Read my essay on Makoto Shinkai in The Criterion Collection

Life achievement unlocked!

Well, this is one of the coolest (and most surreal) announcements I’ve ever gotten to make: I was invited to write an essay for the Criterion Collection in tandem with the Criterion Channel’s currently-running Makoto Shinkai series, and, true to my Weekly Suit Gundam roots, chose to focus on the anime auteur’s early mecha short, Voices of a Distant Star.

You can read that essay - Thoughts Transcending Time and Distance: Makoto Shinkai’s Voices of a Distant Star - now by clicking here and following the link!

Suffice it to say, this is one of the coolest professional projects I’ve ever been a part of. I am a big fan of the Criterion Collection and all the great work they do, as evidenced by the unhealthy number of Criterion discs I own and the overwhelming amount of shelf space they take up (the above picture doesn’t capture the shelf of box sets). Writing for them in any capacity has long been a bucket list item, so I really couldn’t be happier to share this essay with everyone today.

They actually reached out to me because of another piece published on this very site - my review of Shinkai’s Suzume from last year. And the essay I wrote, on Shinkai’s Voices of a Distant Star, stems from work done for our Weekly Suit Gundam podcast and my Giant Robots on Film! class I taught at the University of Iowa a few years back, so it’s all a very full circle moment to have this come together this way.

So once again - please head over to Criterion’s Current page and take a look at the essay! This is one of Shinkai’s lesser-seen early works, but it’s streaming (alongside most of his films up through Your Name) on The Criterion Channel right now, so I hope this encourages more people to check out one of the director’s most singular, special works.