Makoto Shinkai's latest film "Kimi no na wa. Special interview to commemorate the release of the film

Makoto Shinkai is an animation director who has created ambitious animated films such as "5 Centimeters per Second" and "The Garden of Words. His unique touch and lyricism are known as the "Shinkai World," and his works have been highly acclaimed both in Japan and abroad.

The long-awaited new work by director Makoto Shinkai is "Kimi no na wa. which will be released in theaters this August. This film is a story of love and miracles between a boy and a girl who "switch places" in their dreams. The drama of "distance" created by the gap and connection between two people from different worlds is depicted with overwhelming visual beauty and scale. Masashi Ando, who has worked on many Studio Ghibli films, including "Spirited Away," will serve as animation director. He also directed "My Heart is Screaming. The film was produced by a splendid staff, including Masaga Tanaka, who has become one of the leading animators of the new era with works such as "The Heart Cries Out for You. The music, including the theme song, will be performed by the rock band "Radwimps," whose unique worldview and melodies have garnered enthusiastic support.

Ryunosuke Kamiki, a well-known young actor, will play the role of Tachibana Taki, a boy whom Mitsuha sees in her dream, and Mone Kamihiraishi, who won the role of Miyamizu Mitsuha, the heroine whose destiny is tossed about by her own fate, will play the role after an audition. Another highlight of the film is the cast of Masami Nagasawa, Etsuko Ichihara, and others who have crossed the boundary between animation and live-action.

Three years after the release of his previous film, "Garden of Words," Shinkai is back with another gem of entertainment. In this interview, Shinkai's confidence in the film was evident from start to finish. The following is the interview.

About the theme and story

First of all, please tell us how you came up with the idea of making this film.

It was two years ago, in July 2014, that I wrote the proposal for this film, and in February of the same year, I made the "Crossroads" commercial for "Z-kai" with Mr. Masaga Tanaka, the character designer for this film. That was one of the main reasons for the project.

The motif of the commercial was a girl living on a remote island and a boy living in Tokyo, who have never met, but who are both facing the same direction of an entrance exam. I felt that I had not told enough about this motif, and I also wanted to make a longer work with Mr. Tanaka's character.

In "Crossroads," two people who don't know each other yet meet when they take an entrance exam for the same university. This was a commercial about an entrance exam, but I thought that life itself must be like that. You never know who you will meet tomorrow, or six months from now, or ten years from now, and you may find someone very important among those you meet. I wanted to make a film that would tell that story to the best of my ability, and I wondered what kind of approach there would be. I was inspired by Ono Komachi's waka poem, "Souhitsu nemba ya hito no mieru tsurumu yume to kanashimasama," which means that lovers meet in a dream, and by "Torikahebaya monogatari," a story written in the Heian period in which a boy and a girl are swapped and brought up together, Then, I gradually built up the idea of having the boys and girls swap in a dream.

─ ─ The theme of "the difference between men and women" has been an important motif in Shinkai's previous works, but in this work, the worldview seems to have been expanded from the relatively private world of his previous works to the friends and family that surround the characters. I feel that your view of the world is very broadened.

Shinkai: That's right. For those who have been following my films, there seems to be a big jump between my previous film "Garden of Words" and "Kimi no na wa. But in my mind, there is a strong sense of continuity. In fact, there are many films between "The Garden of Leaves of Words" and "What is your name? There were many works between "Garden of Leaves of Words" and "Your Name," including a 30-second commercial for Taisei Corporation and "Crossroads" for Z-kai, but the most significant was the novel "Garden of Leaves of Words," which was serialized for about eight months in the magazine "Da Vinci. I was able to add a newly written part to this serialization and publish it as a book, and in hindsight, I think this experience was also a good training for storytelling. In particular, the eight-month serialization was in an omnibus format, so I had to complete a story every month, and I had to read several books, meet several people, and listen to their stories for each story I wrote. The novel version of "Garden of Words" was also a family novel, an occupational novel, and a coming-of-age novel. So, I naturally used the response and the touch that I got from that novel in "Your Name". I felt that my ability to tell a story had improved compared to before, and I felt that now I could make entertainment more successful in areas that I had wanted to do before but couldn't because of my lack of ability.

───It seems that Director Shinkai's storytelling skills shined through in this film.

Shinkai: Yes, I am getting a good response. When I was writing the novel version of "Garden of Words," there was one chapter that I felt a great response to. In addition to the main characters Takao and Yukino, there is a sub-character named Aizawa who bullies Yukino-sensei. I wrote a chapter with that girl as the main character, and I felt that I had a good response. I placed friends named Teshigawara and Sayaka around the girl Aizawa, who was the villain in the movie, and wrote about how Aizawa came to have a dark side. I was very happy to be able to write about the relationship between the three, and they became my favorite characters. I had a strong sense of the ups and downs of the story and that I could write this kind of story. I think that realization led me to write the script for this film. Incidentally, Teshigawara and Sayaka, who I drew at that time, also appear in this work as friends of Mitsuba.

About the characters and drawings

───It seems that your encounter with Masaga Tanaka, the character designer, was a major factor in your desire to create a film in the "middle" of entertainment, as the director has said.

