Well, according to the Makoto Shinkai Fan Web (Who performs the wonderful service of translating tidbits from the official Byousoku 5 Centimeter site for us English-speaking Shinkai fans), the final edit of Shinkai's upcoming film had been completed sometime before this previous Tuesday (Jan. 23, 2007) and that it will premiere at the Cinema Rise theater in Tokyo in March 2007! Heck yeah I'm excited!

Check out the screenshots that I've captured from the high-definition preview trailer! You can also download the trailers themselves from the official site, and you can also find subtitled version if you look around (I.E., search on YouTube . I would do it for you, but YouTube was down for maintenance when I was writing this entry...).

Ginko, the Mushi-shi.I've watched the first episode of Mushishi twice already, and I still want to rewatch it again!  It seems to be a strange combination of the "traveler" element of Kino's Journey and the nature spirituality of Princess Mononoke, but that still doesn't give what I just watched justice.

Makoto Shinkai is my most favorite anime director/animator. He doesn't make the most flashiest or most dramatic animes; if anything, they're the shiniest! If Yoshitoshi ABe (Haibane Renmei, Serial Experiments Lain, TEXHNOLYZE, Niea_7 ) is a master of making the extraordinary feel mundane, Makoto Shinkai is the master of making the mundane a visual treat of light, shadow, and color. His first full feature film, The Place Promised in Our Early Days (Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho was the Japanese title), was a flawed masterpiece in many viewers eyes, including mine. It was a film that had affected me more than any other. Shinkai's next film, Byousoku 5 Centimeter, which I had mentioned in an earlier weblog entry, is shaping up to be another visual masterpiece, while returning to his element as a short-story/visual poetry master like with his earlier work with Voices of a Distant Star (Hoshi no Koe), She and Her Cat (Kanojo to Kanojo no neko), and Other Worlds (Tooi Sekai).