There is a video version of this article, but the content is very different. If you are interested, you can move to the following link: http://www.bilibili.com/video/av7328891/ (Part 1) http://www.bilibili.com/ video/av7431311/ (Part 2) Presumably everyone has been swiped by Makoto Shinkai's new work "Your Name" recently. Since "The Garden of Words" 3 years ago, Brother Cheng has once again entered our field of vision. "Your Name" is a fantasy story centered on a male protagonist living in Tokyo and a female protagonist living in a town called Itomoru who swap bodies with each other in their sleep. In this work, the "3.11" earthquake is also mapped.
As of December 26, "Your Name", which has been released for almost four months, has garnered about 21.372 billion yen at the box office, ranking fourth in the history of Japanese box office (including Bang Hua and Yang Hua). Japan's Yahoo score has reached as high as 4.54 points (out of 5 points), while "Spirited Away", the top box office in Japan's history, is only 4.02 points. Even though there must have been a lot of evaluation bubbles during the release period, it also shows that the film was a hit and a hit.
This article does not contain spoilers, the stills in the article are from the trailer and official stills. But Tata Jun tried his best to explain "Your Name" as he understood it. Brother Cheng is so popular in our country, we should be grateful for the free publicity of "5 cm per second" in the past ten years. of.
In fact, before "Your Name", Brother Cheng was not well known in Japan. From 1997 to 2002, Brother Cheng was a veritable one person fighting. It was not until 2004's "The End of the Cloud, the Promised Place" that Brother Cheng began to form a team to fight. Until 2013's "The Garden of Words", Brother Cheng's works were considered "non-mainstream" movies in Japan.
The distributor of "Your Name" is Toho, Japan's largest film distributor, and also adopts the "production committee system". Brother Cheng's 2011 work "Children Chasing the Stars" had a production committee, but after the work's reputation suffered from Waterloo, "The Garden of Words" in 2013 returned to independent production.
The so-called "production committee system" is a system in which one or more sponsors provide funds, and the profits obtained are divided according to the agreement. The film and television empire Toho is on the production committee of "Your Name". This system was popularized by Anno Hideaki and producer Otsuki Shunren in 1995's "Evangelion". This system revived the Japanese animation industry at that time, and even live-action films are now being used. For more information on the production committee, please refer to Teacher LIAR's "The Work and Initiative of the Production Committee ( http://m.anitama.cn/article/635f5b5173193b7d ). Anno Hideaki, who promoted the production committee system, no longer adopts the production committee system this time, and has obtained higher independent creative rights; and "Your Name" has begun to use the production committee system. Most of the works released by Dongbao have achieved amazing results and become two beautiful landscapes of Japanese films this year. But the production committee dominated by Dongbao has to pay a price, that is, Makoto Shinkai has to compromise with business. However, this compromise has created a tiger-like box office. What can I get by joining Daddy Dongbao's arms? Of course, there are local tyrant-level publicity, as well as the unprecedented arrangement of Xin Haicheng's works. As we all know, Makoto Shinkai is famous for his fine arts, but he is not good at drawing figures, and his original painting level is not high. Take his 2002 "Voice of the Stars" as an example, the character level is as follows:
Excuse me? Of course, the level of the original painting is not good, and it is not a bad idea to combine the art and post-production technology, and learn from each other's strengths. If you are interested, you can watch his early short film "Distant World". Isn't this a ufotable from the "Sky Realm Overlooking the Landscape" period? (No, I'm not really black) The original painting team of "Your Name" this time can be regarded as very strong. The painting supervisor Yaji Ando once worked in Ghibli and was trained by Hayao Miyazaki. Makoto Shinkai has learned a lot from Ando Yaji's rigorous work attitude. He believes that the production team of each work is "one period, one meeting". Even if the next work no longer cooperates, it will bring Ando Yaji's work attitude to the new work.
Known by painting fans as "the three major painters of the production company Production IG", "Your Name" accounts for two, Okura Keiyuki and Kise Kazuya, these are the contacts of Ando Yaji. Of course, there is also the character setting of Masahiro Tanaka. I invited him to be the character setting because Makoto Shinkai likes his animation "Dragon and Tiger" very much, and thinks that his style can not only cater to the public's taste, but also draw cute characters. Role.
In addition to sight and hearing, of course, this time the theme song and soundtrack are played by the rock band RADWIMPS, and Makoto Shinkai is a fan of this band. The soundtrack to the film received rave reviews. In the whole film, RADWIMPS provided a total of four vocal episodes, and Makoto Shinkai has never abandoned his level of making MVs. In addition to better conditions, there are changes to Xin Haicheng. It is no exaggeration to say that in this work, you can see Makoto Shinkai who is completely different from before. Makoto Shinkai said that he had done a lot of works that made people cry and deeply, but they never made people laugh, so I wanted to give it a try this time. In addition to the laughter, what really makes people laugh should be such a delightful work by Makoto Shinkai.
