>>32137785It was a great movie, just not to the miyazaki standards some people insist on trying to elevate it to. It's not a short coming of story telling, it's just a mechanical thing. Shinkai does gorgeous scenery, has a firm grasp of poetic symbolism, and writes a solid interpersonal drama, but that's it. Miyazaki is an ingenious Animator, not just a good story teller and illustrator, that's the biggest difference. Miyazaki makes full use of animation as his art form, Shinkai just uses it to the ends of his story telling. It leaves a huge gap between them, one Shinkai is all too aware of himself. But he's still a infinitely more capable story teller and artist than 90% of the schlock out there, helped largely by his giving of damn near zero shits about popular genre cliches. The body swap premise has been the closest but apart from one minor running gag in the movie, he dodges most cliches around it in favor of actually playing out the scenario for what t is. Despite being a pretty straight foward film in terms of construction, for some reason some troglodytes seem to have trouble grasping the basic mechanical merits of it.
