Jay Patel

the prompt. try it yourself and show me what you get (mine took an afternoon of back and forth with opus 5.5 in claude code) Create a short animated film for the web that looks completely like a Japanese anime feature by Makoto Shinkai, as if it were taken from a finished theatrical film. It is traditional-looking 2D anime, not a 3D animation, a moving illustration or a web graphic. Build it in code only and make it run live in the browser: no images, no video, no 3D model files, no AI-generated assets, no samples. Every background, cloud, star and sound is generated by the code. Use any libraries and techniques you want, including 3D, as long as every frame looks hand drawn and hand painted. Use Makoto Shinkai's films as the reference for skies, light, backgrounds, colour and atmosphere. The main character is an original old one-car Japanese rural diesel train. No people appear. SCENE Summer dusk at a tiny seaside station at the end of a rural line. Evening cicadas, a level crossing bell, enormous pink and gold thunderheads over a calm sea. An empty one-car train in cream and crimson pulls in, its windows warm and empty. Its destination sign rolls and stops on 銀河 (Galaxy). The platform lamps flicker on one by one, fireflies rise from the grass, the doors close. The train departs along the coast as the poles flash past. Ahead, the rails begin to glow, leave the shore and run out across the sea. The wheels lift off the water and the spray turns into stars. The train climbs a spiral of light through towers of moonlit cloud, bursts out above the sea of clouds and rides into the Milky Way. Back on the ground, the empty station sleeps, the crossing bell rings one last time, and a tiny light crosses the galaxy overhead. ANIME QUALITY STANDARD Every frame must look as if it was drawn by professional animators and painted by master background artists for a finished theatrical film. Train: a hand-drawn anime train that feels old, heavy and loved: cel-coloured forms, faded paint, grime and rust, believable details (cab windows, roll sign, doors, seats, hanging straps). Keep it on-model from every angle. Line art: confident, delicate ink lines with subtle variation in thickness, fading out on distant scenery. Colouring: traditional cel colouring with clean colour areas, hard-edged shadows and coloured (violet, blue) shadow sides. Backgrounds: richly detailed painted backgrounds: the platform, the name board, a glowing vending machine, utility poles and sagging wires, summer grass, the seawall, islands on the horizon. Skies: Shinkai skies: towering cumulonimbus painted lobe by lobe with sunlit tops, pink and gold edges and violet shadows; the deep blue hour; a vivid Milky Way in purples, pinks and blues; shooting stars; the moon. Light and compositing: lens flares, glow, glitter on the water, light particles, gradient overlays, film grain. Light should feel like the main character's mood. Animation: real anime timing: characters and effects on twos, strong holds, mechanical weight in the train, overlapping motion in grass, wires, straps, fireflies and spray. Sound: an original score and sound design, synthesized in code: piano theme on the IV V iii vi progression, strings, celesta, choir, a key change on the climb; higurashi cicadas, the crossing bell, the diesel railcar, rail joints, doors, night insects, waves. Direction: cinematic shots, thoughtful staging, pacing that starts quietly, builds and ends in a soaring climax, then one quiet shot to land it. IT MUST NOT LOOK LIKE 3D: no plastic materials, CGI shading, visible polygons or game-engine lighting. Vector or web art: no simple geometric shapes, uniform outlines, flat corporate illustration, basic gradients, sliding layers or software easing. AI art: no warped shapes, melted details, flicker or changing designs. Amateur work: no stiff poses, empty backgrounds, repeated elements, muddy colours, placeholders or unfinished details. The film should feel nostalgic, bittersweet and full of wonder, like the last train of summer leaving for somewhere you can't follow. Before finishing, render random frames as still images and inspect them. If any frame does not look like a still from a Shinkai film, keep improving it. You are free to change any part of this prompt if it gives a better result.