After examining Auteur theory, I would like to suggest that director and animator Mamoru Hosoda should be considered an auteur.
Technical competence: Hosoda has been working as an animator between 1991- 2024, demonstrating over thirty years of animation experience. His successes in his freelance work leading to the creation of his own animation studio would be strong evidence of his technical competency alone, even before considering that his 2019 work Mirai was nominated in 2019 for an Academy Award for best-animated feature. His work as an animator likely positively influences his work as a director.
Personal Style: Though Mamoda’s style could be argued to follow typical conventions of Japanese anime style animation, his work is visually distinct from other anime styles, with simple characters with thin line weights and rich fully rendered backgrounds. He embraces somewhat more realistic designs for his characters, embracing the typical rather than highly stylised characters, which is also reflected in the stories he tells.
Interior meaning: Mamoda’s narratives are deeply emotionally led, usually revolving around family stories or close interpersonal relationships, and also frequently uses futuristic or sci-fi elements on his works. There are often no distinct antagonists. Instead, the protagonists are often the makers of their problems, which adds to the more realistic style of the stories he tells- humans do not always encounter an arch-nemesis, but instead struggle because living involves struggle.
