Makoto Shinkai, the legendary director behind some of the most beautiful anime movies ever made, is teasing a theatrical return in 2025 with a brand new film. Shinkai directed his first feature, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, in 2004 to strong acclaim. Since then he has pumped out beautiful hit after beautiful hit. His most recent success story was 2022’s Suzume, which followed the titular high school girl as she set out to close doors across Japan which brought about magical natural disasters.
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Following Suzume, Makoto Shinkai has kept incredibly quiet about his next feature film. While he has taken the time to praise various new anime series online, his own upcoming work has been kept in the dark… until now, as the director has teased fans on social media with a prospective update about the film.
Makoto Shinkai Teases New Original Anime Movie
Makoto Shinkai took to social media to wish his waves of fans a happy new year. In the post, he reflected on the year just gone and said he’s been hard at work on his next untitled project. “Happy New Year! 2024 was a year I spent working on a new movie,” he wrote.
Shinkai didn’t reveal any plot details, only that the new movie follows his long-running trend of creating original stories for the big screen. “It’s a great joy to build a new world that no one has seen before from scratch with my colleagues,” he continued. No production or release date has been announced for the new film. But Makoto Shinkai promised a much larger update later in the year. “I’ll do my best to announce it in some way this year.” He then closed the tweet by wishing all his fans a happy and peaceful new year, writing, “I hope 2025 will be a peaceful year for everyone.”
[RELATED: Suzume Director Has a New Anime Obsession]
The Unrivaled Beauty of Makoto Shinkai’s Movies
Since his earliest days as a director, Makoto Shinkai has garnered a reputation for overseeing some of the most jaw-dropping animation to ever hit the screen. The director has a penchant for speculative storytelling, with his earliest work, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, being set in an alternate post-WWII timeline that saw Japan divided and ruled by the US and the Soviet Union.
Fans online have cut together compilation after compilation of scenes from Shinkai’s movies, showcasing the breathtaking artwork. Your Name is often considered his best film to date. Released in 2016, the movie follows two teenagers who have never met who can magically swap bodies.
If you’re looking for a more grounded story, then Shinkai’s most down-to-earth (and shortest) film is currently streaming on Netflix. The Garden of Words follows a struggling school student with ambitious dreams of becoming a shoe designer. While skipping school to sit in his favorite garden, he stumbles across an older woman who is struggling with her own life and ambition. Not only is the film stunning, but Shinkai mimicked the qualities of a real camera to accentuate the grounded storytelling. The animation includes focus pulling, and faux-handheld camera shaking, as though it were a live-action feature film that someone had animated over.
H/T: Makoto Shinkai on X
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