your name.

I think I'm well overdue to watch this, so I'll likely get to it tonight or tomorrow.
 
Just got back from watching this, so let's go, this should be spoiler free (posting from my tablet so please excuse any autocorrect misspellings I miss).

There's an underlying theme to Shinkai's films that I kind of dislike, and it's how he portrays his romance. I find them at best to be clichéd and silly, and at worst to be downright mean spirited. It's like he doesn't understand the joy in love, he doesn't know how fun a romance can be. This film is sadly no different.

It's obvious right from the start what this film will end up being, the OP (I find it weird that a film has a full anime OP anyway) kind of makes it clear from the outset that we should be expecting these two to be together, anything that deviates from that would be a surprise. We don't get that surprise, we get the story of how they came to be together.

Through body swapping apparently. Now don't get me wrong, these parts are fun, genuinely fun, even if some of the comedy (I have BOOBS) didn't land with me, though I found myself far more interested in the microculture of Mitsuha's town than I did the ongoing shenanigans, I feel that a more accomplished director may have gave us a bit of time to soak that in, but we don't really get that, which in the end is understandable because there's a lot to get through in the film, and spending 5 minutes on watching Mitsuha and her grandmother weave ceremonial braided chord would take away from other parts of the film.

The end climax did have me invested, I cared about what happened to the characters and Shinkai had the opportunity to send the film into a direction I would have utterly despised, but this time he resisted temptation and gave me an end to that climax that I liked.

I think my main problem is the shift in focus from Mitsuha at the beginning, to Taki through most of the film. I didn't find him particularly interesting, and he ends up mainly being a vessel for the plot without me ever being invested in who he is or what he cares about. It seems through the film that he's a pretty talented architect, but we're never really shown it in any detail, and we never see if it's something he cares about, so why should we? It also makes the romance vapid, because it's hard to see why anyone would be interested in him, we're told he's a nice guy, we never see it really, he just does what most people might do in such odd circumstances.

The sound design was excellent I must say, not so much the music itself which felt a bit twee and overblown, but the sound effects in just the everyday situations was noticeably very good, it's a weird thing to point out, but throughout the whole film I kept picking up on it.

My main gripe though is the art style, these overly simplified characters just don't gel well with these hyper realistic backgrounds. Yeah they're amazingly well drawn, but when the character on screen doesn't match that level of detail, it just contrasts in a really jarring way. Also, everything looks too clean, they could do with losing some of the detail and making some of the places just look a bit old and tired, Tokyo is a giant city, I can't be expected to believe it looks like it's been hosed down with a giant pressure washer every 5 minutes,and that shrine is supposedly thousands of years old, why does it look brand new? The animation itself is pretty great though (aside from some questionable rotoscoping near the end), even if it does look like I'm watching the film through instagram filters for most the time.

I don't regret spending hard earned to see the film, it's a good-if-flawed experience, and it feels like it's more than the sum of its clichéd parts. It's worth a 3.5/5 anyway.
 
This anime mad me cry it is soooo sad!!!!!!!!!!!
He forgot she forgot she forgot she died they are in different timeline I am sooo saddddd!!!!!:crying:
 
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Watched this today. I've never been good at writing reviews etc. so just going to say few things
that I have on my mind after watching the movie.

It had a lot of 5CPS elements.
Art and animation was just what to expect from Shinkai. I've always liked the art in his movies.
I personally didn't really like the ending though and Shinkai seems to keep making similar endings in all of his movies.
Story was decent I guess but I felt like it had bunch of holes here and there.

Nevertheless enjoyable movie in my opinion and worth watching.
 
omg kimi no na wa is and forever will be (in my opinion) the best anime movie ever. except it like ties with a bunch of hayao miyazaki movies but aside that its the best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
must watch must watch must watch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
chiming in......watched a wile ago, but the movie lives up to the hype. certainly a must watch.......

The disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is still #1 for me in the movie category, but this one did shoot pretty far up the list.......probably #2, and best stand alone movie.
 
It was good, but not all that different from his other movies. The endings are practically the same.

Personally I preferred Garden of Words, which was only held back by its length. Hell, if we're talking recent movies, Koe no Katachi was better imo. I think Kimi no Na Wa was too complicated for its own good, while GoW had this beautiful simplicity to it.

As others have said, Taki didn't get nearly enough development and Mitsuha's life was far more enjoyable to watch. I think that came with trying to rush the story along rather than spending more time developing things. I was actually kind of annoyed when the main part of the plot began with 1hr still left in the movie. It was by far the best part, and the actual events leading to the conclusion while not bad, didn't live up to the proceeding development. I honestly would have been happy seeing the entire movie just on their swapping lives, though I understand it had to be more complicated than that.

Still absolutely worth watching and complete eye candy. But best anime movie of all time? No way. Top 10? Possibly.

