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Jello Reviews - Every Makoto Shinkai Movie (ft. Jay) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-09-14 07:54:24
Edited:
2025-08-11 01:53:51
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Alternate title: Makoto Shinkai is a Weird Loser.

Alternate title: Makoto Shinkai is a Weird Loser.

My boyfriend Jay and I spent the last three months watching every single movie by prolific (?) anime director and writer(???) Makoto Shinkai.

During this two and a half hour review, we ended up psychologically deconstructing this weird loser of a man and thoroughly roasted him for making one movie fourteen times that's just a wish fulfilment fantasy where a 15-year-old girl tells him he's cool and it was fine that he spent three years obsessing over her.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 - An Introduction to the Pathetic Man that is Makoto Shinkai20:05 - 80% of Every Makoto Shinkai Movie (They are the same)37:28 - Other Worlds / She and Her Cat (1999)40:01 - Voices of a Distant Star (2002)47:26 - Hiromi Iwasaki: Egao (2003)47:49 - The Place Promised in our Early Days (2004)1:06:04 - 5 Centimeters Per Second (2007)1:12:46 - A Gathering of Cats (2007)1:13:59 - The Children Who Chase Lost Voices (2011)1:35:34 - Someone's Gaze (2013)1:38:27 - Weathering With You (2019)2:03:02 - Suzume (2022)

Here is She and Her Cat for those interested. It's only 5 minutes long and it still manages to be Too Long somehow.

Garden of Words and Your Name were reviewed in an earlier post which can be found here. 

Some moments from The Children Who Chase Lost Voices compared to the Ghibli movies they stole things from. I could literally make a 50 minute video about this. I do not have the time or inclination to do that.

Files

Comments

Drednot

Ugh, I already have 2 episodes of the latest Dimension 20 campaign to watch, and the latest dungeons and daddies episode, and now I gotta listen to this tomorrow too?!?, can this day get any worse? What's next!?!? A surprise stream??!! Gonna have no free time tomorrow. THANKS JELLO!

Drednot

P.S. good news jello. Looks like a new trolls movie got announced

Nicholas C. Botticella

Thank you for screencapping the Twitter posts; I don't have an account there (for numerous reasons) and trying to view anyone's Tweets on it without one keeps redirecting me to a sign-up screen.

Daniel

Its crazy how prolific Shinkai is. Jello mentions that Your Name got western eyes on him, but as an anime guy, I've heard his name for YEARS cause he did Children who chase lost voices, garden of words, and centimeters. I've only seen Your Name, Centimeters, and Suzume, and honestly I hate his work. Centimeters is boring as fuck, Suzume is less boring but still boring, and Your Name is.... I like Your Name, but honestly I feel like it abandoned the Freaky Friday part of the plot way too early. I wanted to see them stumble around as each other a little bit more. Centimeters per second is the base movie of every one of his movies. Edit: Watched the cat one. Wow I was honestly expecting SOMETHING. Its.... vaguely pretty? But i guess welcome to shinkai

Fanboyistransboy

Hell yeah can’t wait to listen to this while I do homework

DaRat333

She and her cat is terrible and his voice needed to be replaced with anything else.

Beck Carmine

If I ever make something. And it turns out to be terrible. I hope it's the kind of terrible that people like Jay and Jello can just have a laugh talking about.

Folkloric

I just watched She and Her Cat, to quote it: “She was caring like a mother, and beautiful like a lover.” Those are two words that should never, ever be in the same sentence.

Folkloric

I don't *think* Makoto Shinkai likes young girls, but I do think he wants young girls to like *him.*

PurpleIsDebeste

that community comparison is really good and also as a fun bonus makes me like the finale i was kinda sour on a lot more! good job!

dollqueen

Hate to break it to you Jello, but "main character girl is relaxing outside & listening to a radio" is also the opening for Kiki's Delivery Service. Except in Kiki it's on a grassy hill.

Act One

After listening for 40 minutes, I assumed this was exaggerated. Then I watched 'She and Her Cat', saw the phrase 'It is now Winter'. and laughed for a full minute. Practically don't even need the rest of this review to understand what the deal is.

JelloApocalypse

I let this one slide because it was immediately clear this girl was essentially living by herself which was very different from the vibe Kiki's opening put out

Chandler B

I wanna say voices of a distant star and five centimeters per second were the 2 really popular things before Your Name.

