Makoto Shinkai Retrospective: Children Who Chase Lost Voices
Makoto Shinkai’s follow-up to 2007’s divisive 5 Centimeters per Second was perhaps his most deliberately mainstream movie yet —2011's Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below — inexplicably released in some countries (including the UK) under the alternative title Journey to Agartha.
It’s as if some producer or other told Shinkai “Ok, we’ve seen you do frustrated teenage romance with separation by time, space or reality several times now. Why don’t you stop all that nonsense and give us an ersatz Studio Ghibli movie? Preferably like one by Miyazaki. People like those.”
And Shinkai replied “Fine. But it’s still going to be about separation. By death. Lots of death. Death for everyone! I’ll give you Ghibli! Bwa ha ha ha ha!” Cracks fingers.
So that’s how Shinkai’s Lost Voices originated, or how I imagine it did, anyway. Now the theme of death isn’t exactly alien to children and family movies. Many of Disney’s classic animated films feature characters whose lives are shaped by the deaths of their loved ones — Dumbo, Bambi, The Lion King, while multiple Ghibli films also deal with similarly serious, mortal subject matter, such as Howl’s Moving Castle, Grave of the Fireflies and Princess Mononoke.
SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS FOLLOW
Each of the three central characters in Lost Voices has somehow been touched by death, and the manner in which they each deal with it differs. Protagonist Asuna is an 11-year-old latchkey kid — her father died in her infancy, leaving her widowed mother to struggle in her challenging nursing profession, working long night shifts, and leaving Asuna to fend for herself much of the time. Asuna is lonely and struggles to relate to children her own age. When Asuna meets mysterious boy Shun, a profound friendship is quickly kindled, Shun says to her “you’re just like me” — a wanderer, someone who feels inexplicably called to distant places elsewhere. Unfortunately the sickly Shun dies minutes into the film and Asuna struggles to process his sudden absence.
Asuna’s substitute teacher Mr. Morisaki is an intense individual, deeply scarred by the loss of his physically frail wife a decade earlier. He is obsessed with finding the secret of legendary underground world Agartha, for he believes the means to resurrect his beloved lies somewhere deep within the Earth. In service of his obsession he joins Gnostic military organisation Arch Angel, the only group that acknowledge the existence of the mythical Agartha. Asuna unwittingly accompanies Morisaki on his singleminded quest to break the laws of life and death, and surprisingly it’s their quasi-father-daughter relationship that defines the story, rather than any central romance.
Finally, conflicted Agarthan native Shin, younger brother of Shun, travels to the surface world to retrieve his brother’s body, and the magical blue crystal (the “clavis” — Latin for “key”) he smuggled out of his homeland. Having internalised the pain of his loss (following his cremation of his brother’s corpse), he is initially hostile to Asuna, and his actions lead both Asuna and Morisaki through the magic-protected portal and interstitial sea to the (presumably gravitationally inverted) underworld of Agartha. Becoming a pariah amongst his own people, he struggles with feelings of grief, anger, duty and perhaps attraction towards Asuna. Only later in a moment of mutual weakness and understanding are they able to together grieve the loss of Shun.
Asuna herself isn’t too far a departure from the archetypal Miyazaki female heroine. Mostly upbeat and energetic, her motives for dropping her chance at returning to her normal life, instead accompanying Morisaki, are quite unclear in the film. (In fact her motivations are only plainly spelt out in the novelisation, of which more later.) Unlike Morisaki, she’s not driven by a sense of profound injustice that she’s lost both her father and her new friend. Mostly she struggles to process her feelings and instead throws herself into an adventure. Morisaki at one point even asks her “Are you enjoying this?”, several days into their long hike through the depopulated land, filled with empty and ancient ruins, evidence of a grand civilisation long past its peak. It’s clear that the answer is yes, Asuna is having the time of her life, while Morisaki broods over his bereavement.
Morisaki reminds me a great deal of Muska, the main villain from Miyazaki’s 1986 masterpiece Laputa: Castle in the Sky (my personal favourite Ghibli movie). Muska is a similarly driven individual, intense and bespectacled just like Morisaki, yet, unusually for a Miyazaki character, he has almost no redeeming features. His greed and selfishness ultimately lead to his comeuppance and death, whereas while Morisaki does suffer consequences for his semi-antagonistic actions, he acts considerately (sometimes even with obvious paternal care) towards Asuna and regrets involving her in his schemes.
During the climactic confrontation with Agartha’s disturbing (some might even say Biblical) multi-eyed deity, it’s only by sheer bad luck and coincidence that a sacrifice/vessel for the soul of Morisaki’s wife is found in the form of Asuna’s body, at least in the movie version. Morisaki wishes Asuna had never accompanied him (he had initially left her behind to set off alone), yet is still willing to accept the consequences of his wife’s existence overwriting Asuna’s.