4.5/5
 
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Watched this last night with Tents and found it shallow and forgettable. In fact, @Tents found it so forgettable, that when I mentioned I didn't like Your Name a few hours after we finished watching it, that she got confused and thought I was telling her I didn't like her name. It took several confused minutes before she realized I didn't randomly decide that I didn't like her name after years of marriage.

The movie starts out on a sour note for me, because I thought it took waaaaaaaay long to get to the body switching reveal. While I do appreciate that the movie attempts to start with a little character development, this was so shallow and by the numbers that I was bored just waiting for the real movie to start. I guess if you've never seen a movie before, you might need a long introduction to the girl that is dissatisfied with her bucolic country live, but I was utterly bored with it after a few seconds. Taki's introduction was a bit better, just because her mannerisms in his body were kind of funny as was the interaction with his friends. His introduction is no less generic, but at least it had a bit more humor. It takes a full half hour for them to realize that they're switching bodies and that's just too much time for a movie that's less than two hours.

All the budget that went into the visuals felt very much like putting lipstick on a pig. The characters and plot are cliche and the movie tries to paper over the lack of development with montages because it's got too much going on for its run time. It does a terrible job of getting me invested in the romance between the two leads. Basically, their growing feelings for each other is encapsulated in a montage of them switching bodies and exchanging messages. The lack of actual interaction and the focus on how they were effecting each other's lives left little time to actually show them starting to like each other. There was this whole montage and then bam, Taki goes on a date with Cutie Older Sempai and gets told that he's clearly into someone else. I wish some time had actually been spent on them going, through the body switching things and actually showing them discovering each other's lives and growing affection because they've seen each other's most intimate secrets.

At that point the movie had already badly handicapped itself. I didn't care about the generic characters, I didn't buy into the romance so when it came time for the search and the rest of the plot I wasn't invested in any of it.
The whole time thing is something Shinkai has played with before, but here I think it hurt the movie, because not getting to see the leads actually get to interact face to face for the bulk of the movie made it hard to connect with the relationship and took a lot of the drama out of most of the dramatic scenes for me. I just didn't care about the near misses or them trying to reach each other through time. I really didn't care if Taki managed to save her and the town or not. If the movie had done a better job developing the relationship between the two when they were switching bodies and had a more direct method of communication, then I think I would have cared about the second half of the movie a lot more.

Bottom line is I found the movie to be a boring slog with too much going on for any of it to have any substance. I don't think it's particularly well written and it does an absolute shit job of getting me invested in the core relationship where all the drama comes from. Montages can be great when used judiciously, but this movie uses several of them as a cheat to avoid doing the hard work of character development. Between the generic characters and narrative short cuts, I can't say that this is a good or even adequate movie. I think it falls just short of being mediocre. 4 out of 10
 
Well, it's nice to see a well thought out opinion from the opposite end of the scale, even if I don't agree. I have also noticed that I forgot to put my own thoughts on the film despite having watched it back in November 2016.
Personally I greatly enjoyed it, and believe it to be his best work (although only a teeny bit better than Garden of Words, and I have yet to see Beyond the Clouds). I think that the film is relatively simple in its story telling, but for that worked in its favour.
I want to post some more in depth thoughts, but I left it too long since I watched it. I'll look at rewatching it and seeing how I feel about it after that. I reckon my view won't change much, but I will be able to detail my opinion better.
There is only one major thing that I had an issue with, and it might have been hinted at and I just missed it, but I cannot remember any comments on it.
The body swapping also has an element of time travel as Taki is actually two years ahead of Mitsuha. Now I thought that was pretty cool, but I question why neither of them noticed the year during their body swap. Surely they would have glanced it once? I suppose it is a testament to the film I enjoyed it as much as I did despite this flaw, but still. Maybe they did notice, but it was just teenager negligence. They were too into each other's lives to properly realise the implications the time gap had.
 
SpanglishJC said:
The body swapping also has an element of time travel as Taki is actually two years ahead of Mitsuha. Now I thought that was pretty cool, but I question why neither of them noticed the year during their body swap. Surely they would have glanced it once? I suppose it is a testament to the film I enjoyed it as much as I did despite this flaw, but still. Maybe they did notice, but it was just teenager negligence. They were too into each other's lives to properly realise the implications the time gap had.
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I think a lot of this can be put down to them not being that far apart in time, so there's no really big differences between the two time periods. The technology isn't that different and the differences they do notice can all be put down to drastically different settings. A modern city is already enough of a wonder to her and a country village is quaint to him. There's not much reason for them to think about it beyond that when something so extraordinary is going on.

The rest of it can be put down to the comet or whatever caused the time travel messing with certain things. Like it messed with their phones so they could send messages to each other and then made those messages disappear when the time was right.

I don't find this to be much of a flaw, because the "how" of any of the supernatural stuff isn't explained at all and isn't important to the story.
 
