Japanese director returns with new anime feature
Three years on from his runaway hit Your Name, Japanese director Makoto Shinkai returns to China with his latest anime feature Weathering With You, which opened across the Chinese mainland on Nov 1.
Still dominating Japan's 2019 box office charts with a whopping take of nearly 14 billion Japanese yen ($128 million) so far, the film has been selected to represent its native country and contend for the Best International Feature Film title at the 2020 Academy Awards.
The category, which was known as the Best Foreign Language Film until last year, will see Shinkai's effort up against the surprise Chinese blockbuster Ne Zha.
For Shinkai, his life has experienced a big change since the phenomenal success of Your Name, which saw him become the first animator since master Hayao Miyazaki to have a film pass the 10-billion-yen mark in Japan. To date, it is still the highest-grossing Japanese anime film in China.
"I didn't expect that Your Name would be so popular in Japan, and it has become somewhat a hindrance to my artistic creativity and personal life," observes the director, surprisingly, during his recent visit to the Communication University of China in Beijing.
He explains that, since then, he has been recognized more often on streets, and is regularly asked about his future productions by fans, including those who once felt a bit unsatisfied by his previous work.
Responding to the feedback, the 46-year-old now believes he should conceive a new story that's more relatable to daily life.
Japan is an island country, with many parts enduring a rainy season during summer. This inspired Shinkai to create Weathering With You.
"The one theme that concerns all of us is the weather. Most people wake up and open the curtains every morning to see if it's sunny or raining, as the weather will affect their mood," he explains.
Believing the greenhouse effect is getting worse, the director, notes that "it has had a great impact on everyone's life". So, he wrote a script based on the theme of climate change in the hope that it will resonate with audiences everywhere.
Actually, though, the new film is more adept at displaying Shinkai's stylized view of adolescent romance and supernatural phenomena.
The story follows Hodaka Morishima, a 16-year-old high school student who escapes his home on a remote island before landing a magazine job in Tokyo. In the Japanese capital, which is in the midst of months of continuous rainfall, he encounters Hina, the so-called "sunshine girl" who has the ability to alter the weather.
The two youngsters turn this supernatural power into an online business providing sunny days for special occasions, such as wedding ceremonies or grand celebrations. However, it soon becomes apparent that their activities are upsetting the natural balance, resulting in a situation that quickly spirals out of control.
The underlying concept of the film suggests that the sky is a separate ecological system that is connected to the Earth through generations of these "sunshine girls".
Talking about his fictional sky dwellers, especially a species of fish which can transform into raindrops, Shinkai reveals that he used the 2016 Chinese animated blockbuster Big Fish & Begonia - hailed for its creative idea that human souls turn into fish after death - as a reference while drawing the scenes.
Additionally, a copy of American writer J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye appears in the film several times, as Shinkai believes the personality of his teenage protagonist bears a resemblance with Holden Caulfield.
"Both of them are the type of person who feel that they are isolated in our modern world," explains Shinkai.
A signature of all Shinkai's movies is that most of the scenes - whether in the metropolis of Tokyo or remote towns - feature breathtaking picturesque landscapes. As such, he has been dubbed the "desktop wallpaper filmmaker" by his Chinese fans, who are delighted to see the new film live up to that reputation.
Weathering With You is made up of around 1,700 shots - 100 more than those for Your Name - with each of the shots being discussed meticulously with his team. A shot refers to a series of frames that runs for an uninterrupted period of time. Voice performers for the two leading roles were selected from around 2,000 candidates, according to the director.
However, Shinkai's painstaking effort was outperformed in last Friday's box office charts by Chinese dark horse Better Days, which had already been on screens for over a week, and the Hollywood blockbuster Terminator: Dark Fate, which also made its debut on Nov 1.
Aside from its flat performance a haul of 185 million yuan ($26.5 million) in four days - it has received mixed reviews on the country's mainstream reviewing sites.
Most online reviewers say they liked the delicately-painted scenes, but felt that the plotline was loose and unconvincing. Criticism mostly revolves around the somewhat selfish values and the Sophie's Choicea situation where no outcome is preferable over the other - presented in the film. By it's very nature, the question posed is not an easy one to answer and will divide those that try. Questions over the prospects for Shinkai's new film will probably draw a clearer answer. With more blockbusters set to hit screens over the next few weekends, it seems that Weathering With You will struggle to recreate the glory of Your Name, which grossed 575 million yuan in China.
xufan@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily Global 11/07/2019 page15)