The most obvious point is that the amount of information in this work is much more than the previous work of Makoto Shinkai. Although Makoto Shinkai is not good at complex narration (but this time, it is an unprecedented two-line narration that is not too complicated, and he also used some montage cleverness to deceive the audience), but he can describe in more detail in the picture, This gives the picture a sense of reality. Tata-kun is thinking, the details of the picture are the best example in the animation industry to use Jin Min as an example. The picture below is the original poster of Jin Min's "Tokyo Godfather" directed by him. This picture is full of many details. No matter how many times you watch it, you can discover new things. The seemingly endless amount of information is actually controlled just to the advantage and not disorderly.
Only when the details are sufficient and the amount of information is properly controlled can the audience be persuaded and pictures and time will not be wasted. Of course, Xin Haicheng's details this time also lie in the use of foreshadowing. If you don't see it, you don't know, there are so many foreshadowings this time, and sometimes a very ordinary thing may be a foreshadowing. For example, the picture below, which first appeared in the title, was a big foreshadowing. Tata Jun re-read it and found that Xin Haicheng retained his most poetic inner speech in the title, but looking at the whole film, he found that every card in the title was a foreshadowing. In addition to the extension of space, Makoto Shinkai also cleverly used the time difference to hint the audience. As for what to imply, let the audience see it by themselves.
Many viewers are even more unexpected. The little fresh supervisor who can only narrate in the audience's impression will actually use so many lines and plot turning points, which can be described as wave after wave. This is Xin Haicheng's progress. I believe that many viewers in Japan want to swipe it several times because the amount of information this time is enough to withstand re-watching. The biggest contributor in this regard may come from Kawamura Genki, Toho's ace producer. Makoto Shinkai said frankly that Genki Kawamura taught him when to climax in his works, when to turn around and how to superimpose narratives to look good. Who is Kawamura's vitality?
Ten years ago, he took advantage of the popularity of the Japanese drama "Trolley Man" and produced the movie version of "Train Man", which won a high box office of 3.7 billion yen. After that, his "Confession" was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. When Mamoru Hosoda became independent from the original production company MADHOUSE and set up his own studio "Studio Map", Genki Kawamura pulled him again and asked Toho as the producer to launch "Wolf's Children Rain and Snow" - this is the same as now The same as Makoto Shinkai! What's interesting is that last year, Mamoru Hosoda's "Son of the Monster" became a hit of the year, and Mamoru Hosoda was even blown by the media as the "successor of Hayao Miyazaki". Of course, Japanese reporters also listen to the wind and the rain. No, this year, Makoto Shinkai is called "Miyazaki's successor", always trying to make big news. However, Genki Kawamura's own novel "If Cats Disappeared from the World" was also adapted into a movie this year, and it also achieved good results. By the way, this work is the same as "Your Name" with the color of the world.
Many people say that Makoto Shinkai can't tell stories, and his stories are prose and fragmented. It's not that he can't tell stories, but he used to be like a novice player who hasn't leveled up to a certain level. In his previous works, he sometimes regarded the audience as an insider. He thought the audience knew his story. On this basis, no matter how imaginative he is, he will leave the audience behind, and he will let the characters in the works wander with his own consciousness, expressing his heart with the help of bizarre poems, without explaining the story and setting comprehensively. . With the appearance of "Your Name", Xin Haicheng made a step back in "literary and artistic atmosphere" and added more commercial elements. He proves with his strength that he can tell the story well, the film can be made wonderfully, and the skills he was most proud of in the past will become his most powerful seasoning, making the story sublime. Makoto Shinkai said that this work is his strongest work, whether it is production or ostentation, and it will be his masterpiece. He confidently said: "This will be my masterpiece." The masterpiece is not spoken. For example, Makoto Shinkai likes to use the symmetrical composition of the male and female protagonists. This composition is used in "Your Name" to match the plot, making people dream back to "The Other Side of the Cloud, the Promised Place".
Remember the teacher Yukino Baixiangli in "The Garden of Words", she finally moved back to her hometown. In "Your Name", Makoto Shinkai also wisely let Mr. Yukino appear as the heroine's teacher, and the dubbing is still Coriander Hanazawa. Xin Haicheng said that although this is a work that I want to show more people who don't know me, it also has some "small services" for my fans.
