What about the other Mamoru? Oshii has a very large output but I excluded him for two reasons: One, his output contained more franchise films than original or adapted works, and two he seems to have dove into live action more recently.
So, what is the trajectory of Mamoru Hosoda like? Well, before going into feature films, he started on shorts in the Digimon franchise and did a couple other projects like Kitaro short and Superflat Monogram. His first film, One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island was similar in some ways to Miyazaki's Castle of Cagliostro in that it's based on a TV series but takes it in a different stylistic direction. I can't find the film available in English so I'll just say that it's a cartoony sort of fantasy.
His breakout film, though, was The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. It's a sci fi adaptation, screen written by Satoko Okudera, and is set in a relatively current version of Tokyo. It is more of a straightforward story than Hosoda's later films. Personally I find it a bit too traditionally anime with the characters but I'm sure others will disagree. After this film, comes Summer Wars. It had the same screenwriter and was his last film at Madhouse. This film is science fiction again but is his first internet oriented sci fi movie. It arguably panders too much to male anime fans but I like it regardless because it has some of the most in depth character drama of any of his films. This film starts to crystalize some of his traits as a filmmaker by staying in the present day for one and keeping the focus on everyday people but not so everyday situations.
His next film, the last written by Okudera, was The Wolf Children. This is the first film made at Studio Chizu and is a fantasy film about a woman who raises two children after the death of her partially wolf husband. It deals with her children slowly growing up and finding their way and how she deals with it as well. This film is notable for being fantasy instead of sci fi like his last two films but also for a more rural setting for most of the film which is like Summer Wars in that respect. The next film, The Boy and the Beast, Hosoda wrote himself. It's a film about a boy who is raised in the world of beasts by a fighter of a hairy beast. It has good visuals but the characters aren't too interesting. The next film, Mirai, also written by him, has better characters but a stop and go storyline. It's a family oriented fantasy about a boy who learns things with the help of other members of his family, from the past, and through his older baby sister from the future, whose name also means Future in Japanese.
For his most recent film, Hosoda combines Summer Wars with Beauty and the Beast. This film has its flaws too, but in my opinion, is the best of the films that he's written himself. It is called a 'science fantasy' film on Wikipedia. It's appropriate because it focuses largely on fantasy beings inside of the web world and because some of the technology is a bit too futuristic for the time it's set in. It's a bit drab and the characters are often a bit too tropey again, but it's got some very compelling drama that somewhat makes up for it.
So with Hosoda, he went from a fantasy franchise film, did two films in science fiction, branched out into fantasy, only with one that's partially set in a different world, and otherwise kept focused on contemporary real world stories. And then went back from fantasy to a more science fantasy story. Hosoda's filmography has one thing in common with Miyazaki and Takahata by ending with fantasy, at least for the moment but shows more sci fi commitment than the films of either of them, or from Makoto Shinkai.
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