Mamoru Hosoda is a leading contender to succeed Hayao Miyazaki for the title of anime master of masters — the one everyone in the industry, Japanese or foreign, looks up to and steals from.

The Miyazaki influence on Hosoda's own work seems obvious, from his cute-but-realistic style to his concern with pressing social issues and the messy emotions of actual human beings. Hosoda, in fact, once worked for Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli on a project that became 2004's "Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (Howl's Moving Castle)" before Miyazaki decided to take over as director.

At the same time, Hosoda has gone his own non-Miyazaki way. In such films as 2006's "Toki wo Kakeru Shojo (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time)," 2009's "Sama Wozu (Summer Wars)" and his new "Okami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki (Wolf Children)" he has integrated fantastic elements into otherwise everyday settings rather than, Miyazaki-like, create his own fantastic worlds in which universal dramas play out. In "Summer Wars," his masterpiece to date, the rogue computer program that brings the digitally dependent modern world to a screeching halt may be a social nightmare, but it is within the realm of possibility.