The imaginary of catastrophe in the cinema of Makoto Shinkai by Fanny Bourges

Fanny Bourges offers a rereading of Makoto Shinkai's works based on the imaginary of catastrophe.

When Your Name was released in 2016, Makoto Shinkai, whose teams had largely expanded with Voyage Vers Agartha, had the primary ambition of making an entertaining film that would appeal to the general public. But when asked what the comet in his film represented, he had to admit that the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 had unconsciously left its mark on his imagination. This ecological stance is affirmed in Weathering with You, a clear evocation of global warming and rising waters in Tokyo, which questions individual action in this crisis, without proposing a definitive moral. Finally, with Suzume, Makoto Shinkai observes that his twelve-year-old daughter has no real knowledge of the March 11, 2011 earthquake, and raises the question of the duty to remember.

Through this analysis, Fanny Bourges seeks to show the interpretations and futures he proposes. Makoto Shinkai's depiction of contemporary Japan is never divorced from the Shinto legends that describe the origins of these disasters. He thus raises the question of our ability to change the world, but with a certain fatalism about these meteorological forces. Beyond this trilogy, Makoto Shinkai's earlier works (The Tower Beyond the Clouds, The Voices of a Distant Star...) can also be evoked, around questions of separateness. 

Fanny Bourges holds a Master's degree in Literature and has already worked several times on animation cinema (Ghibli, Osamu Tezuka) in her research. She also presented and commented on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky at Le Méliès cinema (Montreuil) in 2023 and 2024. Finally, she runs a fanzine of analyses and illustrations on animation cinema, 'Mina.