Makoto Shinkai

Makoto Shinkai (born 1973) is a Japanese animator and director whose Your Name (2016) became one of the highest-grossing anime films ever made, followed by Weathering with You and Suzume. Long dubbed “the next Miyazaki” — a comparison he rejects — he began as a solo creator, famously animating his early short Voices of a Distant Star almost single-handedly on a home computer.

A tool for the next generation

Promoting Suzume in Mumbai in April 2023, Shinkai was asked about AI and answered with unusual warmth for a marquee animator: “AI is actually quite great. It can make animation, write scripts and create music,” he said, describing himself as someone who thinks very positively about the technology and hopes it becomes a really powerful tool. His stated dream: to think of a movie, draw the storyboard, hand it to AI, and receive the film.

Shinkai was equally clear about the limits of his own adoption — he has not used AI animation tools himself and expects the generation after him to be the one that truly wields them. He suggested AI could take on in-between animation and similar labor, easing the chronic overwork and staffing shortages of Japan’s animation industry.

The stance sets him apart within anime, where Hayao Miyazaki’s disgust at an AI animation demo — “an insult to life itself” — remains the most quoted line in the debate. Shinkai, who built his career proving one person with software could rival a studio, sees the next leverage-multiplier where his elders see a desecration.