Your Name (12A.)
Directed by Makoto Shinkai.
Featuring Kana Hanazawa, Etsuko Ichihara, Ryûnosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Masami Nagasawa and Ryô Narita. In Japanese with subtitles. 106 mins.
For western anime enthusiasts 2016 has been a year for mourning the apparent demise of Studio Ghibli. In Japan though, where Ghibli's “final” film* When Marnie Was There came and went two year ago, this year was about embracing something new, Your Name, an anime which went on to be a massive Japanese box office hit. It is currently the fifth most successful Japanese animation ever, and represents a massive breakout success for CoMix Wave Films.
Ghibli always felt like a rather traditional, old fashioned brand. No matter how odd or surreal the films became they seemed to represent traditional values of hand craft and hard work, a bit like Aardman, or Hovis or Mr Kipling. Your Name is at heart a soppy love story but much brasher and youth culture focused: there are J-pop songs and even some sexual innuendo. The film starts out as a teenage body swap comedy. Two teenagers, Mitsuha and Taki, find themselves waking up in each other's bodies on certain days, exploring and interfering in their very different lives in the countryside and Tokyo. Then a third of the way through the film changes tack and becomes a mystical time travelling sci-fi adventure involving the comet that is lighting up the skies over Japan.
Some of the animation is spectacular, some of it is quite mundane. Your Name is a lovely piece but it doesn't seem to be any great advance, technically or thematically, on other animes. In Japan its phenomenal success may be down to the comet which (spoiler) after initially appears harmless, causes a disaster and destroys a town, tapping into the nation's unresolved trauma of 2010's tsunami.
* Since writing this up Miyazaki has said is planning to do one more film, extedning a short film Boro The Caterpillar into a feature that is expected in 2019.
Directed by Makoto Shinkai.
Featuring Kana Hanazawa, Etsuko Ichihara, Ryûnosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Masami Nagasawa and Ryô Narita. In Japanese with subtitles. 106 mins.
For western anime enthusiasts 2016 has been a year for mourning the apparent demise of Studio Ghibli. In Japan though, where Ghibli's “final” film* When Marnie Was There came and went two year ago, this year was about embracing something new, Your Name, an anime which went on to be a massive Japanese box office hit. It is currently the fifth most successful Japanese animation ever, and represents a massive breakout success for CoMix Wave Films.
Ghibli always felt like a rather traditional, old fashioned brand. No matter how odd or surreal the films became they seemed to represent traditional values of hand craft and hard work, a bit like Aardman, or Hovis or Mr Kipling. Your Name is at heart a soppy love story but much brasher and youth culture focused: there are J-pop songs and even some sexual innuendo. The film starts out as a teenage body swap comedy. Two teenagers, Mitsuha and Taki, find themselves waking up in each other's bodies on certain days, exploring and interfering in their very different lives in the countryside and Tokyo. Then a third of the way through the film changes tack and becomes a mystical time travelling sci-fi adventure involving the comet that is lighting up the skies over Japan.
Some of the animation is spectacular, some of it is quite mundane. Your Name is a lovely piece but it doesn't seem to be any great advance, technically or thematically, on other animes. In Japan its phenomenal success may be down to the comet which (spoiler) after initially appears harmless, causes a disaster and destroys a town, tapping into the nation's unresolved trauma of 2010's tsunami.
* Since writing this up Miyazaki has said is planning to do one more film, extedning a short film Boro The Caterpillar into a feature that is expected in 2019.
