Makoto Shinkai

Makoto Shinkai (新海 誠, Shinkai Makoto), birth name Makoto Niitsu (新津 誠, Niitsu Makoto), is a Japanese director best known for creating productions possessing incredible artwork, each involving bittersweet plots about the distance between his romantic leads. He used to work at Nihon Falcom before becoming easily the most famous of the creators under CoMix Wave Films animation studio.

Shinkai is famous for drawing, producing, and even voicing Voices of a Distant Star himself and for the extreme success it had despite its humble creation. He has been referred to as "the new Miyazaki" in some circles, though he himself dislikes the nickname, calling it an "overestimation".


 * She and Her Cat (1999, with 2016 Adaptation Expansion Everything Flows)
 * Voices of a Distant Star (2002)
 * The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004)
 * 5 Centimeters per Second (2007)
 * Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below (2011)
 * Someone's Gaze (2013)
 * The Garden of Words (2013)
 * Your Name (2016)
 * Weathering with You (2019)
 * Suzume (2022)
 * A variety of commercials

"I can’t draw anything with a sense of reality if it doesn’t come from a place I’m connected to with my own two feet."
 * Author Appeal: Trains are present in all of his works.
 * Award Bait Song: Voices Of A Distant Star and The Place Promised In Our Early Days apply these songs in their endings to great effect.
 * Bittersweet Ending: None of Shinkai's works offers an unambiguous happy ending. Even those featuring what looks like a hard-won personal triumph are invariably marred by some loss or ambiguity.
 * Face of the Band: He's not the only talent CoMix Wave has, but how many people can name any of the others without looking them up?
 * I Will Wait for You: This is played straight in Voices Of A Distant Star and The Place Promised In Our Early Days, but deconstructed in Five Centimeters Per Second,
 * Jack of All Trades: Shinkai himself is a real jack-of-all trades filmmaker. For Five Centimeters Per Second, he was responsible for writing, directing, storyboarding, directing the sound, animating, supervising and drawing the backgrounds, cinematographer, and editing. He also wrote the lyrics to the theme song to The Place Promised in Our Early Days, and as mentioned previously, did everything in the creation of Voices Of A Distant Star aside from voice the female lead during the initial run, which was provided by his wife.
 * Long Title: Most of the productions have rather long titles. In particular, Five Centimeters Per Second's proper title is 5 Centimeters Per Second: A Chain Of Short Stories About Their Distance.
 * One-Man Army: Makoto Shinkai did everything, save the music and the female lead's voice, in Voices Of A Distant Star. In his subsequent works, he has had a production team helping him.
 * Production Posse
 * Worked with Tenmon from Distant Star to Lost Voices. Why they parted ways subsequently isn't known to any English-language source.
 * Worked with Kana Hanazawa from Garden.
 * Worked with RADWIMPS and Ryuunosuke Kamiki from Your Name.
 * Real Place Background: Many of the publicly-accessible locales featured in Shinkai's works are actual locations that have drawn large numbers of pilgrims after their release.
 * Scenery Porn: This is a given in his works -- consider that his art has a tendency to make Real Life appear dreary and low-resolution. In particular, the art in Five Centimeters Per Second surpasses those of his previous works: see Scenery Porn and Cherry Blossom trope images.
 * Write What You Know: In this interview, he expresses the view that he is depicting a local world familiar to people's lived experiences. His residence in Tokyo informs his use of it, and his major in Japanese literature shows up in several of his works. In his own (translated) words: