Adults Who Chase Their Past: Makoto Shinkai and Ghibli

This is pretty much the most obvious connection but the whole movie is littered with similar references.

I’ll admit that I’m hesitant to write a post about Shinkai’s Children Who Chase Lost Voices after Doc’s fantastic post, but the movie was fantastic and has compelled me to tackle a different part of the film than the ideas of the movie and instead the oft-mentioned influence from Ghibli, especially from Laputa.

It would be difficult not to see the numerous connections that are littered throughout the movie. Supposedly Shinkai has said that Laputa was his favorite movie as a child, and it shows from the blue stones, the collapsing civilization long lost from history, or the way the Quetzalcoatl is very similar to the robot in Laputa. The comparisons don’t end at Laputa though, with Shin’s very Ashitaka-like exile and Mimi’s resemblance to Teto from Nausicaa, Shinkai obviously had a certain prominent studio in mind while making this film.

What We Chase

WARNING:  THIS POST IS LARGELY WRITTEN FOR THOSE WHO HAVE SEEN THE THIS MOVIE.  BELOW I QUOTE DIALOG FROM THE FILM AND DISCUSS SOME OF ITS EVENTS AND CHARACTER MOTIVATIONS

I celebrated the annual 72 hour long Global Shinkai Day by checking out his newest film (at the time of this writing), Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below.  There is a scene about three quarters of the way through the movie that made me abruptly sit up and hit rewind to make sure I read the subtitles correctly.