Thread: Shinkai Makotoish recs

Shinkai Makoto is my favorite anime director and story-teller, but he hasn't done that many animes yet. He has a very poetic and cozy style of telling his stories, mostly based on monologues. His movies are usually based on how distance affects relationships and how lingering emotions change the way you mature.

He is also very famous for his animation style which relies heavily on detailed backgrounds and, in his latest work especially, realistic settings.

He is known for:
Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star)
Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho (The Place Promised in Our Early Days)
Byousoku 5 Centimeter (5 Centimeters Per Second)

Now I've introduced him to you who do not already know him, but what I want to find isn't him, but things that are in the same style. If they exist. Preferably anime movies or short TVs, OVAs.

I'm not talking about something exactly the same, but the general focus on a poetic take on human relationships and their development through problems like distance, age or whatnot.

And I'll add a "please" for politeness. Please?

I've only seen the Voices of a Distant Star. I like it even though[SPOILERS] It was a sad ending. kinda obvious from the start. seeing that they are separated not only by distance but also by time. Every time she goes on a warp speed. She moves in a different time. I never did get what happened in the end. Did she survive or not? [/SPOILERS]

when you started talking about monologues. the first thing that came into my mind was The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. It's full of Kyon's monlogue.

I haven't actually seen any of those (though I've read the manga version of Hoshi no Koe), so this is a bit of a guess on my part, but how about Kamichu!? It's set in a very specific town in 1982-3, and the title character is has to deal with suddenly becoming a shinto goddess when simply trying to get that one boy in homeroom to remember her name is problem enough for her. Not exactly poetic, but it does have Ghibli hills backgrounds. With the added bonus of one episode is spent trying to never leaving the kotatsu.

(Because of Kamichu!, I'm told I should watch Haibane Renmei, but I haven't gotten to it, so don't know if it fits. Ditto The Girl Who Walked Through Time, or whatever the title actually is.)

Hm... I read the first chapter of Kamichu!, but it didn't at the time strike me as something like that at the time. I'll check it again out, though. And I think you should test Byousoku 5 centimeter. I think you would like it.

Haibane Renmei is very cozy and I recommend it to anyone who likes cozy stuff, but very ifferent. The Girl Who Walked Through Time (or Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo since there are many translations of the name, but no official one, yet) is quite close to what I'm searching for, but more feel-good. Things like that are easily accepted too, though.

@vincent (spoilers:Well... I think she survived that battle, but apparently she never returned back home. News from the battle was very late as you could see on the newspaper if you were watching carefully)

Pale Cocoon is a 23 minute OVA about a guy and a girl on a space ship. It even has pretty backgrounds.

Originally Posted by jamie1990

Pale Cocoon is a 23 minute OVA about a guy and a girl on a space ship. It even has pretty backgrounds.

Uhh your not suppose to tell him where they are, spoils the whole OVA. Btw they are not on a space ship ~~. But Pale Cocoon is a pretty good OVA, made single handedly by one person. The art is amazing, and the tone and drama was good. It's one of thought provoking OVAS.

You might like ef ~ a tale of memories. The series uses alot of SHAFT/Shinbo-esque visual devices as symbols for the characters and their own personal struggles. Plus, it has the best skies out of any series I've seen.

Originally Posted by boredgwntd

Uhh your not suppose to tell him where they are, spoils the whole OVA. Btw they are not on a space ship ~~. But Pale Cocoon is a pretty good OVA, made single handedly by one person. The art is amazing, and the tone and drama was good. It's one of thought provoking OVAS.

really? shoot. This is why I shouldn't recommend anime I haven't seen yet. Sorry.

@jamie. You fucking rock man. Seriously. Pale Cocoon was exactly the kind of short interesting semi-poetic symbolic thing I was looking for. A bit darker than I expected, but still a very very well spent 20 minutes. I was at first thinking that you might be pulling my leg since some torrents for Pale Cocoon was labeled as hentai, but that might be something else with the same name.

And don't worry about the spoiler thing. I forgot it before I started watching it anyway.

@boatswain. If you think that you should seriously see shinkai makoto's movies if you think that the skies in ef are the most beautiful. Byousoku 5 centimeter is so stunning that even if I removed the sound and subtitles I would cry. It's not unusual to use the term "Shinkai-style sunsets" for example.

But ef is okay. It feels like it's trying too hard to be something extra at times and some of the characters are just purely annoying. I will finish it. Someday.

@boredgwntd. Like Hoshi no Koe then? Animation, script, directing, storyboards... Everything was made by him except the music and half of the voice acting. Maybe I should check if the creator of Pale Cocoon has made anything else interesting.

Thank you all for making my life a bit more interesting.

semi-poetic symbolism. If you ever want to test how far your appreciation for that sort of thing goes, watch Angel's Egg.

I think Pale Cocoon was actually made by a small production team rather than just one person.

Anyway you ought to try a couple of short mangas by this guy called Asano Inio. I think his reflections on life and trails of thought can sometime be trivial and ineffectual, but I don't usually go in for dramas anyway. I think What A Wonderful World is his best, but perhaps you'll like Nijigahara Holograph and Solanin as well.