ZetsubouKaiji said:
I think a lot of this can be put down to them not being that far apart in time, so there's no really big differences between the two time periods. The technology isn't that different and the differences they do notice can all be put down to drastically different settings. A modern city is already enough of a wonder to her and a country village is quaint to him. There's not much reason for them to think about it beyond that when something so extraordinary is going on.

The rest of it can be put down to the comet or whatever caused the time travel messing with certain things. Like it messed with their phones so they could send messages to each other and then made those messages disappear when the time was right.

I don't find this to be much of a flaw, because the "how" of any of the supernatural stuff isn't explained at all and isn't important to the story.
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That's how I thought of it. That the time skip wasn't noticeable due to the comet buggering things about, and perhaps that the current year they inhabited during the swap was just natural to them. I think the question was more about them maybe looking at a date and seeing the two year discrepancy.
I think a small shot of one of them acknowledging the date without any surprise might have properly confirmed that they were unaware of any time skip.
 
SpanglishJC said:
I think a small shot of one of them acknowledging the date without any surprise might have properly confirmed that they were unaware of any time skip.
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That would muck up the reveal that she's actually been dead for three years when he goes looking for her after they stopped switching bodies. It was treated as a big twist. It's a trade off between being perfectly logical and intentionally hiding information for the audience for the sake of a twist.

Although @Tents called the time difference way before the reveal, so I don't know if the twist was as shocking as it was intended to be. I wasn't particularly surprised by it, either. I knew about the body switching part before starting the movie, but I didn't know about the different time lines. However, when the body switching part ended about half way through the movie it was pretty obvious there had to be some other wrinkle to keep them apart.

I think one thing that bothered me more than that is that she actually did seek Taki out the day before the comet hit. She made a scene on the train, gave him a hair ribbon and her name. The weird thing is he forgets all about this meeting until he sees it in her memories. I don't buy that he'd forget such a weird event after three years.
 
ZetsubouKaiji said:
That would muck up the reveal that she's actually been dead for three years when he goes looking for her after they stopped switching bodies. It was treated as a big twist. It's a trade off between being perfectly logical and intentionally hiding information for the audience for the sake of a twist.

Although @Tents called the time difference way before the reveal, so I don't know if the twist was as shocking as it was intended to be. I wasn't particularly surprised by it, either. I knew about the body switching part before starting the movie, but I didn't know about the different time lines. However, when the body switching part ended about half way through the movie it was pretty obvious there had to be some other wrinkle to keep them apart.

I think one thing that bothered me more than that is that she actually did seek Taki out the day before the comet hit. She made a scene on the train, gave him a hair ribbon and her name. The weird thing is he forgets all about this meeting until he sees it in her memories. I don't buy that he'd forget such a weird event after three years.
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I remember liking the twist, but being able to sort of see it coming with how it was set up. I'll have to re-watch it to remember properly though. I suppose that if they did give away the time gap it would've made any twist obvious to everyone.

It is a bit strange he forgets about it completely. I think it would be fair for him to not really think much of it and continue with his life, but you'd think he'd have some sort of realisation as to who she was earlier on. Completely forgetting about it is possible, but very unlikely.

GenSan said:
All I got to say is, didn't expect a take down that harsh. :laugh:
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It got proper slammed son!
 
it's true, it's nice on a 1st watch..........even better if you know absolutely nothing about it going into that 1st watch. all I knew about it is it had lots of hype surrounding it and it was a romance.

There are things about it that can be picked apart in hindsight.................but I loved it on the 1st watch, so I'll leave it at that.

for some reason though, everytime I randomly hear one of the songs from it's sound track, I start to feel depressed.........I don't know if that's a positive or negative testament to the movie.
 
ZetsubouKaiji said:
Watched this last night with Tents and found it shallow and forgettable. In fact, @Tents found it so forgettable, that when I mentioned I didn't like Your Name a few hours after we finished watching it, that she got confused and thought I was telling her I didn't like her name. It took several confused minutes before she realized I didn't randomly decide that I didn't like her name after years of marriage.
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I am embarrassed this actually happened. I got so sad before I realized he is talking about a fucking movie. Idiot brain.

Otherwise as much as I share the same opinion as ZK since we actually discussed the movie in length as we watched and then post credits, I didn't give it that low a score. I am juggling between 2.5 and 3/5 because I have no idea what to do with this. It is better than 5 Centimeters per Second but so much worse than Garden of Words. My issues with this is that I didn't get me engaged in it, what I thought was important was showed in a song montage, a lot of the time padding got in the way and so on.

Did you people notice a little Ghibli influence in it? Especially the little sister character's mannerism made her appear as if she's out of a Ghibli film but with "modern" art. It's not a bad thing or anything just an observation and I might be totally off but I have seen a good amount of Ghibli to notice. Other times we have a possessed Taki walking like a K-On character. Now that cracked me up.

Don't give Shinkai a feature length, he barely knows what to do with all that space.
 
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