I believe that many people are because of the sentence "What kind of speed do you have to survive in order to see you again?" "And watched the animated movie "Five Centimeters per Second". This work, which was released in 2007, has a breathtaking beauty from beginning to end, and the slender psychological changes of the teenager are also moving. This work has won many awards, including the Best Feature-length Animated Film Award at the 2007 Asia-Pacific Film Festival and the Grand Prix at the 2008 Italian Future Film Festival. And the director of this work also wrote the novel of the same name himself, realizing the double expression of image + text. This is a qiē brought to us by director Makoto Shinkai. So how does the director view the beauty of the world? What exactly are the possibilities of animation? Recently, a Japanese media conducted an exclusive interview on this, let's take a look at the mental journey of this international master!

No matter what country you are in, beautiful things are sure to be common

Q: "5 Centimeters per Second" has won film awards overseas, and "The Garden of Words", which was released in 2013, has also been screened simultaneously in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and mainland China, which shows the popularity of the work overseas. So what do you think about this, director?

Shinkai: I participated in overseas screenings and symposiums, and I felt that there were a lot of people who liked my work very much, and I was very happy to experience it firsthand. Of course, it also makes me more confident. But I think it's reasonable that in this day and age, such a result would have occurred. I'm grateful that there are a certain number of people in the Japanese audience who will like my work, but assuming that this group makes up 0.1% of the Japanese population, then when the denominator is expanded from 100 million to 7.2 billion when the work is exported overseas, the number of audiences will naturally be huge.

It's not just my work, it's entertainment works that have some kind of influence, such as Hollywood movies, which are now being exported abroad through various media. Japanese manga and anime have a wide variety of genres and unique styles, but it is precisely because of this variety that the audience can say "I like it" from the bottom of their hearts. Even if they are not Japanese, this is not surprising at all.

Q: When you made "5 Centimeters per Second", did you expect that this work would be as widely praised by overseas groups as it is today?

Shinkai: No, no, how is this possible. Especially about the work "Five Centimeters per Second", I just hope to make a work that I want to see, and I hope that this work can be watched by the people around me. That's the original intention of making zuò. Even if the work doesn't resonate with people and doesn't make people happy, if someone has happened to have a similar experience or touched the heartstrings, then I feel satisfied. In a sense, it is also a work that limits the audience base. At the time of "The Voice of the Stars" (released in 2002), the work was also exported overseas, and I personally participated in several overseas film festivals, so I learned that our audience will also save overseas. However, I didn't deliberately think about overseas audiences when I was creating. Although this is not a "personal novel" in the true sense of the word, the work itself is still very limited, so I think "if you understand it, you will naturally understand." When this kind of work created with a clear "criminal motive" was released abroad, I even worried: "Is this a good thing?" "But in terms of results, '5 Centimeters per Second' is still my most popular work overseas. And it was only a long time before I realized, "This may be a matter of course." ”

Q: In 2008, you held workshops on digital animation for local creators in Jordan, Qatar, and Syria. The Middle East has a completely different culture and values than Japan, so what did you learn about it?

Shinkai: It was a long time ago, and maybe it's a completely different situation now...... Anyway, I was particularly impressed by the fact that the children gathered at the Jordan Children's Pavilion loved Sailor Moon and drew the characters in their manuals. Jordan is an Islamic country, so women need to cover their faces and hair with a headscarf. Compared to Saudi Arabia, where women are only allowed to show their eyes, the religion is not so strict, and even the usual dress is no different from that of us Japanese, for example, some people wear slender cargo pants. However, there are still very few women who show their skin. Women in Jordan have been covering their skin as a common sense since they were born, and their daily feelings in life are still far from the highly revealing costumes of "Sailor Moon". So how do they embrace this style of character? I was amazed at that. But I'm afraid it has nothing to do with customs, just because "something interesting is fun" and "something you like is popular".

On top of that, I was riding in a car in Syria with a man I knew well, and the Gundam theme song was playing in his car. That is, the Syrian car is walking through the town of Damascus, and inside the car is playing an animated song that I think is common sense. It's a bit surreal, but it's also a lot of fun. I don't think the Syrians are that far away from us. There are Syrians who are very similar to me, and there are people who are more like my friends. Although the system is different from the perspective of the national system, the diversity of people is the same everywhere. So these people will also say "interesting" about the same work. It's a natural thing. That's what I felt on the ground.

