 Distance is an amount of space between two things or people. Makoto Shinkai stated in an interview that he wants to achieve emotionally what Mizaki did for lots of people, including himself. The emotion that Makoto Shinkai effectively engineers is love. He displays many different forms of love in many different settings. Whether it's the realistic portrayal of love or a magnificent fantasy, Shinkai is always able to see the heart of his viewers while they're lifefully playing with our own hearts in the process. His goals seem to be to ensure that people gain a deeper understanding of what love is and what it represents. Just how Mizaki instills wonder and hope in his own films. Shinkai is an anime director, mostly known for the number one grossing anime movie of all time which he produced, Your Name, or Kimi no Nao. Shinkai has other great movies as well, such as Garden of Words, 5 centimeters per second, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, and his short solo film, Voices of a Distant Star. Shinkai is mostly known for his breathtaking animation in which he incorporates beautiful scenery, backdrops, and the way he perfectly recreates certain known areas in Japan. Shinkai is also known for his sometimes heartbreaking or heartwarming love stories. And one of his most popular themes that reoccurs in all of his movies is the theme of a distant love. In Shinkai's films, distance doesn't always pertain to physical distance, but other kinds of distance as well. Shinkai uses his theme of distance as an antagonist to the love that his protagonists are attempting to achieve. He uses distance to further explain the strife and the constant struggle that love is. Shinkai uses his separation to ground or to further elevate the fantastical ideas in his films. First, let's look at Your Name, or Kimi no Nao. Taki Tachibana and Mitsuha Miyamizu are the main characters whose lives are intertwined by the fact that they can switch bodies from time to time. Taki lives in Tokyo, whereas Mitsuha lives in the small, calm town of Itomori. Taki and Mitsuha enter a citywide search for each other, and they remain emotionally connected throughout the entirety of the film, even as they grow in age. Though they forget each other's names, the memories and feelings for each other are never forgotten. Your name encapsulates two types of distance, physical and a temporal distance. The first being physical distance. Mitsuha and Taki are often separated by where they live, Tokyo and Itomori, but they are also separated by time, which we will call temporal distance. Mitsuha and Taki both occupy different temporal planes during the movie, with Taki sometimes being three years ahead of Mitsuha before Kataware Doki happens. Your name's distance is used to show a connection between two people in spirit and in mind, as well as in life and in death. Next, Garden of Words. Garden of Words follows Takawa Kizuki, a high school student who skips class on rainy days and has dreams to be a shoemaker. And Yukari Yukino, a high school teacher who skips work and is having trouble overcoming her fears. As shown, the distance between the two characters is in their age, and this we can call the generational distance. Takawa is 15 years old and Yukino is 27. Now, as for the love, the way in which I interpreted it is this way. Takawa and Yukino weren't involved in romantic love, but a platonic love. The ancient Greeks used filia as the form of love. It is defined as the type of love that has felt among friends who've endured tough times together. In my interpretation, Yukino and Takawa weren't in love, but both of them needed someone to fill a certain role that the other did not have in their life. Akizuki needed someone to encourage his dreams and someone to help guide him in the right direction. And Yukino needed someone to help her walk again, someone to help her life regain meaning, and that person ended up helping her regain her taste as well. They were each other's guiding light and emotional conduit, which is why the two shared a meaningful moment of embrace at the end of the film. Now, I do believe that Takawa loved her at the moment that he stated it himself, and she reciprocated the same feelings, but Yukino repressed her own feelings out of her understanding society's norms and her being realistic, especially since she was moving away. I believe the two later understood the type of love that they felt for each other, and later understood the situation that they were both in, which is desperation. Garden of Words' distance is present to tell us that the emotional comfort that we need doesn't have any boundaries. And third, five centimeters per second. This is a film split into three episodes, and it takes a more realistic view on distance to love, while focusing on Takaki Tono and Akari Shunohara as they struggle to maintain their relationship due to distance. This movie falls into the category of spatial distance. From the title, five centimeters per second, we are immediately told how slowly we drift from one another. We are shown in the very first scene of the first episode that this cherry blossom tree that we see is the constant in their relationship, as a place where they always reunite, but also as a metaphor. As Akari explains to Takaki that cherry blossoms fall at the speed of five centimeters per second. In the first episode, we watched Takaki and Akari who live far from each other, but they still visit one another once in a while, and they constantly write letters to each other. In the second episode, Takaki and Akari have drifted away from each other. As Takaki now only dreams of Akari and sends emails to