Your Name. - Crim Reviews Anime
Your Name. (2016)
Version: English (Dub/Dubbed)
The best movie so far this year doesn’t even come from this year. It had already spent an overwhelming 8 months of box office reverence, especially in its native Japan (having just dethroned Spirited Away as the highest-grossing anime). It was at the start of 2017 that Funimation announced their English/US dub release for April.
After a brilliant cold opening, Your Name. begins with Mitsuha, a teenage girl in the small community of Itomori, bored of her workaday life. A reminiscence of the princesses of the Disney Renaissance. That is where the similarities end, however. One day she wakes up, shocked to discover that she is in fact a girl. Meanwhile, Taki, a male teen inhabitant of Tokyo, wakes up with the realization that he is a boy. The two eventually catch on to what has happened: they’ve switched bodies.
The majority of media entertainment in Japan tends to go beyond realm of imagination when it comes to peculiar storylines. Currently, I’m in the middle of a show where students of a class must kills they’re extraterrestrial, almost-omnipotent teacher by the end of their semester (aptly titled Assassination Classroom). The premise of Your Name. is quite tame compared to most anime offerings. What makes the movie is an experiment in unequivocal beauty from both an animation and narrative perspective.
Director Makoto Shintai has had a hand in creating several short animated piece with Voices of a Distant Star and Garden of Words, as well as feature length pieces such as 5 Centimeters Per Second and Children Who Chase Lost Voices (the latter of which I’ve seen). He’s clearly a force to be reckoned with in terms of anime. Sentimentality is his wheelhouse, and Your Name. is no exception. Lots of it seep through his breathtaking animation and colors, which share a crux in Shinkai’s style. With the absence of traditional animation in America, it’s amazing to see the form culminating so well overseas.
What lies in the heart of Your Name. is its interlocking use of development, with the progression of the main characters Mitsuha and Taki. Shinkai takes advantage of the usually routine body-swapping cliché and turns it onto its toes. A better understanding of the characters sweeps through the swap, and how the two leads work through to each other despite not being in their own bodies is development to be witnessed with much admiration.
Shinkai is able to work the story in such a way that blends comedy, drama, happiness, and heartbreak with complete ease. Most movies never find the great balance in tone to do so even in the slightest, but Your Name. pulls it right off. When a step is taken it its plot, the pace never wavers. I had a similar feeling watching his earlier work in Children Who Chase Lost Voices. It’s easy to tell they’re conceived by the same mastermind, which can also be said of that in the department of gorgeous animation and backgrounds. Though I love both movies, I believe Your Name. is the superior one. In fact, it’s a superior movie of the year so far. 2017 may have a lot to live up to if we’ve already had a crowning achievement in the animation side already.
Rating: ★★★★★