Directed by: Makoto Shinkai
Written by: Makoto Shinkai, Clark Cheng (English script)
Starring: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Ryo Narita
IMDb Link
I didn't know anything about this film going in to it, other than that it's currently extremely popular in Japan. I'm happy to say that I went in blind and came out smiling.
*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*
Your Name is a bit strange in its initial premise, but not unheard of; it focuses on two characters, Taki and Mitsuha, who begin to randomly switch bodies in their sleep. Taki is a boy living in Tokyo, Mitsuha a girl living in the mountainous countryside. The two are oblivious to this phenomenon at first, believing each other's lives to be nothing more than dreams, but they quickly become aware of each other through comments from their friends and notes they've left for the other to find. Through this strange link between the two, they forge a friendship by helping each other out with their respective social lives; Taki makes Mitsuha more popular, and Mitsuha helps Taki get with a girl at his workplace. The film does a great job of mixing comedy and romance, as Taki and Mitsuha constantly bicker through notes and try to fight being honest about their insecurities; it's a cool dynamic, as the two technically don't know each other but are quite intimately aware of their existences. The film explores the lives of both characters in detail, offering you the internal perspective of both to make them likable and easy to invest in. It helps as well that the voice acting is excellent, with the two leads sounding natural in their emotions to me despite the language barrier.
Like any romance, the film eventually exchanges the comedy for some drama, but Your Name does it in a way that's definitely unexpected; I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, but I appreciate what they ultimately do with it. After dating the girl that he works with, Taki realises that he has fallen for Mitsuha, but at the same time they stop body switching, so Taki decides to travel the countryside trying to find the small town in which she lives (why he never asked her, I'm not sure). It's during this exploration that Taki discovers that Mitsuha's town was destroyed by a comet three years ago, and that a third of the town's population was killed, including Mitsuha. Yeah, it's not enough that he's body switching, he's travelling through time too. From here the film's plot starts to get culturally specific, as Taki manages to cause a switch one more time by going to Mitsuha's family shrine and drinking fermented saki that she made herself. The whole time travel aspect is over-complicated and little bizarrely executed, but it sets up the finale so well that I can except it.
Seriously, the finale is the highlight of the movie, with very real stakes set creating a huge amount of tension. I'm not going to spoil anything from here, but the film goes all-in and comes out with more than a few somber emotional moments that'll probably hit you right in the gut. The film's slightly meandering steps during its character building stage are contrasted here with breakneck speed an intensity, and even if you aren't a fan of the concept this film offers a lot to the themes of love and what it can cause people to do.
Past the plot and characters, the film looks and sounds amazing. Every type of animation has been getting better and better, which Your Name acting as another example of how far we've come, while the soundtrack sets the mood of every scene perfectly.
This feels shallow, but I don't think I can say anything new without spoiling the finale, since it really hammers home what has been built up over the previous hour of the movie, so I'll just let my verdict summarise my thoughts
The Verdict: Your Name is a beautiful film, a character-focused long-distance romance with a few high-concept twists that enhance the urgency within the plot's finale. While it's not the most accessible film, being foreign, animated, and complex in nature, but I highly recommend this film to people who aren't turned away by those factors, because the film does an excellent job at maintaining investment in its characters, even when the plot takes an even stranger turn.
Rating: 8/10
Published February 23rd, 2017
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