Your Name

One morning, a girl named Mitsuha, who wishes for a different life outside of her Japanese countryside home, wakes up in the body of a Tokyo high school student named Taki.  Taki himself winds up in Mistuha’s body.  Following initial confusion, the two begin to bond through their shared experiences, despite the fact they have never met in person.  As the bond between Mitsuha and Taki deepens, a disaster looms overhead that will rock both of them to the core.  Between faith and friendship, love and time, one of the most powerful Anime tales ever conceived is about to be told.

Your Name…Your Name…Your…Name.  It was the title I could not stop hearing about for months.  During the tail end of 2016, it was either this movie or Yuri on Ice that was being treated like it was the second coming for Anime fans worldwide.  Upon it’s release in Japan, Your Name shattered every single international box office record known to man, becoming one of Japan’s top 5 highest grossing films and enjoying a span of almost twelve weeks at #1 on the Japanese Box Office Charts (it was dethroned briefly by Death Note: Light up the New World but was back on top soon after).  Some critics, especially Anime News Network, hailed it as one of the best movies of 2016 and it even became a possibility that this film could get a nomination for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars.  Wow.  When a film gets hyped this much, it already has a lot going against it.  What if it fails miserably?  What if it’s over hyped?  What if im just not impressed?  Well considering I knew next to nothing about the film besides the hype and the director, it was going to be an interesting viewing to say the least.

And by the end I was crying…not as bad as other people in the theater but still, frak you world, they hype was met.  No it was surpassed.  Makoto Shinkai pat yourself on the back cause you kicked all kinds of ass here buddy.

There are almost a million and one things to talk about when it comes to Your Name.  The story connects on levels you never thought it would.  It starts with a pretty neat spin on “Freaky Friday” before slowly turning into one of the most heart tugging love stories ever written by modern man.  The two leads are so freaking likeable, every single action they did mattered to me and I was actively rooting for them to eventually find each other in the end.  The animation grabbed you and pulled you against the screen, demanding your attention and keeping it for a good two hours.  The freaking comet is so gorgeous it sometimes steals the show, despite the doom it might seem to bring later on.

What makes this movie work for me personally, is that it reminds me a lot of why I like Anime to begin with.  A love story about body swapping lovers?  Not my cup of tea.  And it’s definitely not a story I’d see if it was a live action flick either.  But in Anime form, this seemingly silly story felt ready to go past all boundaries to get itself told.  And it did.  The humor and the heartfelt moments both gelled really well and while the switch from humor to serious is a little sudden, Your Name never loses its drive or your attention.  I kind of pieced together some of the secrets behind Mitsuha and Taki’s ability to switch but I never once let that distract me and it continued to bypass my expectations as to where it was all going in the end.  This is what Anime does best for me: takes standard imagination, kicks out the wall that is a barrier and takes you beyond everything you’ve come to expect. 

I really wish I could go into some more details about certain scenes and plot points but this is a movie I think you should see as Spoiler Free as possible, like I did.  Even if youre not an Anime fan, hell if youre a big romantic buff, this film will blow you away with just how good it is and how invested you are in everything.  Though, if I did have to criticize one thing, it’s the very end.  It could have taken two minutes to get to the final moment of Your Name.  Instead, they pad it out for about ten minutes and I was getting antsy for the conclusion to be reached.  It was there and, while I didn’t want the movie to end, they were taking a little too long to wrap up the main plot point.  Other than that, this film is pretty freaking flawless. 

Yep, I’ll stand by the praise and Your Name belongs on the same pedestal as Akira and Spirited Away.  It’s a film that shows what Anime is truly capable of and can appeal to both fans of the genre and casual movie goers alike.  There’s romance, there’s humor (I laughed every time Taki popped up in Mitsuha’s body and immedietly grabbed her boobs just as her kid sister came in and wondered WTF was wrong with her), there’s edge of your seat suspense and a literal race against time that you might not see coming but when it does, you’re in it.  Your with Taki and Mitsuha til the end.  It was a journey I wont soon forget and an Anime that moved me to tears.  I cant remember the last time that happened.  

I’ll end this review with a quote from Matt Smith’s 11^th Doctor from Doctor Who, that I think sums up my final thoughts on Your Name’s plot perfectly.

“The universe is big, it's vast and complicated, and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles. And that's the theory. Nine hundred years, never seen one yet, but this would do me.”

What else can I say…go see Your Name…yep…that’s it.

9.5/10