Your Name – movie review

Stunning, finely rendered and detailed animation in the Japanese anime style is the hallmark of Your Name, a youth fantasy written and directed by Makoto Shinkai, who also wrote a novel of the same name. It concerns a mysterious connection between two pupils – strangers – living different lives in disparate parts of Japan.

Mitsuha is a high school girl living in the rural town of Itomori, who is fed up with her life in the countryside. She wishes to leave her mountain village for the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. She dreams she is a boy living in the Japanese capital. Taki, a Tokyo secondary student, wakes up in a daze and comes to realise that he is not himself. Somehow Mitsuha and Taki have managed to body swap. In time they grow used to it and start intervening in each other’s lives. They begin communicating with each other.

Mitsuha helps Taki get closer to a female coworker at the place where he works part time and even to land a date with her, while Taki aids Mitsuha to become more popular at school. Clearly Mitsuha and Taki have strong feelings for one another and during the course of the movie these are played out, although the plot is anything but straightforward. It involves a comet hitting Mitsuha’s hometown and the pair being in disconnected time zones.

Your Name is a very special production, with extraordinary attention given to each carefully crafted scene. Put simply, it is beautiful to look at.

Interspersing the occasional music track with narrative, the storyline, though, is complex and downright confusing. Who is doing what, when? Is it a dream? Is it reality? Why the meeting of minds and stepping into each others shoes? There are no real answers to those questions, other than it is the way it is. If you accept that, you my well be thrilled by the experience. If not, I dare say you might find yourself exasperated.

Regardless, I thought the story went on for too long. A tight 90 minutes would have been ample and none of the nuance would have to disappear. Nevertheless, as an artistic endeavour Your Name is right up there with the best of breed. Rated PG, it scores a 7 to 7½ out of 10.

Director: Makoto Shinkai
Cast: (Voices of) Cassandra Morris, Kyle Herbert, Michelle Ruff, Ray Chase
Release Date: 24 November 2016
Rating: PG

Alex First