world and overlooks the world. Even if this role is in contact with human society, it is still not reduced by the sense of distance between people. You say that Ryogu Haruhi doesn't feel lonely? That's because Ah Xuan, as an observer of Lianggong, bears it for her, and Lianggong can manipulate the world at will without knowing it.
This hairstyle of the heroine Mitsuba is considered by many to be a tribute to Haruhi Ryogu
Although Makoto Shinkai will also be at the forefront of mainstream animation directors this year, he is not similar to several other famous animation directors. To give a few examples, Osamu Tezuka influenced Hayao Miyazaki and Katsuyo Otomo. The internationally renowned Hayao Miyazaki influenced Hideaki Anno and Hosoda Mori. Katsuyo Otomo influenced Imatoshi. The above mentioned animation directors are all quite well-known animation directors, which can basically be seen that the mutual influence of Japanese animators is in the same vein.
Makoto Shinkai, on the other hand, is an outlier, influenced by animation and influenced by the Gal Game. Think about where he worked in the early days?
From 1995 to 2000, Makoto Shinkai worked for the game company Falcom (at the time he still used his real name, Makoto Shinjin). During that period, his independent animations were carried out secretly. Also working at Falcom at that time was the musician Tenmon (who later composed works for Makoto Shinkai until "The Child Chasing the Stars").
The OP animation of "Forever Ys2" speculates from many sources of evidence that this is undoubtedly the work of Makoto Shinkai.
In 2001, Makoto Shinkai's own animation was discovered by Falcom. In order to do "The Sound of Stars" with all his might, Makoto Shinkai resigned and took away The Gate of Heaven. The soundtrack made by Tianmen for "The Sound of Stars" is still popular.
World series works actually exploded in ACG works from 2000 to 2005, mostly in beautiful girl games. At that time, it was also the era when key clubs were dominating the beauty girl game industry, and Key's representative works of that period, "AIR" and "CLANNAD", were very orthodox world stories.
Of course, Makoto Shinkai also supervised several game animations for Minori's beautiful girl games from 2001 to 2006, the most famous of which is "ef - the first tale". The following year, the game was adapted into an anime of the same name by Onuma Shin.
The world system was originally a subculture that was detached from the mainstream, but Makoto Shinkai brought this genre to the mainstream world in "Your Name" because of Makoto Shinkai's concessions.
<h3>Shinkai Makoto, past and present: Breaking through the wall of sighs of time and space</h3>
The timeline in "The Sound of Stars" is set in the near future 2046, and mikako, a junior high school girl, becomes an astronaut who travels to the edge of the solar system in order to hunt down aliens who threaten Earth. Her classmate XiaoSheng, who has a crush on her, communicates with Mikako through text messages on her mobile phone, but as the distance expands, Xiaosheng receives Mikako's text messages for longer and longer, and finally a text message takes 8 years to receive. Unexpectedly, I received the last text message sent by Mikako before she died in battle 8 years ago.
And "The Other Side of the Cloud, the Agreed Place" is also set in the near future, when Japan is divided into the north and south by war, and the protagonists, Hiroki Fujisawa and Taku Shirakawa, also like their classmates in the same grade, Sawado Saori. However, it is not known that Zedusori has suddenly disappeared for three years, and her existence is related to the survival of the world.
The worldview in "5 Centimeters per Second" is a very everyday world, takaki and Akari have been inseparable good friends since childhood, but as Takaki transferred schools, the two have been thinking about each other during their student days. When he grew up, because the two saw each other less and less, the relationship became more and more estranged, and eventually fell in love with strangers.
What the author wants to express by giving these three examples is that these early works of Makoto Shinkai can be seen that Makoto is very sullen. He seems to love to create this sense of alienation in his works like Jimmy M, leaving the best of times in his youth and adolescence. The protagonists of these works are isolated by fate, believing that it is difficult for people to resist fate, and go lonely for life with a sense of fatalism.
