OPINION, MOTIVATION AND LOG

Opinion

• Lotte van den Bogaert:

This movie is very approachable, yet not easy to understand or explain. It’s open for interpretation. That much is clear by the amount of analyses and conspiracy theories you can find on the internet. A lot of little details, you would think are unimportant at first, resurface and play a role in the storyline.  There are also a lot of references to Shintoism. In spite of that, the fact that as a foreigner with no knowledge of Shintoism, it is still enjoyable to watch. This is because they do explain a lot in the movie itself and it’s not too dependent on the religious elements. In fact, since the story is understandable without this knowledge, you can conclude that the traditional elements play a mostly symbolic role and provide an interesting context for the story. 

This being said, I think some things should be taken into consideration. These traditional elements all play a role, obviously, but the beauty lies in the fact that you yourself can choose how far you want to take the understanding of the movie. For example, one of the elements that is quite prominent in this movie is the aspect of time. You do get the idea that Makoto Shinkai is hinting at the connection with time, since there is a time difference of three years between the main characters' storylines and the ever-returning element of musubi concerns time as well. However, if we take a look at why the Makoto Shinkai wrote this story, I think we can assume that this is nothing more than an extra barrier between two loved ones, who are constantly searching for each other, but seem to not be able to find each other. Therefore, we can say that sometimes, the fact that there is a connection to the cultural elements is more important than the meaning they hold.

In general, however, I think it is clear that the target audience is Japanese, assuming they will have more of a feeling with the spiritual events that are going on in the movie. 

• Hanne Lavrys: 

Some events in the movie can not be explained easy and there is open space for discussion. I find this quite interesting because it's a great way to put the whole movie in another daylight. Makoto Shinkai  lays the foundation of the movie and leaves gaps that could be filled with the imagination of the viewer. The cultural elements Makoto Shinkai puts in the movie are a good way to learn more about the 'old' Japanese culture, placed in a modern perspective. The movie itself is easy to watch but thinking about it more thoroughly is quite a challenge. Together with my partner we spend a huge amount of the time discussing what the real meaning of the movie actually is. We can conclude that everyone can interpreter the movie in their own way which makes, in my opinion, this a great collaboration between writer en viewer. When doing research, we can find several websites, blogs and forums that discuss the topic, spiritual elements and the basics like the characters and the overall storyline. The main theme, the desire for someone else, put in an animation makes it a lot more approachable for the audience. The melancholic setting together with the adrenaline of time rush makes the movie energetic but also calm in a way to make it an enjoyable balance. 

Motivation

The reason we wanted to make our blog about this subject, is that when we saw the movie, the many references to Japanese culture interested us so much, that we wanted to find out the meaning or meanings behind it all. The movie gives enough clues that you can figure a lot out by yourself, but it’s obvious that there is more to it. The ending is quite open, which stimulates you to look for further answers on your own. That’s why our goal of this blog was to give a detailed explanation of the anime itself, together with the view of Makato Shinkai on the anime and thoroughly explained posts of the Japanese elements such as musubi, kuchikamizake and shintoism. By making this we really learned a lot and we hope that this blog can give others some elements to better understand and appreciate the anime.

Log

When we had just sent in the subject that we chose, we first started brainstorming about what we hoped our blog would look like and what we could actually do within the range of skill and knowledge we have on making blogs. When we found a good site to make our blog on, we started by making a plot summary and a character description. Then, in early November, we made up a list of posts of what we wanted to write about and discussed which subjects needed the most explanation. We went to the east Asian library to find sources on musubi, kuchikamizake, and kataware doki, but could only find some information on musubi. This meant we had to find the rest of our sources online, which wasn’t that easy.

Throughout November we worked mostly on finding sources, planning who would write what and brainstorming about what the meaning of the movie was. For this it was actually very useful that we were allowed to work on this with two people, because it can be quite a complicated movie.

In December we started to write our actual posts, altered some things and brainstormed some more. In the end, we both worked on most parts and split the work pretty evenly.