Makoto Shinkai English Fan Forum and Site

Laz · Laz Joined: 09 Jan 2008 Posts: 1073

Since we only had one entry in this category enjoy this Essay by one of our Members ...

The Lost Empire

In some ways, I crave feelings I have never felt. I can imagine these emotions, and I can explain them, but I can say that they never came to me, authentically. Yet when I first watched Makoto Shinkai’s film, Voices of a Distant Star, loneliness and isolation blended with these imagined feelings of loving and being loved. I could not look away, and my thoughts never became words, but my heartbeat slowed, and became stronger. I crawled within myself after the credits rolled. After viewing all three films, I remembered moments of each that I could associate with my world, and everyday, I find new moments, that in sometimes an indirect way, made my world feel as if itself were shown through Shinkai’s eyes.

I was completely infatuated with a girl for a couple years. I became like her and we were friends, but never more than that. There were moments I should have avoided her, and others I should have been there for her, and I often felt out of synch with her. Around this time, I found the manga of “Voices of a Distant Star”. I explored the world of Shinkai and watched all his films in one night as soon as 5 Centimetres per Second was released. It was after that long weekend, I stopped my addiction to this girl I had been nearly stalking for two years. Something Makoto Shinkai said in an interview shot through my aching heart: “It’s about what you can make people feel, not what you can give them.”

I once wanted to be an author, but I was giving up on the dream, and when read that, an urge came to me, to use this inspiration, of these films, and of this little genius, to build a world of my own, not around someone else. And I found my will to write again; which now, I would like to help people feel emotions strongly again, just like how they did once before, like remembering love and losses, so that each and every story becomes a personal experience for each person. Somehow, Makoto Shinkai, showed me what I felt, and how to do it. Through stories.

There are still days that I find I see the world in the beautiful way Shinkai does, but now it is not always the same. I keep seeing the world as if it were only touched with his brush, not painted in every frame. His world helped me into my own, and I only have him to thank. I found myself again, my thoughts, my imagination, my childhood and my future. I am not absorbed in someone else, or in something equally as blind. I am here.
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You're a woman, I'm a calf ... you're a window, I'm a knife ... we come together making chance into starlight ... - Jeff Buckley

ここにいるよ. - Voices of a Distant Star