These works of his deliberately avoid the perception of society, which is like a kind of childlike expectation - the people around me I know (or the people I value) are the whole world, and I know the world from the people around me, and thus return from this world to the knowledge of myself. You could argue that this perception is from the perspective of students who have not yet set foot in society, but there is also this perception of the typical Japanese otaku.
"Otaku Videotape" produced by GAINAX is considered to be one of the works that otaku must not watch.
Why otaku can be associated with youth, perhaps because of this cognitive problem, the typical image of otaku in Japan is not good at communicating with others, inferior in society, so they choose a hobby to immerse themselves in it, as their own spiritual haven. They lack the recognition of society, think that society is terrible, which is similar to students.
Based on this, we can also logically deduce why there are so many works with students as the protagonist in the medium of Japanese animation, which also gives people a ridiculous illusion: "Japanese high school students are invincible." Of course, otaku can also be proud that their whole life may be in adolescence.
The reason why Ta tatsujun believes that Makoto Shinkai has an otaku "bloodline" is not only because he has played beautiful girl games, but also because of his own inferiority and sullenness - the work is like a person. So where did the protagonists of his early works go? They place these lonelinesses in ethereal thoughts that create eternity, but the sense of distance between time and space is rarely broken. The result of this sullen faction is that in "5 Centimeters per Second", the male and female protagonists enter the society, and the thoughts between them are worn away by the society. They realized the power and cruelty of this society.
The concession made by "Your Name" is to break the law of the sullenness of the protagonists of most world-based works, and let the action faction be the protagonists. If the Sullen Faction is the one that allows Otaku to put themselves in the shoes of the characters, then "Your Name" is a group of protagonists who are now in charge of the world system.
The picture above comes from Higashi Hiroki's evaluation of "Your Name", a scholar who has made achievements in the study of Japanese otaku culture. He said in this tweet: "With the imagination of the world's beautiful girl game, let the current character occupy the protagonist, so it has received a wonderful national evaluation... "Your Name" is not so much the beginning of an era as it is a work that announces the end of an era.
This is a comment that makes otaku look very lonely. We see from the "Your Name" release boom, this animation has a lot of "cash" to see, many of which are still couples. "Your Name", as a work that announces the end of an era, has also been confirmed in this fact. Some netizens ridiculed the comparison between the audience of "New Godzilla" and "Your Name", and found extremely obvious differences in it: after all, Hideaki Anno is an old otaku generation influenced by the old special film "Ultraman" and "Mobile Suit Gundam 0079", and the works he made are largely a return to that era.
The audience of "New Godzilla" can see what the age structure and characteristics of the scene are
The audience of "Your Name" is more "full"
In "Your Name", the male and female protagonists are action factions, they will bravely resist fate and strive for their own happiness. This is also one of the reasons why many viewers feel that the last 20 minutes of the film are very "not new hai makoto". If Makoto Shinkai's previous works have a strong writer's nature, then his writer type will inevitably be weakened in recent years because he is getting closer and closer to business, and the production committee system is a key point that weakens his writer's nature. Makoto Shinkai's writerhood, which was originally like thick mucus, is now diluted.
But Ta Ta Jun can make it very clear that although this is a compromise side of Makoto Shinkai, and also sees some of his denial of his past self, such a story must also be written by Makoto Shinkai, who denies that his past is abandoned, and this denial is not destructive, but a catalyst for his evolution.
Makoto Shinkai had a bad review of his second feature film, The Child Chasing the Stars, and he chose to retreat from the rapids, and two years later he again made a short film, "The Garden of Leaves". Those who have watched "The Garden of Words and Leaves" know that this is a teacher-student love with a ten-year age difference, and the teacher-student love is a forbidden love in the eyes of the outside world. The heroine, Yukino Gakari, as a teacher, is actually fond of his student Takao Akizuki. However, due to her own inferiority and fear of being pointed out to her by the outside world, she did not dare to take the next step.
This is the typical protagonist of Makoto Shinkai's early works, and the guidance from the outside world comes from society, and these protagonists are afraid of facing society, which also causes a lack of social cognition.
