Whenever conversation turns to who inspires me as a filmmaker, the first person who comes to mind is Makoto Shinkai. He's an up-and-coming anime director who has been called, in various circles, "The Next Miyazaki." I think this title is well deserved, because he's brilliant, but also faintly bullshit, because Miyazaki-sensei is still alive and released a movie as recently as two years ago and is still heading up Ghibli so it would be kind of premature to start labeling people as "the next _____." Like what, do you want him to hurry up and die? He's only 70, and the life expectancy in Japan is up to like 89 or some ridiculous number, so I'd hazard to say he'll probably be with us a while yet.
Granted, they do have some things in common. Both are very conscious of animation as a medium for storytelling, rather than as a genre of filmmaking. Both create very human characters with very human mannerisms. Both are fascinated with flight. (Miyazaki is noted for his obsession with aircraft. Shinkai is more interested in space travel, but The Place Promised in our Early Days had an awesome plane.)
Shinkai tends to veer more science fiction, where Miyazaki's interests are more fantasy. That said, there's a lot in Hoshi o Kodomo (I have no idea where he's getting his word salad english title "Children who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below - Hoshi o Kodomo is roughly "Children who Chase Stars") that looks very Ghibli-esque, there's a scene that I'm pretty sure is invoking Castle in the Sky, and checking the website reveals a supporting character who is clearly designed after Teto from Nausicaa. So way to undermine my argument, Shinkai-sensei. But if one of the main critiques of your work is that all three of your movies are really similar, then I guess this is a branching out for you.
What I like about Shinkai's films is that he presents a world that is somehow removed from our own, but not so far removed that it's hard to grasp, and then within these gorgeous science fiction settings, he boils his story down to tight human dramas about isolation and struggling to connect. Voices of a Distant Star is beautiful, and I've embedded a segment of Five Centimeters Per Second, which is a collection of three short films using all kinds of travel metaphors for growing up, not knowing where you're going but going anyways, even if it seems like you're getting there incredibly slowly. (This section uses rockets, and it's beautiful.)
*There's some bad science in this dub. When he says "center of the solar system," he means "center of the galaxy."
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