Stars In A Jam Jar

So I watched 5 Centimeters Per Second on my phone at 3AM on a school night as a high schooler because I have insomnia, and I only picked it because it was one of the only free dub versions of an anime on the Crunchyroll app. I think the strange dark magic that keeps Makoto Shinkai in work is his ability to direct things that feel like the rumble on a train, and I do mean that unironically and very uncomplicatedly. I somehow never forgot 5 Centimeters Per Second, not because I found it profound or because it affected me personally, but because I got a distinct sensation that it was a movie meant to be watched at 3AM on a school night by a high schooler with insomnia, in the same way that the distinctive transport rumble of a train is meant to be heard and listened to when there is nothing else to be listening to on a train. My impulse is to try and go somewhere with this. But there is nowhere to go with Makoto Shinkai's nothing movie. I'd be walking to that pier alone.

Justice Hainsworth

yknow, there are times when i realize that the way you look at art is fundamentally different from mine in a lot of ways. youre a pretty professional guy all around, you got high standards, you got a goal in mind, you like art that feels like a well-crafted watch. despite the fact that i watch as much and as broadly as i can, i dont think it takes much to please me. most movies i see coast on the upper side of a 1-10 scale. even when i dont like something on first go i often go out of my way to find some appreciation for it. hell, i think a lot of the time i think its impressive something was made at all. i’d probably insist that something of worth is there in a blank canvas with one singular dot in the center and youd probably look at me like i was yelling at a ghost. pretty much what im saying is that with all that in mind, you’d think id actually be a really easy mark for this guy’s stuff. this guy kind of weakens my worldview at the knees fundamentally, because hes one of the only people who has consistently let me down so much that i kind of barely have anything good to say about his stuff lmao. you are spot-fucking on. you did it! you broke him down to his bare essentials! i really *really* dont like saying this about most things that people create but there really is pretty much nothing there. im not even particularly impressed by the one movie that everybody knows him for (im gonna push back against the #WheresTheBody theory for the script, because despite the fact that it slightly deviates from the Shinkai Structure it still feels like the fumbling baby steps of a guy leaving his comfort zone for the first time in years). people say his movies look like moving screensavers and i cannot for the life of me conceptualize a context for which that can be read as a compliment. Every single time i try to come back to any other one of his movies there is one quote by Lou Reed talking about Frank Zappa that always comes back to me: “He’s not happy with himself, and I think he’s right.”

Xaghi, Princess of Power

The way you described the random musical numbers reminded me of the fever dream of watching the anime movies production by Happy Science, a Japanese cult that takes every religion and stirs it together along with historical revisionism. In a lot of those films they'd just insert random musical numbers in between cult propaganda. They're on YouTube and while it'd be very interesting to hear your experiences, but if you decide to spare your sanity I completely understand. Not everyone is prepared for the stories of Hermes, who according to the cult was a real person and an incarnation of Happy Science's super-mega God/Buddha named El Cantare, along with Thoth, King of Atlantis, and the founder of the cult. Said founder died pretty recently, also.

S

I’ve missed these reviews lol. Hearing thoughts on community would be interesting!

Kyo

The part of the second half of Suzume that definitely resonates differently with a western audience is that (based on the diary and them driving to northeast Japan) her mom clearly died in the 2011 Tsunami. They went to Sendai, where Suzume's house got destroyed. It threw me for a loop because all of his movies beforehand had fictional timelines, but the 3/11 timestamp is what hit on it for me. It's kind of an unfair shorthand, because Shinkai doesn't need to exposit on the character's perspectives very much, like if there was suddenly a reveal in a western cartoon that a character's family died in 9/11 or something.

Emma Breslauer

I'm probably a lot kinder on Suzume then I should be, because I like the first half a lot and I like the idea talking about the trauma that came from living through 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The second half is definitely weaker, but I do really like her finding her old journal and seeing all the days after 3/11 being blacked out and having to revisit the site of her old home that was destroyed. My absolute main problem with this movie is DEFINITELY the boy though, he is so bland and adds absolutely nothing thematically besides being eye candy. He has no personal connection to the disaster in the way that Suzume does or the way that ANY of the people they meet in the fun road trip do, we don't even really get much insight into how he feels about his family tradition or how they were affected by the disasters. I think him turning into the chair is SUPPOSED to connect him to Suzume's mother, which might tie into a fear of losing more loved ones to these disasters, but that also might be me giving the movie too much credit and still doesn't make him an interesting character in his own right. "Weathering With You" I had MUCH less patience for lol; everything felt forced and dumb and I just fundamentally could not get over Tokyo getting submerged because of some dumb teenagers wanting to kiss and the narrative completely justifying their decisions. Like what is theme here supposed to be? Fuck trying to do anything about global warming because it might make cute teenage girls die? Also I hate the cameos from the "Your Name" characters, please let them staying in their own not terrible movie.

RadioCommunicationsMaid

I'll say just calling every MC in Makoto Shinkai's movies, Makoto Shinkai instead of their name did a lot of immediate groundwork in convincing me of your point about what kind of a weird loser he is. And that was before you told me about the third movie that was just the same movie again with ten more movies that are just the same movie again. You really hit the nail on the very sad-sack head of Makoto Shinkai with this review.