By the way, Makoto Shinkai is a person with a very classical complex, and his love for classical love and separation is also revealed in his works. In "The Garden of Words", the verses of the Japanese classical poetry collection "Manyoshu" run through the whole film. The inspiration for the story of "Your Name" this time came from a short song written by Ono Komachi in "Anthology of Ancient and Modern Japanese Songs": If you meet in a dream, you don't see anyone, if you know it's a dream, why don't you wake up. Even if there are often rendezvous in the dream, how can it be compared to seeing it once. (Original: 思ひつつbedればや人の見えつらむ夢と見りせば覚めざらましを.) Xin Haicheng expresses his view of time through "knot", and "knot" is homophonic with "production spirit" in Japanese (musubi), which means to produce, to generate. The "knot" connects people and people in space, and connects the past and the present in time. The bonds of the world are thus formed. This is also the most crucial hint in "Your Name". This echoes the estrangement of time and space in Makoto Shinkai's previous works, but this time Makoto Shinkai is a qualitative change, and he is starting to break the lonely distance he created!
The term "world system" is mentioned above. What is world system? To put it simply, it is a work that directly links the protagonist with the drastic changes or survival of the world. In a deep sense, most of the world-related works are from the people around them to the cognition of the world, and then back to the cognition of the self. This is a sci-fi genre derived from the Japanese ACGN culture, such as "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya", "Irino's Sky, UFO's Summer", "Final Weapon Kano", and Makoto Shinkai's "Voice of the Stars", "Clouds" The Other Side, The Promised Place" and the new work "Your Name" are all works of the world series. The world system has always given Tata Jun the feeling of loneliness, because a certain character has become independent of this human society and has become an existence that maintains the world and overlooks the world. Even if this role is in contact with human society, what still remains unabated is the sense of distance between people. Although the fate of the world is involved, the story only focuses on the small hero and heroine. Simply put, it is to integrate the two worlds of you and me, and the huge setting of the destruction of the world, but omitting the external social details, it is A very self-conscious work. Are you saying that Haruhi Suzumiya doesn't feel lonely? That's because A Xu, as an observer of Suzumiya, bears it for her, and Suzumiya can control the world at will, but he doesn't know it.
Although Makoto Shinkai will also step into the forefront of mainstream animation directors this year, he is not very similar to several other famous animation directors. The author cites a few examples, Tezuka Osamu has influenced Miyazaki and Otomo Keyang. The internationally renowned Hayao Miyazaki influenced Anno Hideaki and Hosoda Mori. And Otomo Keyang influenced Jin Min. The above mentioned are quite well-known animation directors, which basically shows that the mutual influence of Japanese animation people is a thread. Makoto Shinkai is an outlier. He is influenced by animation and also by Gal Game. Think about where he worked in the early days? From 1995 to 2000, Makoto Shinkai worked for the game company Falcom (he used his real name Makoto Shintsu at that time). The animations he produced independently during that period were all done secretly. Also working at Falcom at the time was the musician Tianmen (he later composed compositions by Makoto Shinkai until "Children Chasing the Stars").
In 2001, Makoto Shinkai's own animation was discovered by Falcom. In order to do "Voice of the Stars" with all his strength, Makoto Shinkai resigned and took Tianmen with him. Tianmen's original soundtrack for "The Voice of the Stars" is still very popular. World series works actually broke out in ACG works from 2000 to 2005, mostly in beautiful girl games. That year was also the era when Key was dominating the beautiful girl game industry. Key's representative works "AIR" and "CLANAD" at that time were very orthodox world stories. Of course, Makoto Shinkai also supervised the production of several game animations for the beautiful girl games under Minori Company from 2001 to 2006, the most famous of which is "ef - the first tale" (after that, Makoto Shinkai of Minori's works basically is nominal). The following year, the game was adapted by Onuma Shin into an animation of the same name. The world system was originally a subculture that was out of the mainstream, but Makoto Shinkai brought this genre to the mainstream world in "Your Name" because Makoto Shinkai made concessions. Let's take a look at Makoto Shinkai's works. The timeline in "Voice of the Stars" is set in the near future 2046. A junior high school girl, Mikako, becomes an astronaut and travels to the edge of the solar system in order to hunt down aliens that threaten the earth. Xiaosheng, a classmate who has a crush on her, communicates with Meijiazi through text messages on her mobile phone. However, as the distance increases, Xiaosheng takes longer and longer to receive Meijiazi's text messages, and it takes 8 years to receive a final text message. What I didn't expect to receive was the last text message that Mikako sent before his death in battle 8 years ago. And "The Other Side of the Cloud, the Promised Place" is also set in Japan, which is divided into north and south due to war in the near future. The protagonists, Fujisawa Hiroki and Shirakawa Takuya, also like their classmates in the same grade, Sawa Do Sayuri. However, Sawadu Sayuri suddenly disappeared for three years, and her existence is actually related to the survival of the world. The worldview in "5 Centimeters Per Second" is a very everyday world. Takaki and Akari have been inseparable friends since childhood. However, as Takaki transferred schools, the two missed each other during their school days. After growing up, because the two met less and less, the relationship became more and more alienated, and finally fell in love with strangers.