In the novel, there’s an extra scene preceding these events where Asuna and Morisaki meet a woman who was resurrected by her lover who sacrificed their own existence to bring her back to life. That lends extra weight to Morisaki’s decision to proceed alone, and additional pathos when Asuna catches up to him, against his wishes. I’m unsure if this scene was in the original screenplay, but at 116 minutes it’s already a fairly hefty runtime for a family-friendly animated adventure movie, so perhaps difficult editing choices were made. (It’s still shorter than Laputa though…)
Unlike Shinkai’s previous work, any romantic undertones are half-baked at most, and perhaps that’s for the best considering the heroine’s age. She obviously finds Shun attractive (he does save her from a slavering boar-monster-thing) and also kisses her on the forehead, so you can forgive her young maiden’s heart for fluttering, and you can also forgive her for hoping that very-similar-in-appearance Shin might treat her like his gentle older brother did. It’s clear that as they interact, Asuna and Shin do have an effect on one another, but there’s a refreshing lack of gooey-eyed adolescent introspective mush, such as overflowed from Voices of a Distant Star and 5 Centimeters per Second. I’d almost say this change of focus makes this the least Shinkai-like Shinkai movie, and also the film most likely to appeal to those who can’t stand his other works.
This difference is unfortunately due to Shinkai’s slavish attempt to homage the best of Ghibli’s oeuvre, and in doing so it strangles his own individual voice. Like him or loathe him, Shinkai’s works are usually easily identifiable by their hyperreal, ultradetailed artwork with incredible use of colour almost unlike any other anime filmmaker. Lost Voices subdues almost every aspect of Shinkai’s personality — it remains a gorgeous production, but even the beautiful fantasy backdrops, detailed and colourful as they are, lack that otherworldly Shinkai quality — which is ironic, considering the subject matter. In a way, it’s so generic an anime fantasy that had I not known Shinkai was the director, I probably would not have guessed.
That’s not to say Lost Voices is a bad film — it certainly isn’t, it’s very accessible and entertaining. It kept my 12-year-old son’s attention throughout, which is no easy task, and I doubt I could have shown any of Shinkai’s previous works to him — he’d have been bored stiff. I’m also an easy mark for this kind of explorative grand adventure fantasy, so I’d have probably enjoyed it even if it weren’t immaculately presented. What it lacks in comparison to the Ghibli films it so desperately seeks to emulate is both focus and clarity.
The best children’s films feature protagonists with easily definable goals. Sprited Away’s Chihiro works desperately hard in order to save her parents. Howl’s Moving Castle’s Sophie works for mercurial wizard Howl in the hope she might regain her youth, and also because of her love for him. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’s titular princess wants to do her best for her people and to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Laputa’s Sheeta wants to reach the floating island to solve the mystery of her origins and to prevent its secrets from being misused. Lost Voices’ Asuna doesn’t even know what she wants until the end, and she’s mostly an accessory to Morisaki, who is the main plot instigator.
Reminiscent of the best of Ghibli (and most notably Laputa and Princess Mononoke), though, Lost Voices features fascinating imagery — whether it’s tantalising glimpses of fallen civilisations via intricately designed ruins, or freaky-looking creatures with pointy teeth and slavering maws, these designs could have come from any film made by Miyazaki’s famed studio. A Miyazaki-esque enivironmentalism undercurrent is present thoughout, though barely explored — people from Agartha can’t survive long on the surface world due to “contamination” of the environment, the same thing causes the ancient guardian monsters to lose their minds.
In terms of worldbuilding, much is left unexplained, which is usually fine, but the presence of a day/night cycle within the subterranean world bugged me. At no point does Shinkai even try to explain how this works. Is the entire Earth hollow? Is Agartha the underside of a hollow Earth with inverted gravity (shades of Patema Inverted…)? Is perhaps the Earth’s core analogous to the sun? (Has anyone else seen similarly-themed French animated series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea? I loved that as a kid.) Why at “night time” under the Earth are there vivid auroras in the “sky”? What is the source of the radiation that causes them? Neither novel nor manga versions elaborate on this either. The novel briefly poses the conundrum of subterranean day and night, but then sweeps it under the strata. Anime is often guilty of overexplaining its fantasy worlds — Lost Voices could have done with a bit more exposition than merely handwaving and hoping the audience doesn’t notice.
