There is no arguing that Makoto Shinkai will go down in history as one of the greatest anime artists of our generation.
There are so few other names that stand as tall as his, and although often compared to Miyazaki, Shinkai's work could not be more different.
And it is in this difference that made such a monumental influence on anime as we know it.
Where Miyazaki's films aim to transport you into another world to escape from the problems of our own, Shinkai works to ground you as firmly as possible into reality.
My passion for anime and Japanese culture as a whole can easily be traced back to one single moment when I stumbled onto a blog post comparing the locations from Yuru Camp, one of my favorite animes at the time, to their real-life counterparts.
This completely changed the way I watched anime, and it was that very same day that I started planning my own trip to Japan, which would eventually become the first season of the Anime Expedition and create my now-dream to move there someday.
Recounting this chain of events, I became curious about just how anime got to this point where nearly every external location is a photo-accurate representation of a real-world place.
Obviously, we can't talk about Makoto Shinkai or real-life anime for that matter without mentioning "Your Name," which not only further popularized anime in the West, especially in the non-shonen category,
but it was also one of the first times an anime location has gone viral, causing hundreds if not thousands of fans to fly across the globe in order to visit the iconic staircase.
And if you visited the steps for yourself, you'd know that there's a map left there that directs you to more Your Name locations all across Tokyo.
