World Acclaimed Film Director visits JAGS

Thursday 18 December 2008 saw the Prissian Theatre host its first ever Animation Evening Event. We were lucky to have the honour of screening the highly popular Japanese Animation Film – “5cm Per Second” (Byosoku 5 Sechimetoru) with the famous director himself, Makoto Shinkai. Enthusiastic to make his visit to JAGS unforgettable, the evening began with the Japanese students welcoming Shinkai-san with a tuneful (and much practised) rendition of the film’s theme tune, ‘One More Time, One More Chance’. (It seemed to work as he was later heard saying that he admired the performance.)

The evening was an excitingly eventful one including a Japanese news report on the director, bravely translated by two of our Japanese students; Charlotte Parks-Taylor and Ruth Silverleaf, the showing of the film itself, and an on-stage demonstration of the making of animation films.

The enthusiastic audience of students, parents and disbelieving fans settled down to intently watch the first two highly emotional sections of the film ‘Cherry Blossom’ and ‘Cosmonaut’. By the interval, much of the audience was close to tears, engrossed in discussing the film. The third section, after which the film is named, brought the animation to an equally moving finale, and when the film ended (too soon for most) Makoto Shinkai received a standing ovation from his audience.

The film itself...
The film “5cm Per Second” is set in Japan, beginning in the 1990’s and ending in the present, and refers to the speed at which cherry blossom or ‘sakura’ falls to the ground.

The first part called Cherry Blossom, illustrates the growing relationship between the main characters: high school students Takaki and Akari. It conveys their painful separation after Akari has to move away, and the youngsters struggle to keep in touch, as a result of hazardous train journeys and intense snowstorms. The next episode, Cosmonaut narrates the pain of reciprocated love felt by Kanae, a classmate of the now adolescent Takaki, who regards her only as a friend, and is subconsciously still searching for his greater childhood love. The third section, 5 Centimetres Per Second, then fast-forwards to 2008. Takaki, a computer programmer in Tokyo, and Akari who is engaged, are living very separate lives. However, Takaki still has a grieving heart, which badly affects his life. On the verge of a breakdown, fate brings Takaki and Akari together, although only for a fleeting moment. 

After emotionally recovering, the audience was lucky to have Makoto Shinkai demonstrate how he animated the film, using computer animation technology. He also showed us a funny three-minute animation “Cat’s Meeting”, about cats taking over the world. This was especially written for JAGS and shown on Japanese TV.

To end this remarkable evening, two eager volunteers from the audience were given the opportunity to go up onto the stage and draw something of their own, which was turned into their very own animation miniclips by Shinkai-san. Makoto Shinkai kindly stayed at the end so that fans could get autographs and have a chat with him too. The evening was a great success, and we learnt many fascinating and interesting things about animation as well as having a lot of fun too.

Chloe Clerck, Grace Johnson, Pooja Patel, Shriya Pabari and Ayesha Williams, Year 12