Writer & Director: Makoto Shinkai
Studio: CoMix Wave Films
Watched on: 28/12/2020
Review contains ***SPOILERS*** for Your Name (Kimi No Na Wa)
Ratings:
Not for me. Very successful film that received huge praise but just not my sort of thing. It's ambiguous, it's fluffy and ultimately it's about romance. It also didn't actually look good the whole way through, in my opinion.
So in terms of how it looked, I was definitely impressed right from the opening scene. The clouds, the comet and scenery all looked legitimately beautiful. Then the big comet/shower looked really nice and anything related to the comet or just the sky looked really great, with a nice, well-blended CG element to it. A few things made it a bit weird for me though; the heavy use of layering and parallax, the odd bit of out-of-place CGI and of course, the very limited style of 'anime' character art and animation. The environments looked fucking incredible - like every coffee cup, rock, book, phone, tree etc. looked amazing and was finished to an amazing standard. But yeah, the characters just didn't look great; they were more like chariacatures ready to be filled in with the final detail. Of course that's an incredibly subjective thing because this is an anime film and was always going to look like that, so can't really knock it for it.
That's pretty much it for positives. I didn't like anything else in the film lmao. The story is so pointless I genuinely wonder if it was worth telling (in terms of revenue, it clearly was). Basically, there's no real substance to it. Is the point that they are meant to be together? That they saved the town? The first point seems to suggest that destiny meant they would always end up together but the second suggests they can change destiny - so what's it going for? Is it just that we're supposed to just see that things are weird and interesting and that's it? Fundamentally, I just wasn't invested in this story at all. I wasn't rooting for Mitsuha and I didn't really get what Taki wanted in life. Did they do all of that so that they could be in love? Why did Taki write "I love you" on her hand. That was fucking dumb. But I also just saw no reason for them to like one another, because the fruits of the positive changes they made in each other's lives didn't even come to anything. So probably says more about me and what I like but I hated the ambiguity and the general lack of a solid plot.
I guess the above highlights the fact that I didn't find the characters very interesting nor compelling. I guess I'd give the directing a positive score overall, because it looks amazing and any key points (i.e. the comet, the switching of lives, the escape plan etc.) are all clearly communicated and there are some interesting storytelling mechanics that worked well, like the opening credits rushing through things so that they felt like an actual distant memory to you, the viewer, as well. But overall, it was just too wishy washy for me to ever like it. Think it's unlikely I go for 'Weathering with You' now too.