"You, you've always been like that!" Always say nothing about important things, and then put on the label of nothing, always alone, spend your life! ”
This is the "curse" of the male protagonist Takao Akizuki in "The Garden of Words" to his favorite person, Yukino Baika, and now in Tatajun's view, this is also a warning to Makoto Shinkai to himself. And this time, the heroine ran over and hugged the hero, and she began to bravely accept all this. This character has overturned Makoto Shinkai's previous beliefs in life.
"The Garden of Words and Leaves" seems to be Makoto Shinkai making concessions, but in fact it is a big step forward.
In "Your Name", Makoto Shinkai's compromise is also his progress. Only when people come into contact with society, only by experiencing the cognition of "others- society - world - self", and breaking through the barriers of time and space, can people grow up. Above, Tatajun said that there is a credibility of something that is enhanced by refining the description. Then the credibility of this work is to increase the description of the social cognitive process, which is equivalent to connecting with the public. After all, everyone lives in society.
Brother Cheng figured it out at this point, gave in, and liberated himself. The credibility of his work increases, and as a result, it moves people.
Tatajun here to reveal a little, this poster actually hints at the ending of "Your Name". This is Makoto Shinkai's answer to his past works, a make-up for past regrets.
<h3>Final words</h3>
At the end, Ta Ta Jun extends: "Your Name" actually tells the story of three generations. In the words of Hiroki Toho above, although there is a statement that the protagonist is "now charged", it can actually be explained that the new generation is different from the old generation, and compared with the previous generation, young people should be pushing the front wave and pushing the back wave, more bravely challenging reality. There is an interesting interpretation on Japanese social networks, the first generation in "Your Name", the heroine's grandmother, experienced the generation of defeated Japan after the nuclear bomb attack, and the second generation, the generation of the heroine's mother, was the generation that experienced the Great Depression in Japan in 1989. This may be suspected of over-interpretation, but it is not without lack of fun.
2016 was a year of change and turmoil for Japan, and if nothing else, Emperor Heisei will abdicate in October this year, and the 28-year-old Heisei era will become history. Once there is a drastic change in society, the most soothing thing to soothe the hearts of others is the entertainment culture product. Here's an example: In early 1930, during the Great Depression in the United States, the Mei Lanfang Theater Company premiered at the 49th Street Theater in the heart of Broadway in New York, which lasted for 2 weeks. Whether it's "New Godzilla" or "Your Name," it's a realistic haven for Japan in 2016 to some extent.
Then again, this time it was Makoto Shinkai's masterpiece, and Tatajun felt that Makoto Shinkai had just been affirmed by the mainstream, but he was still a craftsman, far from the level of a master, let alone "Miyazaki's successor". Maybe after this work, Makoto Shinkai will not be able to make a better work for a while, which also makes "Your Name" really become his peak work. And look and cherish. Of course, Ta Ta Jun very much hopes that Brother Cheng can punch me in the face, after all, there are not too many good works. Here, I also wish Brother Chengge to continue to work hard and keep walking.
Thank you Brother Cheng for bringing us "Your Name", I hope that more excellent works will be produced in the future
1. Why is the big hit of "Your Name"? Deciphering from the context of Sekai and beautiful girl games,Author: Daito Toba,http://realsound.jp/movie/2016/09/post-2675.html. (The adaptation version: 开创个 于 诚诚诚评你 family name.<) >，http://www.acgdoge.net/archives/11037）。 该对 对 Xinhai 诚minori period drawings;
2. World Department_Baidu Encyclopedia, http://baike.baidu.com/link?url=xStnYoaXvvPVAJXgif74isj-MUjzVc6col_hOFvFlhRghzef3DCadFeslx4Y_6TUFHsOfqXEnqgfUp5681Mek_;
3. "The Unique Role of Cultural Industries in the Economic Depression Period", by Wang Jiaxin, http://www.3566t.com/news/thzc/1376321.html.
Text/Ta tajun
Synergy / Tomoshi Kitamura