Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Meeting Makoto Shinkai

I have always been a big fan of Shinkai's work. His animation is always so moving and his work is very unique focusing on great detail on the night time sky which is beautiful. Voices of a Distant Star was my favourite peice from him. I also liked 5 cm Per Second and Beyond the Clouds.

The film that was screening was Journey to Agartha Chidren Who Chase Lost Voices and was in the LightHouse Cinema organised by the Embassy of Japan and by Andrew from Kaze. It was a very magical movie with alot of influences from Miyazaki. It may have been alot like Sprited Away and other anime in the fantasy genre but it still was unique and very Shinkai with beautiful visuals of the night sky and stars. After the movie there was a Q&A session and Tara Brady from the Irish Times briefly interviewed Shinkai and the audience asked questions. One girl asked a very good question why he uses visuals on the night sky and stars in his works. Shinkai answered that when he was a child he would always look at the night sky and stars and dreamed of becoming an astronaut. One guy asked a good question on where does he get his inspirations and mentioned that he gets his inspirations from many mythologies around the world.

After the Q&A session we queued for an hour and a half to get our posters it was well worth the wait! Shinkai was a pleasure to meet. He was very grateful to see that so many people came to see him. Here is an image of me with Shinkai. That is Hugo on the left from the Experience Japan Festival, Stephen and Will who are friends on the right. I was chatting to alot of people at the event and many travelled from all over Ireland. There must of been well over 50 people at the event and the tickets really sold out!

Well here is my souvenir to remember the night by. It was memorable night and inspirational. I wish I told Shinkai that his work inspires me as a cosplayer and that I would like to one day send him an image of me maybe cosplaying as one of his characters or just of me with the beautiful sky similar to his work to show he inpires me. Maybe one day.. I would really like to get shots similar to the above images so people can see I am influenced by him. I really do love the way he portrays the sky and I would like to feature this in my pictures.
 




4 comments:

  1. I managed to get him to scrawl on a postcard for me. Even though I started near the queue it was a long wait though. Worth it, he was a nice chap.

    Beautifully animated movie. Great direction. The writing didn't blow me away but it was mostly okay I guess. Did more right than it did wrong.

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  2. It really must of been a blast not only seeing the movie, but a Q&A and a signed poster. Really shows just how much Ireland is embracing more and more of the Japanese Culture. It also seems that you are part of this wave of excitement.

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  3. Awh thank you! Alot of people are saying they will love more events like this so hopefully with my involvement with Experience Japan and Eirtakon I can make it happen. :-)

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  4. Hello! Can I ask you a question? We're waiting for Shinkai in Moscow in September, but as I know his company representatives demand to give not more than 50 autographs in a day. Our inviting company (anime distributor) offers fans to buy a "ticket" to his autograpgh-session (so they have only 50 tickets for a day). And this ticket is much more expensive than ticket to the cinema. What was the condition of meeting him at your event? Thanks)
    Nat

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