Shinkai: That's right. I don't know if it was Tanaka-san's characters that made me feel that I could create entertainment, or if I met Tanaka-san when I had the feeling that I wanted to create "entertainment in the middle of the pack" within myself. I don't know in what order I met Mr. Tanaka, but when I created "Crossroads," I felt as if I had acquired a major weapon. I felt that I could put Mr. Tanaka's drawings, which are in the middle of character animation, in the world where we had always pushed background art to the forefront, and it would still work. The reaction of the viewers was also very positive. So, I naturally felt that I wanted to use this combination for the next work.

──Masashi Ando participated in this film as the animation director, but I imagine he had some difficulties with the characters created by Mr. Tanaka.

Shinkai: I had no difficulties myself, but I think Mr. Ando must have had a very difficult time. I just said to Mr. Tanaka and Mr. Ando that I would ask them to do it, and all I could do was look at the finished product and say, "Wow, that's great.

Normally, it would have gone more smoothly if I had asked Mr. Tanaka-san, the character designer, to be the animation director, but at the time, he was working on a film directed by Tatsuyuki Nagai called "My heart is crying out to you. At the time, Mr. Tanaka was working on a film directed by Tatsuyuki Nagai called "Kokoro ga Sore Yagitteiru Da" (My Heart is Screaming), and his schedule was packed after that, so I was left with just character design. Then, we were discussing with the staff about what to do about the animation director, and if we were to go by simple preference without considering the possibility of realization, we would like someone like Masashi Ando, for example, and we were lucky enough to be introduced to him.

In fact, there are several animators from Studio Ghibli in our production studio (Comics Wave Film), and they had a connection with Mr. Ando, so I was connected to him. After about 3-4 months of consideration, he contacted me and said, "I think you might find something interesting in having Mr. Tanaka's character drawn by an animator like me, who has drawn modest plays," and he agreed to take on the project. After that, I think there was a constant battle within Mr. Ando.

──With Mr. Ando on board as animation director, I felt that the characters' movements took on a Ghibli-like quality in a good way.

Shinkai: Mr. Tanaka's characters have a kind of edge to Japanese animation, such as late-night anime, which has a core fan base but may not be familiar to non-animation fans. Just by looking at the screen, you can see the freshness of having his designs moved by people from Ghibli, who have been working in a different world from that of Mr. Tanaka and his team for a long time. It is not 100% of Mr. Tanaka's drawings. And with Mr. Ando's interpretation, it has been softened a bit for the masses. In fact, there are many Ghibli artists other than Mr. Ando, and when they draw a picture that is too close to a "Ghibli picture," Mr. Ando, as animation director, pulls them closer to Mr. Tanaka's side. The pictures created through this kind of tug-of-war are rich in the various contexts of Japanese animation, and I think they have a truly complex flavor. This richness was something that I had not calculated at all, nor did I expect or anticipate, but I am glad that I was able to receive it. The timing of the project was also a major factor. The production of Mamoru Hosoda's movie had just finished, and people from Ghibli who had participated in that production came here, Mr. Ando's job was just open, and Mr. Tanaka's was just jam-packed (laughs), I had nothing to do with it, but even looking at it objectively, I think it was a very good production.

However, the storyboards were pretty much set in stone for the performances and movements, so I think Mr. Ando and his team must have had a lot of difficulty in doing things. For example, if I had done what I was trying to do this time in the Ghibli way, which is to "connect the plays properly," the film would not have been 107 minutes long, but it would have been two and a half hours or so. However, my style of directing is not to connect the scenes with the play, but to connect the jumps in the play by switching cuts, and I hope to create a sharp sense of pleasure in the process. The drawing team must have had a lot of problems such as, "The storyboard says 4 seconds here, but it's not long enough. In fact, the length tended to be extended, but in some places we doubled the length, and in other places we had the artists work on the same length as in the storyboards. I think we ended up with a good final product, but I am curious how it looked to Mr. Ando. We don't talk about this kind of thing very often (laughs). (Laughs.) After the film was completed, he said, "Well, it turned out to be a good film, didn't it?

───Did working with someone like Mr. Ando, who can draw a solid play, change your own expression in any way?

Shinkai: I started drawing storyboards at a time when Mr. Ando had not yet been selected as the animation director or not. Therefore, I did not do any so-called "ate-drawing" at all. However, in the past, I would have judged that it would be too much work and would have many disadvantages for our studio, but this time, I tried to draw without worrying too much. One of the reasons was the presence of Kenichi Tsuchiya of Answer Studio, who had worked with us on "Garden of Words" and commercials for Taisei Corporation. Kenichi Tsuchiya is also an animator who draws solid pictures and is also very good at everyday acts, and he is also assisting me as assistant animation director this time. So, since Mr. Tsuchiya would at least be there, I decided to include some everyday scenes that would be a bit difficult to draw, such as getting up from the futon and walking around.

Even so, I think my storyboards are drawn in such a way that the story can be told even if the pictures are stopped at worst, and even if the pictures do not move that precisely, when you watch the movie, you can still enjoy it by switching cuts and using music. Therefore, I did not show that much reliance on theatricality in this film. However, when I watched the finished film, for example, the animator who was in charge of the climax scene where Mitsuba runs down the hill and falls was extremely skillful, and he ran exhausted in a way that I had not imagined in my storyboard. It was a very emotional scene. I was simply astonished to see how much expression could be achieved with just pictures. I had never relied on such expressive power before. But on the other hand, it is a bit dangerous to rely on such things (laughs). (Laughs.) You can't always get that kind of thing. It is a bit scary in the assembly part of the project.