What I want to express by citing these three examples is that Makoto Shinkai's works in these early years can see that Brother Cheng is very boring. He seems to like to create such a sense of alienation in his works as if shaking M, leaving the best time in his teenage years and adolescence. The protagonists of these works are all isolated by fate, thinking that it is difficult for people to resist fate, and they will be lonely for life with a sense of fate. These works of his have deliberately avoided the cognition of society, which is like a kind of expectation full of children - the people around me (or the people I value) are the whole world, I know from the people around me. Knowing the world, from this world back to the self-knowledge. You can say that this cognitive perspective is from the perspective of students who have not yet set foot in society, but there is also a typical Japanese otaku culture that has this kind of perception.
Why otaku can be associated with youth, perhaps because of this cognitive problem, otaku culture deliberately ignores social awareness, and the world is reverie because of loneliness. As an audience, the supplement that gives a certain legitimacy to the love of the world is a kind of cultural consumption enjoyment. This is exactly what the students have in common. However, for the general public who do not know or like the world system, the loneliness of the world system may make people feel extremely embarrassed. According to this, we can also logically deduce why there are so many works with students as the protagonists in the medium of Japanese animation, which also gives a mocking illusion: "Japanese high school students are invincible." Of course, the otaku can also be proud of the fact that they may have been in adolescence physically and mentally throughout their lives.
Tata Jun believes that the reason why Xin Haicheng has the "blood" of the otaku family is not only because he has done beautiful girl games, but also because of his own inferiority and sullenness - his works are like people. So what happened to the protagonists of his early works? They pin these loneliness in illusory thoughts, and thoughts create eternity, but the sense of distance between time and space is rarely broken. The result of this sultry faction is that in "5 Centimeters Per Second", the male and female protagonists enter the society, and the nostalgia between them is worn away by the society. They realize how powerful and cruel this society is. The concession made by "Your Name" is to break the law of the protagonist of most world series works, and let the action send to be the protagonist. If the sultry faction can put the otaku into the role, then "Your Name" is a group of protagonists who are now acting as the world department.
The picture above is from Dong Haoji's evaluation of "Your Name", he is a scholar who has made achievements in the study of Japanese otaku culture. He said in this tweet: With the imagination of the world-based beautiful girl game, the current role occupies the protagonist, so it has won a national-level evaluation... "Your Name" is not so much the beginning of an era , rather a work that heralds the end of an era. This is a comment that makes the otaku look very lonely. First of all, Masaga Tanaka's character design, whether it is "Your Name." ” or “Crossroads”, neither did they design colorful hair colors like “Unknown Flower Name” and “Waiting in Midsummer”, but all black hair, which also shows that from the aspect of character design, conscious to connect with reality. Then we look at the upsurge of "Your Name" release, this animation has a lot of "current charge", many of them are couples. "Your Name" as a work that declares the end of an era has also been confirmed in this reality.
Off the topic, some netizens ridiculed the audience comparison of "New Godzilla" (below) and "Your Name" (above), after all, Hideaki Anno was photographed by the old special "Ultraman" and "Mobile Suit Gundam 0079" "Influenced by the old otaku generation, his works are largely a return to that era. In "Your Name", the hero and heroine are activists who will bravely resist fate and strive for their own happiness. This is also one of the reasons why many viewers feel that the last 20 minutes of the film are very "not Shin Haicheng". If Makoto Shinkai's previous works have a strong writer's character, then because he is getting closer to business in recent years, his writer's type will inevitably be weakened. The production committee system is one of the main points to weaken his writer's character. Makoto Shinkai's writer nature was originally like thick slime, but now it has been diluted. In 2002, when Makoto Shinkai became famous for "Voice of the Stars", Gundam's father Yoshiyuki Tomino noticed him, and the two held a conversation on "Animage". At that time, Tomino asked Xin Haicheng whether he wanted to move forward as a professional writer or become an amateur artist in the future, especially the two, it was impossible to have both. At that time, Xin Haicheng was still young, and Tomino also said that the more he developed, the more obvious this problem would be. Now, Makoto Shinkai has already answered this question raised by Tomino Yoshiyuki back then. But Tata Jun can make it very clear that although this is a compromise of Xin Haicheng, and he also sees some denials of his past self, but such a story must also be written by Xin Haicheng, Xin Haicheng denies that his past is Sublation, this negation is not destructive, but a catalyst for his evolution.
