If you ever needed proof that the director of Your Name is a visual perfectionist, this is it.

From humble beginnings as “that guy who made an entire OVA by himself,” Makoto Shinkai has risen through the ranks to become anime’s hottest director, and a lot of his success is due to his films’ breathtaking artwork. With an eye for detail and an aesthetic flair, Shinkai crafts glimmering worlds of pure emotion, and he’s in his finest form when he’s depicting the sky.

Because of that, Shinkai’s most recent film, Weathering with You, gave him ample opportunity to show off his talents. Clouds, rain, and sunshine are all important plot points and metaphorical motifs, and the director even says his initial inspiration for the film came while gazing up at the summer sky. But as beautiful as Weathering with You looked in theaters, it turns out he wasn’t 100-percent satisfied with the visuals. The movie came out on Blu-ray and DVD in Japan on Wednesday, but before the home video release Shinkai felt the need to polish up some parts, one of which he shows in the tweet below.

The top half of the image shows how Weathering with You’s theatrical release looked during a heart-pounding scene where young lovers Hodaka and Hina tumble through the sky with outstretched arms. But when Shinkai noticed a (to him) glaring mistake, he says he “went pale in shock.”

So what’s the problem? He forget to add an additional layer of clouds he wanted in the middle-distance background. The home video version, with those missing clouds inserted, can be seen in the bottom half of Shinkai’s tweeted image.

While extensive visual retouches have become the norm for home video releases of anime that originally aired on TV, it’s surprising to hear that the director of 2019’s most lavishly animated big-budget anime film is still making revisions. Shinkai actually says that the home video version of Weathering with You contains a number of other fixes, but that this particular example is the “most noticeable,” proving he’s a true perfectionist when it comes to the way his movies look, even when it comes to things most of us won’t notice.

Source: Twitter/@shinkaimakoto via Hachima Kiko
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