Your Name
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 Your name is...
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Your Name (Japanese: 君の名は。 Hepburn: Kimi no Na wa.) is a 2016 Japanese animated drama film written and directed by Makoto Shinkai and produced by CoMix Wave Films. The film was produced by Noritaka Kawaguchi and Genki Kawamura, with music composed by Radwimps. Your Name tells the story of a high school girl in rural Japan and a high school boy in Tokyo who swap bodies.
The film stars the voices of Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Masami Nagasawa, and Etsuko Ichihara. Shinkai's novel of the same name was published a month before the film's premiere.
Plot
Mitsuha is the daughter of the mayor of a small mountain town. She's a straightforward high school girl who lives with her sister and her grandmother and has no qualms about letting it be known that she's uninterested in Shinto rituals or helping her father's electoral campaign. Instead she dreams of leaving the boring town and trying her luck in Tokyo. Taki is a high school boy in Tokyo who works part-time in an Italian restaurant and aspires to become an architect or an artist. Every night he has a strange dream where he becomes...a high school girl in a small mountain town.
Why They Ask Their Names
- The story of two main characters switching bodies and Mitsuha's home town going to be destroyed by a meteorite shower as Taki never notices about 3 years before is very creative.
- Likable characters such as the main duo Mitsuha and Taki, even if they aren't as complex as some characters from some other anime shows and movies (see BQ# 2).
- As expected from Makoto Shinkai, most of the film's backgrounds are very well-crafted and the characters' animation is too expressive. The image of the comet is absolutely breathtaking with the color scheme of an aurora combined with a stellar and astrological shape to the object itself. And every single frame, even the ones that are present for no longer than a few seconds, looks like it could easily be painted on a canvas and placed as a painting in a museum, and it wouldn't feel out of place one little bit. This is all helped by the animation itself being no short of absolutely phenomenal.
- Beautiful music score by RADWIMPS.
- Excellent voice casting and acting in both the original Japanese version and English dub.
- The film takes a complete turn when it turns out that (SPOILER) Mitsuha, the girl Taki switched bodies with, had died three years prior. And while the twist does several gaping plot holes, it's still an unexpected one that raises the stakes of the film and adds a deep sense of seriousness to the story due to the fact that one of the main characters that we've been following through the entirety of the film and have grown attached to has actually been dead the entire time.
- The movie's emotional moments are very touching too, even the scene where Mitsuha meets Taki for the first time.
- The third act is very amazing and well-plotted, and it also unexpectedly becomes a time travel film.
- The ending is very satisfying and touching: After both Taki and Mitsuha lose their memories of the events of the film, it then cuts to five years later, and shows that Taki has graduated from university and searches for a job. He senses that he lost something important that he cannot identify, and feels inexplicable interest in the events surrounding the comet, now eight years in the past. The town of Itomori had been destroyed; however, all of its people survived as they had evacuated just in time. Meanwhile, Mitsuha has since moved to Tokyo. Sometime later, Taki and Mitsuha glimpse each other when their respective trains pass each other, and are instantly drawn to seek one another. Each disembarks and races to find the other, finally meeting at the stairs of Suga Shrine. Taki calls out to Mitsuha, saying that he feels that he knows her, and she responds likewise. Having finally found what each had long searched for, they shed tears of happiness and simultaneously ask each other for their name.
Bad Qualities
- The aforementioned plot twist (mentioned in WTATN# 6), while good, creates a large amount of plot holes and unanswered questions, like how they never realize that they were in different years, considering that they were leaving notes for each other in their respective cellphones.
- Taki and Mitsuha, while likable characters, aren't exactly very "complex", and while their development arcs are great, there some elements that were wasted, like Taki's relationship with his father and the whereabouts of his mother who is never mentioned on the movie.
- The side characters like Taki and Mitsuha's friends, are somewhat shallow compared to the main characters.
- Mitsuha's father, Toshiki Miyamizu, is somewhat an unlikeable and pointless character, who barely appears and contributes in the movie in general, and his only main purpose is to develop Mitsuha's character arc.
Reception
Critical reception of Your Name was received critical acclaim. It holds a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 96 critics.
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