Makoto Shinkai had a bad evaluation in his second feature film "Children Chasing the Stars". He chose to retire bravely. Two years later, he made a short film "The Garden of Words" again. Anyone who has watched "The Garden of Words" knows that this is a teacher-student relationship with a ten-year age difference. From the outside, the teacher-student relationship is a forbidden love. As a teacher, the heroine Yukino Yukari actually has a good impression of his student Akizuki Takao. However, out of her own inferiority and fear of the outside world pointing at her, she did not dare to take the next step. This is the typical protagonist of Makoto Shinkai's early works. The outside guidance comes from the society. These protagonists are afraid of facing the society, which also causes a lack of social cognition. "You, you've always been like that! You always don't mention important things, and then put on the label of nothing, always be alone, and live your life!" This is the actor Qiuyue Takao in "The Garden of Words" The "curse" of the person he likes in Yukino Baixiang, now in Tata Jun's view, this is also Xin Haicheng's warning to himself. And this time, the heroine ran over and hugged the hero, and she began to accept it bravely. This role has overturned Makoto Shinkai's previous life beliefs. "The Garden of Words" seems like Makoto Shinkai is giving in, but it's actually a big step forward. In "Your Name", Xin Haicheng's compromise is also his progress. Only by contacting society, only by experiencing the cognition of "others-society-world-self" and breaking through the barriers of time and space, can people grow up. Tata Jun mentioned a credible thing above, and the credibility is improved by refining the description. Then the credibility of this work is to increase the description of the social cognitive process, which is equivalent to connecting with the public. After all, everyone lives in society. Brother Cheng figured out this point, gave in, and liberated himself. The credibility of his work increases, and as a result moves people.
Let Tata Jun reveal a little here, this poster actually hints at the ending of "Your Name". This is Xin Haicheng's answer to his past works and a make up for his past regrets.
At the end, Tata Jun extended a bit. "Your Name" actually tells the story of three generations. In the words of Dong Haoji above, although there is a saying that the protagonist is "currently charged", it can actually be explained that the new generation is different from the old generation. Compared with the previous generation, young people should push the waves forward and push the waves back. Be braver to challenge reality. There is an interesting interpretation on Japanese social networks. In "Your Name", the first generation, that is, the heroine's grandmother, experienced the generation of Japan that was defeated by a nuclear bomb attack. The second generation, that is, the heroine's Mom's generation is the generation that experienced Japan's emergency Great Depression in 1989. This may be suspicious of over-interpretation, but it is not uninteresting. 2016 is a year of change and turmoil in Japan. If nothing else, Emperor Heisei will abdicate in October this year, and the 28-year-old Heisei will become history. Once the society undergoes drastic changes, entertainment and cultural products can best appease the hearts of others. For example, in early 1930, during the Great Depression in the United States, the Mei Lanfang Theatre Company made its premiere at the 49th Street Theater in the central area of Broadway in New York, and the performance lasted for 2 weeks. Whether it's "Shin Godzilla" or "Your Name", it is to some extent a realistic haven for Japan in 2016. Then again, this time is Makoto Shinkai's masterpiece. Tata Jun feels that Makoto Shinkai has just been recognized by the mainstream, but he is still a craftsman, far from being a master, let alone "the successor of Hayao Miyazaki". ". Xin Haicheng also feels sincere and fearful about the media's promotion and the current box office results. From the past to the present, whether the changes of Makoto Shinkai are good or bad, whether his works should be closer to the mainstream public in the future, or continue to retain his otaku feelings, these issues can only be explained by his future works. Xin Haicheng said at the Busan Film Festival that the next work will still focus on adolescent male and female protagonists, and will still be produced with Dongbao as the center in the next three years. It is hoped that in the near future, Xin Haicheng can make the most perfect choice and continue to bring us an audio-visual feast.
References: 1. "『The name of the king. 』の大ヒットはなぜ "event" なのか? セカイ Department and Beautiful Girl ゲームのContext から読み解く", author: Daisuke Watanabe, http://realsound.jp/movie/2016/09/post-2675.html . (Translation: A New Era Belonging to Makoto Shinkai, Japanese Film Critic Comments on Makoto Shinkai
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