The interest of the work is not diminished by translation

Q: Shinkai's works are very well portrayed and have a unique Japanese feel, so I thought, "Can this idea be accurately conveyed to overseas audiences?" However, is this expression actually beyond the limits of culture?

Shinkai: That's right. When I was working on "5 Centimeters per Second", I did have questions about this myself. As I said earlier, this is a work that has a limited audience even in Japan. So is it really good to take this work overseas? I doubt it. But now I think I don't need to worry about these things.

For example, in "The Garden of Words", the heroine hums a song (a love short song that appears in "Manyoshu"), and the protagonist responds with a singing voice. The lack of commentary may be difficult for overseas audiences to understand, but I think there are many people in Japan who don't know about this kind of song. Even if I suddenly want to sing a tanka, I don't know what to say (laughs). But ah, even if they didn't understand the meaning, the audience got a message: the two had a special relationship because of this song. No matter how good a translation is, it is impossible to 100% interchange cultures and languages, and it is not perfect. But this has nothing to do with the fun of the work, right?

Q: Japanese is a diverse language, so the difficulty of translating it affects the export of your work.

Shinkai: Certainly, the subtle differences between the first person such as "we" and "Lao Tzu", as well as the subtle differences between titles such as "Mr." and "sauce", are all things that creators, including me, need to distinguish with a delicate touch, which will also have an impact on the use of the works. If all the first person is unified as "I", then there will definitely be a certain amount of missing. But it's not just because of this, there is no way to make the director's works. When I was staying overseas, I used to buy local DVDs such as "Listen Around" and listen to the English in order to learn English. As a result, I found that although the pronunciation and lines are different from the version I have seen, the overall feeling of the work is still the same. Shizuku is still cute, Seiji is still handsome, and the ending is still very touching. Now I think, "Specifically, what is something that only Japanese people can understand?" "If you were to make a work with such a goal, I would probably make it, but I can't imagine it. The moment a work is accepted, it becomes the possession of the other person, and even if I think "these people don't understand", sometimes the audience's reaction is still beyond my imagination, and some unexpected groups will resonate with the work.

Q: This is what you have experienced first-hand from your contact with overseas fans and the feedback you received from "5 Centimeters per Second"?

Shinkai: Yes. When making "5 Centimeters per Second", if I personally think the age of the audience should be over 25 years old. At the very least, it should be someone who is already employed. And if you haven't been out of love, then the work shouldn't be able to resonate. However, when the work surfaced, I often heard junior high school students say to children in the upper grades of elementary school, "I am very touched". I was amazed and thought, "Not to mention that they haven't even gone to work, these kids haven't even gone to high school, so where do you get that empathy?" "But when I look back as a teenager, I realize that even if it's about something I haven't experienced, it still immerses me. When I was in high school, I read "Norwegian Woods" and had a hunch many times: How many times will this happen in my life? So he confirmed: Even the unknown world can still move people's hearts. And even if the audience's understanding of a work is not the same as the creator imagined, it can still work. In the same way, our works can also be transmitted abroad. If there's any problem with the translation of the anime, it's the "sound deviation". In order to achieve the ideal size, we carefully set the length of the lines and the sound effect to be accurate to less than per second, but once the voice language changes, the size will naturally be invalid. In translation, it is certainly impossible to avoid the situation that contradicts the situation I set, but there is no way to do it. But despite this, the overall impression of a work will not collapse because of this. This is very basic common sense, right?

Only at that time could I create "Five Centimeters per Second"

Q: In "5 Centimeters per Second", every change in the scene, even every crossing of the route, is beautifully depicted. I think one of the most important reasons for the popularity of this work is that the way the makers portray the world of the work is so amazing.

Shinkai: I grew up in the countryside, and then I came to Tokyo to go to university. But in the first few years, I couldn't like Tokyo at all. I had a headache when I looked at the crowds, and the train was very hard to load and I couldn't see the mountains. However, although the scenery may seem monotonous, as time goes by, I feel that each scenery is full of memories of myself and others, and the scenery becomes beautiful. Although the city of Tokyo itself has not changed, the scene before you is shining brightly. On the contrary, when I am not doing things well, a qiē seems to become dim. All the scenes change according to their mood, and fundamentally, every insignificant moment in the world is actually beautiful. Because of this deep feeling, I wanted the scenery in "5 Centimeters per Second" to be very beautiful. In particular, I put a lot of effort into the background art and colors, trying to make every camera switch amazingly beautiful. Since the fate of the characters in the scene is staggering, in order to compensate for this tragedy, I have also added to the picture to maintain balance. And now that I think about it, that balance is not possible (laughs). Because the portrayal is so beautiful, the director's work has some illusory shadows, and now I definitely can't devote myself to every shot as I did before. Prioritization is necessary. But at the time, I didn't think I was overdoing it, I just used my strength for all the shots. And being able to achieve such a way of making zuò also makes "5 Centimeters per Second" a special work in a sense.

