Nostalgic Anime Retrospective No. 21] "Hoshinokoe"'s Distance, which can be understood if you pay attention to "what the characters were touching".

Makoto Shinkai's latest film, Kimi no na wa. will be released in theaters on August 26, 2016. The romantic story of a man and woman living in the city and the countryside who are brought together by a mysterious power is common to all of Shinkai's previous works, but this time it is an entertainment epic that is full of laughter and suspense.

Shinkai's fame was quickly raised by the small-scale release of "Hoshinokoe" in 2002, and the director's emotions are vividly imprinted in "Hoshinokoe," which he single-handedly created 14 years ago.

That world" for the heroine Mikako

There is a word "the world. Until I was in junior high school, I had a vague idea that the world was a place where cell phone signals could be heard. This is the monologue of the heroine Mikako. On the train, on the emergency staircase of her apartment building, she texts on her cell phone and talks to her boyfriend Noboru on his cell phone. But Noboru does not answer her.

Mikako opens her eyes and finds herself sitting in the cockpit of a mobile weapon, the Tracer. The tracer is floating in space, far away from her. I see. I'm not in that world anymore," Mikako murmurs. This is the end of the avant-garde title.
When the title opens, Mikako and Noboru are at junior high school after school. They look up at the spaceship from the bicycle parking lot, stop at a convenience store, and then take shelter from the rain at the bus stop--this is the "that world" that Mikako was referring to. In the next scene, Mikako is on a tracer, training on Mars. She has been chosen to pilot a tracer, a weapon to fight aliens.

The scene turns to Noboru, who remains on Earth. He has gone to high school and is exchanging cell phone e-mails with Mikako, who continues to pursue the enemy to Mars and then to Jupiter. However, the further Mikako moves away from the earth, the longer the time between the messages, six months and a year.

During this time, Mikako is alone in the cockpit of the tracer, touching only her cell phone. The cell phone is her only means of communication with Noboru, and it is the only trace of "that world. Mikako, after being separated from Noboru, only touches the tracer's control stick and the cell phone. Now, let us examine "what did Mikako's hand touch?" from the avant-garde title.

What did Mikako touch with her hand at the end?

At the beginning of the film, Mikako's fingertips are pressing a button on her cell phone and typing a text message. In the next scene, Mikako runs down the fire escape of the apartment building and grips the iron railing. Mikako grips the railing with her right hand, holds the cell phone with her left hand, and says to herself, "I'm lonely.

Mikako then returns home. At that moment, she touches the doorknob. The house is somehow an after-school classroom - and Mikako finds herself in the cockpit of a tracer. Since the avant title is a mental picture of Mikako in the cockpit of the tracer, she only touches cold, hard objects: "the cell phone," "the handrail on the fire escape," and "the doorknob.

Then, in the recollection scene, that is, the after-school scene when she leaves school with Noboru, what does she touch?　　Mikako has her bag in the basket of Noboru's bicycle, so she is not holding anything in her hand. In the bus stop, she rests her left hand on a wooden bench. And after the rain is over, she is riding on the back of Noboru's bicycle and grabbing both of his shoulders with her hands. In other words, she was able to touch Noboru's warm and soft shoulders in "that world" that Mikako had left.

The cruel fact that Mikako, who had firmly grasped Noboru's shoulders, can now only touch the tracer's control stick and cell phone speaks more eloquently than anything else of Mikako's loneliness.

Noboru, now a high school student, becomes acquainted with another female student. The kicker is not a cell phone e-mail. It was a letter in his shoe box. By holding a paper envelope in his hand instead of a cold, hard cell phone, Noboru is psychologically distanced from Mikako. ......

By paying attention to what Mikako and Noboru were "touching," we can feel more strongly the hopeless distance between the "two worlds" that separate them.


(Text by Keisuke Hirota)

(C) Makoto Shinkai/ CoMix Wave Films