NEW YORK (AP) ā Makoto Shinkai was never the same filmmaker after the .
When the tsunami and quake ravaged the TÅhoku region of northern Japan and prompted a nuclear meltdown, Shinkai, a now 50-year-old director and animator of some of the most popular anime features in the world, could feel his sense of storytelling crumbling.
āThe shock to me was that the daily life that we had become accustomed to in Japan can suddenly be severed without any warning whatsoever,ā says Shinkai. āI had this odd, foreboding feeling that that could happen again and again. I began to think about how I wanted to tell stories within this new reality.ā
The three blockbusters that have followed by Shinkai ā and the new release āSuzumeā ā have each tethered hugely emotional tales to ecological disaster. In āYour Name,ā a meteor threatens to demolish a village, an event that dovetails with a body-switching romance. In āWeathering With You,ā a runaway teenage boy befriends a Tokyo girl who can control the weather, spawning fluctuations that mirror climate change.
which opens in U.S. theaters Friday, returns to . Suzume, whose mother perished in the tsunami, years later meets a mysterious young man responsible for racing to close portals ā literal doorways that appear around Japan ā before they unleash a giant, earthquake-causing worm.
āWith these three films, I didnāt set out to make a disaster movie. I wanted to tell a love story, a romance, a coming-of-age of an adolescent girl,ā Shinkai said on a recent trip to New York, speaking through an interpreter. āAs I continued to make the plot, this idea of disaster kept creeping in. Suddenly, I felt surrounded in my daily life by disaster. Itās like a door that keeps opening.ā
Shinkai has emerged as one of cinemaās most imaginative filmmakers of contemporary cataclysm. His movies arenāt just about surviving apocalypse, though, but living with its omnipresent threat. And itās made him one of the biggest box-office draws in movies.
After it was released in 2016, āYour Nameā became the then-best-selling anime of all time, dethroning Hayao Miyazakiās beloved āSpirited Awayā with nearly $400 million in ticket sales. āWeathering With Youā made nearly $200 million. Before opening in North America, āSuzumeā has already crossed $200 million, including $100 million in Japan and nearly that in China. Itās easily the biggest international release of the year so far in China, more than doubling the sales of āAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.ā
Much of that success is owed to Shinkaiās earnest grappling with todayās ecological upheaval in sprawling epics that are filtered through everyday life. National trauma mixes with supernatural fantasy. While Japan has been home to many extreme geological events, itās a tension that most in the world can increasingly connect with.
āIt can be anything: earthquakes, climate change, the pandemic. Russia and Ukraine, for an example,ā says Shinkai. āThis idea that our daily life will continue to maintain the status quo should be set aside and challenged.ā
Shinkai, who writes and directs his films, has become convinced that young people shouldnāt be pandered to with stories where the natural world is heroically returned to balance, calling such approaches āegotistic and irresponsible.ā Instead, his disasters take on metaphorical meaning for young protagonists who learn to persist, and find joy, in a world of perpetual danger, shadowed by loss.
His latest, which was l in two decades, is a road movie where the 17-year-old Suzume (voiced by Nanoka Hara) travels from the the southwestern island of Kyushu with that mysterious young man, Souta (Hokuto Matsumura), who happens to get transformed into a three-legged chair while closing a portal.
As a wooden sidekick, Souta recalls a Miyazaki side character like the hopping scarecrow of But Shinkai, whoās often been cited as among the heirs to Miyazaki, says his film is no homage. But he grants Miyazakiās influence is so pervasive in Japanese society that it seeps into everything. He imagines Suzume, herself, grew up on his films.
Shinkai liked the symbolism of a chair, something we use every day. His father made him one as a child. While promoting āĀŁ³Ü³ś³Ü³¾±š,ā just like the one in the movie, , bringing it with him on stage and occasionally taking pictures of it at places like or the
āIāve picked very daily items ā a door, a chair ā that are perhaps relatable to a wide range of audiences,ā he says. āThis symbolism of the door, I think people are able to translate to their own story. We start thinking about: How do we maintain our daily routine?ā
Shinkai is known for photorealistic panoramas of glittering splendor. As much as doorways make up the iconography of āĀŁ³Ü³ś³Ü³¾±š,ā the most indelible image is one he uses at the beginning and end of the film. Suzume rides her bike on a steep hill with a sparkling ocean set behind her. The waters below, which to her could signify the tsunami that left her an orphan, are at once gorgeous and perilous.
āIn a weird way, I feel that with āYour Nameā and āWeathering With Youā and āSuzumeā that Iām creating this sort of folklore or mythology,ā Shinkai says. āIn mythology or these ancient legends, what theyāre doing is taking real-life events and transforming it into a story that can relayed to others.ā
Whether Shinkai will continue on this quest in his next film he doesnāt know. Itās a blank slate, he says. But he doesnāt close the door.
āAs I continue to make more stories,ā he says, smiling, āthat door might start creaking open again.ā
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Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
