Shinkai's Lovers Ranked by Minutes Spent Together

Taki and Mitsuha get about four and a half minutes together in Your Name, out of a hundred and seven. One Makoto Shinkai couple gets more than an hour, and for most of it one of them is a chair. Five Makoto Shinkai couples ranked by the minutes they actually spend together on screen, in the same place at the same time, with dreams, body swaps and phone calls left out. Taki and Mitsuha in Your Name (CoMix Wave Films, 2016) share about four and a half minutes of what was once the highest grossing Japanese film ever, Takaki and Akari in 5 Centimeters per Second get about seven, most of it one snowy night at Iwafune station, and Takao and Yukari in The Garden of Words get about eighteen and a half minutes, the biggest share of any human couple of the five, rationed by the rainy season. Hodaka and Hina in Weathering with You get about thirty five minutes, and the film makes Hina pay for the sunshine. Number one is Suzume and Souta in Suzume, about sixty four minutes, nearly fifty of them with Souta cursed by the cat Daijin into a three legged child's chair, and Shinkai himself explains why he made the chair her primary interest. Every quoted line of dialogue is from the films' English subtitle tracks, and Shinkai's own words come from his published interviews with Looper, Letterboxd and Electric Sheep. Chapters 0:00 The Stopwatch 0:35 The Rule 1:07 Five 2:07 Four 3:17 Three 4:30 Two 5:23 One 6:14 Take the Chair Away 7:16 A Girl and a Chair More at Cutscene HQ:    / @watch-cutscene   #MakotoShinkai #YourName #Suzume #Anime #VideoEssay