One major plot point goes essentially unconfirmed directly in the film, but is fairly easy (at least for an attentive adult) to elucidate — and that’s the indentity of Asuna’s father. It’s very clear that Asuna herself is half-surface-dweller and half-Agarthan. The facts that her father died young and left her behind a magic blue stone are big hints, but then so is the interest the creepy six-limbed Izoku have in Asuna as someone who is “unclean”, to be eradicated from the world. It’s also heavily hinted that Asuna is the daughter of Shun’s absent teacher, who left years before to explore the surface world, against the laws of his village. Such subtext becomes plainly spoken text in the novel, and I expect my son never picked up on any of this from the film version. It does lead me to wonder what, if anything, does Asuna’s mother know of Agartha?
The biggest theme in the film is grief, the importance of accepting the separation caused by death as both a blessing and a curse, and moving on with life. Morisaki’s inability to do this consumes him and brings untold harm to both himself and others. Even at the very end, Morisaki chooses to stay in Agartha, to wander in search of another way to fulfil his dream. Asuna wisely chooses to return to her surface life, and to grow up. Shin can’t follow her, so they are separated — but unlike Shinkai’s other films, this isn’t the focus of the ending. The novel ends with the promise that perhaps one day Shin and Asuna might meet again.
Once more, Shinkai is joined by his close collaborator and composer Tenmon who provides a relaxing, classically instrumental cinematic score. He’s no Joe Hisaishi unfortunately, and I can’t recall any particular standout tracks, whereas it’s been years since I last saw Laputa and I can still hear the theme in my head.
I’ve already mentioned the novelisation several times now. In English, it’s published in a combined volume with the 5 Centimeters per Second novelisation by Makoto Shinkai himself. The Lost Voices adaptation is by Asahi Akisaka though, who as far as I can see has had no other work translated into English. It’s a very short book, and is mostly a functional but faithful and clear retelling of the movie in prose form. Aside from a few short additional scenes here and there, it’s almost like the screenplay transferred directly to the page, and it works pretty well. We get a little more insight into Asuna’s personality, especially her difficulty in socialising, and in regards to her deep loneliness. It’s definitely worth reading soon after watching the film to help clarify some of the vaguer aspects of the story.
There’s also a three-volume manga adaptation, with very simplified, almost cutesy artwork, but unfortunately this is unavailable in English, and even the scanlators seem to have given up after volume two. There are some pretty big changes to the plot in the manga, and I wish the third volume were available for me to see where they were going with it.
Lost Voices seems to be the most forgotten of Shinkai’s works in the West, which is weird, as it seemed to have been the one most calculated to court mainstream success. Perhaps it’s because it was unavailable for a long time in both UK and US. The UK release was handled by Kaze via their distribution deal with Manga Entertainment. When Kaze exited the UK market, many of their titles were left in license limbo. Similarly in the US, the rights for Lost Voices were held by Sentai, whose license expired several years ago. Thankfully over the past couple of years, Anime Limited in the UK and GKIDs in the US rescued the licenses and we’ve seen new home releases of a film that deserves to be seen more widely.
It’s interesting to see that by general cultural measures, Shinkai’s first attempt at mainstream commercial success failed to make a lasting impression on the anime industry and fandom as a whole, and his next work, The Garden of Words, would be much more in line with his earlier work. Who could have guessed that following this, the arguable perfection of the Shinkai aesthetic, Your Name, would come to be an international megahit, without trying to ape another studio or another director’s successes. Of course these are stories for another day. Thanks for reading!
Children Who Chase Lost Voices (Journey to Agartha)
Cinematography, written and directed by: Makoto Shinkai
Music by: Tenmon
Production studio: CoMix Wave Films
Japanese cinematic release: 7th May 2011
UK blu-ray release: (as Journey to Agartha) 28th January 2013, Manga Entertainment/Kaze (as Children Who Chase Lost Voices) 5th April 2021, Anime Limited.
US Blu-ray release: 7th June 2022, GKIDS/Shout Factory
Languages: Japanese audio with English subtitles, English audio.
Runtime: 116 minutes
BBFC rating: 12
Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below (novel)
Written by: Asahi Akisaka
Japanese publisher: Media Factory
Japanese Publication date:August 2012
Published in the US as: Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below + 5 Centimeters per Second (Hardcover)
US Publisher: Yen Press
US Publication date: 4th May 2021
Page count: 192
Translated by: Taylor Engel
ISBN: 978–1975315–69–6
Hoshi o Ou Kodomo (manga)
Story by: Makoto Shinkai
Art by: Mitani Tomoko
Published by: Media Factory
Serialised in: Comic Flapper (2011–2012)
Number of volumes: 3
English translation: None legally available, scanlations incomplete.
