Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai: How are the two animators so different yet so similar?

Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai

Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai are two of the most excellent animators in the Japanese anime industry. These two individuals are different in their approach yet similar in sense and style. Through this article, we will try to interrogate Miyazaki and Shinkai in their respective domains and finally try to deduce their methods and draw similarities.

Your Name Makoto Shinkai
Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name was regarded worldwide as an emotional masterpiece. (Image via IMDb)

The Japanese anime industry has been widely regarded as one of the most quickly emerging industries in the world. They have reached a global stage in a relatively short period, although the growth has been on the upward curve for some time.

The industry has garnered immense popularity and fame with some of the greatest stories of animated cinema. Their peculiar themes and sub-genres have carved a niche in the Western cinematic world.

Miyazaki and Shinkai’s techniques and approaches

Hayao Miyazaki is a proponent of the traditional form of creation of anime. He doesn’t resort to or prefer the new-age and modern 3-D animation techniques. He believes that anime is born out of hand-drawn and flat drawings and therefore he prefers the traditional way of creating anime.

This is a major style that we observe in Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli creations. He is considered a hard taskmaster and a man who is bent on setting higher standards for himself and his peers.

Princess Mononoke Hayao Miyazaki
Princess Mononoke by Hayao Miyazaki became one of the highest-grossing films in anime history. (Image via IMDb)

On the other hand, Makoto Shinkai relies on computer software more than traditional hand-drawn images to animate. His animation is greatly entrenched with surreal beauty. He tries to portray reality in a heightened manner and thus resorts to shiny sceneries and colors in his work.

Makoto Shinkai is known for his 3-D animation and his ability to merge the animated world with a real sense of being. He is known for giving life to the mundaneness of daily objects.

Miyazaki’s Ghibli and Shinkai’s CoMix Wave

The world has known Ghibli for over two decades now. They rose to immense popularity after Hayao Miyazaki won the Oscar in 2003 for Spirited Away. The Ghibli Studio has created some of the impeccable masterpieces of anime.

The movies include Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo, My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and The Wind Rises. These movies have given the audience a different reality of imagination and creation. The movies are emotional, political, philosophical, and artistic in nature.

Spirited Away hayao Miyazaki Ghibli
Spirited Away (2001) won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2003. (Image via IMDb)

Shinkai has created a name for himself and his work during his time at CoMix Wave Films. Some of his greatest creations including Your Name, Weathering With You, 5 Centimeters Per Second, and the recently released Suzume no Tojimari are with CoMix Wave.

This also brings us to the point where we assess both studios in terms of their differences in cinematic animation. While one focuses on the youthfulness of the characters, the other (Miyazaki) focuses on the conflicts of the youth. There are parallels and points of divergence where these two animators drift away, but there are also converging elements in their creations.

Where do Miyazaki and Shinkai converge?

Makoto Shinkai is often referred to as the ‘New Miyazaki’. Both of the animators try to trigger the same emotions and also try to affirm the same psychological appeal. the two animators try to provoke the same imagery and elements of picturesque beauty.

Although they differ in their processes of putting their thoughts into a motion picture, they are similar in their approach which tries to characterize their protagonists. Both animators love to interrogate the conflicts of their protagonists and therefore they employ various visually immersing elements in their anime.

weathering with you makoto shinkai
Weathering With You is a Shinkai anime that interrogates youth and the mundane aesthetics of daily life. (Image via Rotten Tomatoes)

Miyazaki and Shinkai might differ in their own ways, but both animators have a strong sense of honesty in their work. They create not for the audience but for the tradition of human thought and experience. Their experimentations with the human emotional construct are truly mesmerizing and commendable.

Conclusion

We have seen how Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai belong to different periods of anime but they employ almost similar narratives and techniques of story-telling. The world of anime has been predominantly Shonen.

In this age where short and crisp methods of storytelling are appealing to a larger audience, Miyazaki and Shinkai are trying to uphold the torch which traditional techniques and anime which focus on the individual as well as society. This makes anime an immensely theatrical experience.

If you have any questions regarding Hayao Miyazaki or Makoto Shinkai and their movies, feel free to ask in the comments below. For more content, stay with us, here at Spiel Times.

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