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arcosapphire t1_iyeoxjg wrote

Reply to comment by Zoradesu in Accidently stumbled upon this movie (Your Name), now it's my favourite anime movie by SociallyAnxiousGuy23

> its director Satoshi Kon has a much more consistent and interesting catalogue as opposed to Makoto Shinkai.

Okay, I'll take the more interesting comment as a debatable opinion, but more consistent?

If I have a criticism about Shinkai, it's that he always makes the same movie. A boy and a girl have something that makes communication between them difficult. They struggle with this but mostly they are sad. They accept that struggle is part of growing up.

That's...every movie he's done. And the visuals are always beautiful, top-notch, and probably feature clouds. There's a very good chance something from space is involved.

He's like the most consistent director I could imagine.

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Zoradesu t1_iyexc6p wrote

I guess what I mean by consistent in this context is his writing, at least in my opinion. A lot of his films do feature pretty similar writing beats, but some his stories feel like they take a backseat for the sake of the visuals. You get a lot of "wallpaper" moments, but they often don't really mean anything other than looking pretty. Your Name feels like his best project to me because it has the best balance of breathtaking visuals and an engaging enough story. Something like Weathering For You or Children Who Chase Lost Voices was disappointing for me because the stories were underwhelming or they didn't really go anywhere.

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arcosapphire t1_iyeznkx wrote

What's surprising about Your Name is that the plot did actually go somewhere. Otherwise, his movies are pretty much entirely character studies. You hear a lot about what the characters are thinking. Mostly their doubts.

So again, extremely consistent. Like what actually happens in Voices? Some people essentially talk to themselves. What happens in Beyond the Clouds? Same thing. What happens in 5cm? Same thing. What happens in Your Name? Same thing except this time they also save a town. See, that's the aberration. But it was just in addition to the things that are always there. And it nearly ended like the other Shinkai films, where the two characters drift apart, but swerved at the last second.

I'm fine with movies that aren't plot-driven, so I still love what Shinkai makes. But back to the point, even if you don't like that sort of thing, I can't see how you could call him anything but consistent.

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Zoradesu t1_iyf1pvw wrote

For me it's just how he writes some of his characters. In Voices, the characters were just bland to me and I couldn't really connect with them. I feel the same way about Garden of Words. But then you have Your Name and 5cm to where you could emotionally connect with those characters. That and the actually stories for some of his films is where the inconsistencies were for me. Like I said, I agree his films do have similar beats, but the quality of the writing is inconsistent from movie to movie for me.

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SandyBoxEggo t1_iyf97k2 wrote

I also thought Weathering With You looked pretty bad. Especially the fireworks scene.

Very few projects have figured out how to CGI well in anime styles (Promare, Chainsaw Man), but Weathering With You is definitely not one of them.

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