Kruh-Daze

As someone in the extreme minority who didn’t like Your Name, I feel vindicated by this.

JelloApocalypse

Yeah "Suzume" and "Weathering With You" are like 80% the exact same movie, I think it's up to personal preference which is The One that Pisses You Off lmao

Drednot

The children who speak to lost voices sounds like a love letter to ghibli written like a ransom note. Much like ransom notes are 'written" but cutting letters out of random magazines and news papers and glued together on a sheet of paper. He took all of his favorite scenes across ghibli, cut them out, and made up his own story.

Inky

To be honest I think the Makoto Shinkai formula is a fine story. ONCE.

Clever Chaves

You talked about Ghibli so much during The Children Who Chase Lost Voices that I kinda want to hear Jay and yourself review all of Ghibli.

Clever Chaves

Also, just heard your review of Weathering With You, and there was an interview of Makoto Shinkai talking about it and the ending, that played at the end of the movie when I saw it in theaters. It'll probably not change your opinion too much, but one of the themes of the movie is GLOBAL WARMING, and how the old generation are practically (and technically also literally) sacrificing the new generation to GLOBAL WARMING. This is why it rains all the time, and this is why young rain maidens are sacrificed in order to bring the sun (and prolong GLOBAL WARMING). In the end the main character, who represents the young generation, decides to undo the sacrifice in order to break the cycle, and actually try to deal with GLOBAL WARMING. This is why after the time skip when the Main Character is out of probation, most of Japan has sunk due to GLOBAL WARMING, and the dad specifically says that it's not his (The Young Generation) fault that Japan sank and it never stopped raining, but their (The Old Generation) for never doing anything to stop it or actually try to solve the problem. They doomed Japan for them and everyone yet to come, which is why no one actually gives a shit at the end that Japan is underwater, because no one really is giving a shit right now about all the environmental effects GLOBAL WARMING is causing.

JelloApocalypse

Genuinely Jay and I during the movie said "This movie gives 'Climate Change isn't real' vibes" because the way the story was being told and the way the weather powers were talked about was so reminiscent of those people who say "Don't worry that earth is getting warmer! There have been warm days in the past! It's fine. :)" And everyone saying "It's ok that Japan is underwater now dw about it" at the end is really athematic if he was going for a Global Warming story.

BigMoffers

“Stop being depressed. Your pissing me off. This is about MY needs, Makoto Shinkai. Your mental health is annoying me.” That Is the worst thing for a therapist could say to someone m. Dunno why I pictured the scenario of you saying that while giving him therapy but I did and it was hilarious.

Aimless

So I just read the wiki & apparently he had a daughter a year before The Children Who Chase Lost Voices released. Y'know the one where the main girl imprints on older men & wants them to be her dad.

Vanilla Snow Golem

Jello making fun of people in a way were he acts like how they would act is such a delight

Kiran Nguyen

Weathering With You is actually on HBO Max and the description only mentions the boy going to Tokyo and not the actual weather premise

Bean & Bug

To your fictional (better) version on Weathering With You at the end: I actually watched most of the movie with the assumption that the boy had been abused by his parents due to the fact that he begins his trip to Tokyo with a couple Conspicuous Bandages, and the fact that he's so dead set against returning home even when he's struggling to feed himself. And then at the end he just... gets sent back? And is fine? And I realized I was giving the movie too much credit. That said, I don't dislike the message of "you don't owe anyone your sacrifice, you are literally a child," though it doesn't justify the rest of the ending being... bad.

Elated Megalodon (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-05 14:00 The only part of this video that I will disagree with is "I've never seen a man work in an industry he is demonstrably to untalented to be writing and directing in". Like, that's not inaccurate, but David Cage exists, so-
2024-07-17 06:02 The only part of this that I will disagree with is "I've never seen a man work in an industry he is demonstrably to untalented to be writing and directing in". Like, that's not inaccurate, but David Cage exists, so-

The only part of this that I will disagree with is "I've never seen a man work in an industry he is demonstrably to untalented to be writing and directing in". Like, that's not inaccurate, but David Cage exists, so-

Gabriel Davis

who's better at saying nothing: makoto shinkai or mokoto naegi?

Noah Finch

Just wait until i make my movie that's a rip-off of every makoto Shinkai movie, The words of spring and winter and cats --- train.

Maddy K

As a scholar of early 2010s AMVs, I have to appreciate 5 cm per second for the vital services it provided. Those backgrounds were always there to be jarringly detailed compared to whatever quirky shojo it was paired with 🙏

RockemSockem

If I had a nickel for every time jello yelled at a guy named makoto for his bad writing, I’d have like three nickels, which isn’t much but it’s weird it’s happened thrice