The answer is simple: "Makoto Shinkai's animation movies all grips me, just like Hayaou Miyazaki's animation movies does". There, comparison made!

I've studied to become a film scholar, and I know my fair share of film theory, so I also know how easy it is to lose sense of the important aspects of a film when one's head is filled with technicalities. What our breed does is to lose sight of what really makes a film appealing to its audience. What makes someone feel they just saw a great movie can definitely be technical brilliance, or creative innovation, but chiefly it is the emotional impact it has. In this sense, Shinkai really knows to stir the emotions of his viewers, on a somewhat similar level to what Miyazaki does.

To us who've indulged ourselves in the structure of cinema, it does become apparent that in reality Miyazaki has a much bigger talent for his art than Shinkai does. At least as far as film theory is concerned. But we've got to realize that we are a minority, and the aspects which we praise may go entirely unnoticed by the average viewer. And our perspective on this does in no way have monopoly on truth. It may well be that our way of viewing films is entirely wrong, and the average viewers judgment is the right one. Maybe we're both right. What ultimately matters is that peoples comparison of Shinkai and Miyazaki does not need to be justified. In the end, there is no true objectivity to this art.

His major films, Places Promised, Voices, and 5cm, have all been clones of the same general theme, evoking the same emotion. His art style is glossy and impressive, but his characters and narrative are hollow. His films rely mostly on his very talented ability to infuse emotion and mood into a scene and little else. That has worked up until now.

With "Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo", he unfortunately cannot rely on that, and thus the film suffers terribly, with characters being very flat and the emotional content very unconvincing. The setting of "Agartha" is artificial and the relationships between the characters are wholly unsatisfying. A male character with flowing long hair dashes in front of the heroine to rescue her from a monster. A few minutes later, she has developed a deep affection for him that she will risk her life for. This is the sort of amateur plot devices that are found in this film.

Satoshi Kon created social dramas, comedies, and thrillers before people started calling him a genius. Hayao Miyazaki branched from sci-fi, to children's films, to mythological dramas to young love stories, and won over adults and children alike. It seems to me that it is purely the new internet crowd, mostly consisting of young viewers, who have jumped to establish Shinkai as being a successor to these sorts of accomplished people based on a small collection of films, most of which have been variations of the same idea.

Mr Imperiale, I have a suggestion for your next article – please explain to me exactly why Shinkai deserves to be put on the pedestal and either called, or compared to, one of the greatest Japanese animators, based on a relatively shallow and repetitious collection of films, with his newest one recieving a strong beating from reviewers already when it attempts to go beyond it.