Makoto Shinkai's 'Children Who Chase Voices from Deep Below

Holes Haziran 16, 2022

When I learned that Japan Foundation will be screening Makoto Shinkai's latest work Children Who Chase Voices from Deep Below, I knew there's no way I could miss it.*

Five years ago, 5cm per secondbowled me over. There are few films that conveyed feelings so raw and thorough that completely immersed me into the story of love, anticipation and dejectedness while simultaneously enraptured me with feelings of beauty and grace. Throughout the duration of the film, the director illuminated my screen with sublime hues and grand visual splendour. At the end of the film, I was carried to a great emotional height, struck with mixed feelings of awe and melancholy. It was such a powerful and exquisite piece of work.

Byosoku Go Senchimitaru

Wide landscapes & small subjects evoking a sense of melancholy

A beautiful moment when love is confessed

Shinkai plays with light

Night by the quiet street. Even the illuminated signs look lonely

And now for Children........

The title Children Who Chase Voices from Deep Below alone bears the signature of the author, famed for dealing with themes that connote distance, dreams and hope. This time, Children is a meditation on loss, dealing with grief, and loneliness. Asuna follows her teacher Morisaki on a journey deep below Earth to bring his wife back to life. Along the way, she encounters mystical creatures and a fantastical otherworld. After going through a series of soul-stirring events, she finally realises the very reason of her journey – that she was lonely.

The amount of detail put into the work was laudable, from the creation of the fantastical landscape down to the plotting of Asuna's journey in Agartha. Duly impressed with 5cm per second, I anticipated the same breathtaking emotional ride that Shinkai has proven capable to deliver. However, Childrenfalls short from the high rungs of his previous works. The movie is excellent in its own way in terms of the breadth of imagination and blend of various ethnic elements and myths, but in the pursuit of an adrenaline-pumped adventure, the plot becomes complicated and disengaging up to a point. It lacks the still moments of contemplation that gave 5cm per secondits power and beauty.

Away from the cityscapes to quiet lush greenery

In 5cm per second, Shinkai conveyed distance and longing through moments of stillness and poetic imagery (sakura petals falling, lights flickering on an empty classroom). These moments accumulated tension and culminated in the few climaxes of the film. But with the jam-packed treatment in Children, the emotions that the director wished to convey are somehow lost in the unfolding of events. Apart from the finale where Asuna confesses her loneliness and Morisaki's brief reunion with his wife, the themes of loss and emptiness have disappeared amidst the dramatic twists and turns. As a result, audience' empathy for the characters were not fully evoked.

Our heroine Asuna going about by herself

Another gorgeous scene with impeccable use of sunlight

The gateway to Agartha

One could mistake Children Who Chase Voices from Deep Below as one of Studio Ghibli's work. Indeed the film resembles or to some extent, is influenced by Miyazaki's famous animated fantasy films the likes of Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Laputa, except one could spot Shinkai's trademark blend of CGI and animation in the stunning panoramas. Despite the flaw in the plot, the art design remains the strength of the film. There are some enchanting moments, such as when they submerge into the water and meander along the imposing monuments reminiscent of the Lost Atlantis and fall into an abyss that unveils incredible cliff walls and primeval paintings. I had been excited with the notion of spending the next ninety minutes exploring the mysterious underwater world with the characters, but the next scene shows Asuna and Morisaki back to a land setting – they had traveled to the core of the earth.

A chamber crawled by vines

Our children about to be swallowed by a Quetzlcoatl

The crater that leads down to the Underworld

The journey to Agartha (the Underworld where the dead can be brought alive) is one of vast arid landscapes scattered with ruins. Shinkai did a lot of research and borrowed extensively on myths and legends for the creation of the setting. Agartha is an actual name given to a legendary kingdom at the core of the earth in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, which explains the Tibetan setting of the villagers. The gatekeepers of the Underworld, the Quetzal Coatl, are in fact the name of a deity in Aztec mythology.

Queztlcoatl - the feathered serpent

Years ago in uni, I came across the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, about the man Orpheus who went down the underworld of Hades in search of his beloved wife to resurrect her and bring back to earth. But he was given one condition: while Eurydice climbed up behind him, he was not allowed to look back at her, else she would return to the underworld. So he kept to the rule. But when he climbed out, he turned around while she was not yet out of the cliff, and as a result she fell back to the bottom. Watching Children reminded me about this story, and it is only then that I learned that intriguingly, this story has many variations across cultures. In the film, it noted the myth as part of the Kojiki mythology in Japan. The story is such a teasing embodiment of longing, implying that the very essence of longing makes one lose everything completely.

Orpheus and Eurydice

In this aspect, the film delves beautifully into the theme of life and death, a very heavy topic that has been softly and delicately treaded in the animation. As the village elder in the film remarked after Mimi was swallowed by a Quetzlcoatl: what is lost becomes part of a bigger life. The deceased becomes integrated into the forces around us, perhaps disintegrated into different forms but always there, with us. This slides into the greater philosophy of impermanence, that impermanence is the only constant, and that by attaching to impermanence we suffer pain, as evident in Morisaki's quest to resurrect his wife, who tells him to move on and be happy. Despite the grand scheme of things, the story ultimately hinges on Asuna's discovery about herself, the dormant pain of having lost her father and emptiness of living with an absent parent. The infatuation between her and the boys however is underdeveloped, thereby making the drive for adventure rather forceful.

An impressive Aurora

The amazing clarity

All in all, Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below is a beautiful representation of loss and coming to terms with grief, in my opinion a suitable piece to introduce the subject to kids. But in the effort of bringing so many elements of myths and legends and gripping action together, it sometimes over-complicates and under-develops the story. Nevertheless, be awed by the stunning imagery and landscapes. The visual prowess of director Makoto Shinkai still remains a strong reason to watch the film.

The ending of 5cm per second, my favourite part of the movie and most climactic bit. There could be no other song as fitting as Masayoshi Yamasaki's 'One More Time, One More Chance'.