Q: The director himself wrote the novel versions of "Five Centimeters per Second" and "The Garden of Words", and deliberately used different expressions, does it also contain any special intentions?

Shinkai: When I was writing a novel for the first time, I was just trying my best to write it. I didn't know if I would be able to finish the work, but I had to meet the deadline every month, so I had the impression that I was writing and writing (laughs). Recently, however, I have discovered that I am not only working as an animation director, but also in the fields of novel writing and advertising production. Regardless of the job, I have a strong sense of "doing something that can only be done in this industry". For example, if I was writing a novel, I would have to make it a work that "makes it difficult to adapt it into a mirror, even in front of the original manuscript." For this reason, I frequently use the table xiàn technique, which is difficult to make an image. In this way, I feel that as a person who is not a professional novelist, I can also find my own meaning in the creation of articles. It's the same with tsuò images, and I want to make zuò a work that is difficult to interpret with simple words. This idea is getting stronger year by year.

Q: That's why Mr. Shinkai's work involves both animated films and novels. In this way, it also has a complementary effect on the work itself.

Shinkai: Actually, when I was in "5 Centimeters per Second", I really wanted to complete the work. The work was divided into three episodes, and the first and second episodes were both more than 20 minutes long, but the third episode was very short, almost constructed from the songs of Mr. Yamazaki Shoyoshi. As for the real plot part, I think it will be more balanced if it takes about 5 minutes, or maybe it should be done. Of course, this short time is also due to the schedule (laughs). I didn't have the time or money, so I had to finish the work with the momentum of "one way or another, it has to be done". However, a few years after the end of the work, some people said, "It's good to do this", and the plot is the shortest in the whole length of the story, and it doesn't take too long to experience it, so the result is still good. At that time, even if I didn't know the routines and processes required to make movies and entertainment works, as long as I produced a work, then this work would definitely resonate with some people and be needed by people in some places, right? - That's how I felt when I was creating. Now that I think about it, there are a lot of immatures in that work, and it's hard for people to watch it all over again. However, this distorted aspect has its own charm. Heck, that sounds like an excuse (laughs).

However, for example, are there any works that I can relate to as a viewer? Then I would nominate "Dragon and Tiger", which is my favorite work. I also had a chance to communicate with director Nagai Ryuyuki, and I said, "This place in "Dragon and Tiger" is very good. And the other person's reaction was "Huh? You mean that place? "It seems that Director Nagai Tatsuyuki and I don't have the same opinion. However, "what I think of as "Dragon and Tiger Fight" is a biblical existence, and I think it is 100% perfect. Even if there are some places that the creator didn't intend, they are still something I really like. From my current point of view, "5 Centimeters per Second" is a work with a very low degree of completion, but this low-level thing seems to form a kind of "between the lines", which makes different audiences feel that "this is my work". In fact, when I was making zuò, I felt inexplicably that even if it was a work that was not as good as it is now, there would still be a certain number of people who would approve of it.

Q: So how did such a hunch come about?

Shinkai: I'm sure it's a feeling I get from my daily life. I really liked Mr. Kenshi Hirokane's manga "Dusk Meteor Swarm", and I was in my 20s at the time, and when I held it in my hand, I felt that the world in the work was confusing. After all, this is a collection of love works that portray uncles and aunts in their prime. However, when I was in middle age and read this work again, I found it very interesting and read it several times. On the contrary, do you still find the manga that I was so obsessed with in middle school still interesting? It doesn't seem to be a bit certain. Just as I am influenced by different works all the time, even if my interests and life change, I still have the work I am pursuing. That's what I really feel. Therefore, if the work that I want to make and see comes out, then I can believe that this work will definitely be needed by someone.

"5 Centimeters per Second" is a special work that I can only make at that time. In the same way, the works that I make now cannot be made at that time. Every time I make a new work, I have to think, "This must be a work that I can't make at the moment", and I have to believe that I will definitely be able to make this work now.