Just watched "
The Place Promised in Our Early Days" on Crunchy roll ( Still Have free passes left if you want to watch without commercials!- IM me...) - and its the last feature length Makoto Shinkai film I have to watch. I think I may have saved the best for last. "Voices from a Distant Star" tells a similar story and in far less time, but this one benefits from the longer telling in my opinion (and an entire studio producing the film instead of Shinkaialone on his powermac G4) . All of his films were consistently stunning visually, the stories had similar themes ( platontic young love, loss and separation, longing) and similar symbolism (trains, rain) so some might feel they have "seen this one before" - but I have a high tolerance for repetition, and I enjoyed seeing the variations on the main theme. They aren't the same stories by any means - and its a bit like watching Tarantino progress toward "Pulp Fiction" film by film.. - but way more fun and with far less blood and gore.
I don't think Shinkai has had his "pulp fiction" moment yet, but when he does and he makes that film, its going to be truely brilliant.
“ Shinkai has been hailed as the next Miyazaki, and his dreamy mindscapes often equal or surpass the anime maestro in breadth of detail and depth of emotion. Shinkai extends the innate possibilities of the anime dynamic, reapplying its principles of lush effects, inflated background detail and sometimes undernourished character animation to mirror the interiority of the characters in every nuance of their surroundings." – Ronnie Scheib from Variety"
I have seen quite a few Miyazaki films.. I liked them. I like Shinkai films more than any of them.
Now, just to try sand convince you folks to watch Weisshaupt's silly cartoons, here is a listing of awards he has garnered:
She and her Cat ( short film) Human Grand Prix in SKIP Creative Human award – 2000
Grand Prix in 12th DoGA CG-animation contest
Voices from a Distant Star listed 100th on DVD Verdict's Top 100 DVD Films list
2002 Animation Kobe for packaged work
2003 Seiun Award for best media
5 Centimeters per secondwon the Lancia Platinum Grand Prize at the Future Film Festival for best movie in animation or special effects
Award for Best Animated Feature Film at the 2007 Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
The limited edition DVD of the film was ranked 3rd on the Tohan charts between 18–24 July 2007, while the regular edition of the film was ranked 7th.[33] The film was Japan's fourth most popular Blu-ray film in 2008.[34]
Mania.com lists 5 Centimeters Per Second as the best anime not by Hayao Miyazaki.
The Japan Times?'?s Mark Schilling commends Shinkai saying that he is better than Miyazaki
"at piercing the veil of the everyday to reveal a poignant, evanescent beauty most of us notice only in rare moments." (emphasis mine.)
Children Who Chase Lost VoicesChildren Who Chase Lost Voices received highly positive reviews from film critics with many critics describing the film as a near-perfection of Studio GhibliLuke Halliday from Capsule Computers gave the film a perfect score, heralding the film as Shinkai's finest "Children Who Chase Lost Voices is an astonishing film that truly feels like the culmination of Shinkai’s entire career up until this point. It is his most ambitious work to date and quite simply his crowning achievement in the art form." He continued on to highlight the film's significance to anime as an artform "This is perhaps the most important anime film of the new millennium, because it marks an important changing of tides. It is films like Children Who Chase Lost Voices that remind us of how magical anime can truly be."
The Garden of Words Year's Best Animation in iTunes' Best of 2013
won the 2013 Kobe Theatrical Film Award
At the 2013 Fantasia International Film Festival, it shared the Satoshi Kon Award for Achievement in Animation with Berserk: Golden Age Arc III – Descent while winning the Audience Award for Best Animation Feature.[
2014 Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film, it won the AniMovie Award for feature films
Amaze yourself and you friends. Next time you are looking for "something good to watch" try one of these.
Storyboards, original art, and other material from The Garden of Words were exhibited between June 28 and October 19, 2014 at the Ooka Makoto Kotoba Museum in Mishima, Shizuoka Prefecture. The museum, run by Z-Kai Co., also featured Shinkai's commercial Cross Road (made for Z-Kai Co.), along with She and Her Cat and 5 Centimeters Per Second. In addition to the display materials and film viewings for each of the works, a replica of the shoes designed by Takao was also on display.[105]
