Watch out Hayao Miyazaki, you've got some serious, new competition
Hailed as the new Hayao Miyazaki, Makoto Shinkai is one of the brightest new stars of Japanese animation.
His new film, A Chain of Short Stories About their Distance, is now available on DVD. The animated feature comprises three related stories about young love and loss. This is Shinkai in his element - visual poetry that is widely imaginative, achingly beautiful and melancholic.
The young animator was born in 1973 in Nagano Prefecture and studied literature at university. He had developed a passion for animation and manga at high school, when he came across his favourite Miyazaki film Castle in the Sky.
A passionate animator, he spent seven years working on his first short, She and Her Cat, which tells a touching story about the relationship between a cat and a young woman from the perspective of the feline. The monochrome short won the grand prize at the 2000 DoGA CG Animation contest.
Shinkai's breakthrough short, Voices of a Distant Star, is a futuristic love story about two teenagers separated by time and space. This success was followed by the feature-length The Place Promised in Our Early Days, which was released in Japan in November 2004. The critically acclaimed animated feature won several awards in Japan, Korea and North America.