himself of the things that he should be telling Akari. And in the final episode, we truly see the effect that distance has on people. There's too much time and emotion lost between the two characters. Akari is now getting married to another man, and Takaki still holds that dream of being Akari so much that he dreams of seeing her by the cherry blossom tree. We can identify this as emotional distance, as the two character sentiments are just not aligned with each other. We understand that Takaki and Akari have slowly moved away from each other, emotionally and physically, at the speed of five centimeters per second. To continue, we look at the place promised in our early days. This movie takes a fantastical approach to love. It takes place mostly from the perspective of teen genius Hiroki Fujisawa, alongside his best friend and fellow genius Takuya Shirakawa, and Hiroki's future love interest, Sayuri Sawatari. The movie focuses on a promise made when the three were younger, which is that they will go and fly to the Union Tower, which is a galloping tower that pierces even the clouds. After Sayuri disappears for three years, it is revealed that she's been in a coma, and that her mind now occupies an alternate universe, one where she's completely alone. This is spatial distance. Over the three years, Hiroki and Takuya have drifted from each other, after the two took different paths due to the grief that they felt after Sayuri's disappearance. It is revealed that over the three years, Hiroki has been dreaming of Sayuri constantly, and he's been trying to find her, whereas Takuya has been focused on his work. And it is off of the simple longing that Hiroki and Sayuri have had for each other over the three years, and their love continue to grow and grow. And it is this longing that causes Hiroki and Takuya to reunite and to finally save Sayuri, though wiping Sayuri's memories of Hiroki during those three years. We identify this as spatial distance. As Hiroki and Sayuri were separated by universes, the place promised in our early days' distance is utilized to explain the importance of a promise. Fifth, children who chase lost voices. This Shinkai film looks at a young Asuna, who is the main protagonist, and her journey to revive the dead. Her and Mr. Morisaki both have people that they've lost. Asuna has lost Shun, a boy from the land of Agartha, and Mr. Morisaki has lost his wife. The two of them end up traveling to Agartha, a place where it is possible to revive the dead. But such a process is forbidden. Now this falls under spatial distance, as Asuna and Shun are separated by the realm of the living and the realm of the dead. Their tumultuous journey teaches them about the cycle of life and how precious, but also how short that life is. Children who chase lost voices' distance is used to explain the greatest distance of them all, life and death. And finally, voices of a distant star. The oldest of the aforementioned movies trails Mikako on her journey through space as she constantly emails her love in Noboru. As Mikako moves through space, the time it takes to deliver her emails get longer and longer, ranging from a couple days to several months, a year and a half, and finally, eight years. In 24 minutes, this movie is able to depict persistence and patience. After the eight years have passed, Noboru states that he's given up on their love. But as soon as he receives that email from a 15-year-old Mikako, telling him that she loves him, Noboru's patience becomes revitalized and his love for her is stronger than ever. This is spatial and temporal distance as Mikako is several light years away, and her messages are eight years behind. And lastly, voices of a distant star's distance is employed to show us the sheer might of love. Every single shinkai work has distance and love as this common theme, but each movie teaches us something different about it. Children who chase lost voices teaches us that some things are better left alone and that some distance is meant to be intempered with. The place promised in our early days is melancholic tone and instructs us that sometimes even giving a simple thought and having perseverance can maintain a dream or a promise. Five centimeters per second's conclusion grounds us and it brings us back into reality. It lets us know that sometimes distance isn't just an obstacle, but a wall, viewing our path to somewhere, some thing, or even someone else, and that life must go on. The garden of words instills the idea of love having no boundaries and that friendship has no distinctions. It also teaches us that it's okay to need other people. Voices of a distant star in your name teaches that separation or even time and space are no match for the kind of love that is decided by fate, a pure love. At the end of the day, distance is simply an interval, a space and an obstacle that can be overcome, but sometimes it isn't meant to be. And love, well, everyone needs love because love is putting another person before yourself. Love teaches us to be selfless, whether it's romantic, friendly, or apparent to their child. Everyone needs it. Makoto Shinkai understands this and he bases his movies off of this premise. Shinkai's plots aren't exquisite or extremely complex, but he doesn't need them to be. Based off of his comprehension for human emotion and the comprehension that humans are empathetic and compassionate by nature, especially towards certain emotions, he manipulates this and he grasps the impact that it has and with it he creates powerful touching films. Makoto Shinkai expresses his understanding of emotion by being an astounding storyteller of love at a distance of course.