{"id":6006,"date":"2018-11-21T00:06:32","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T05:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/?page_id=6006"},"modified":"2021-09-19T14:11:57","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T19:11:57","slug":"kimi-no-na-wa-your-name-2016-review","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/movie-reviews\/kimi-no-na-wa-your-name-2016-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Kimi no Na wa (Your Name) (2016) Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Kimi no Na wa (Your Name) (2016)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

~Review by Grawlix (October 2018)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t watch anime as much as I used to. This has more to do with a lack of time than of interest; there are only so many hours in a day, after all. But occasionally there\u2019s a development that can\u2019t be ignored. My awareness of <\/span>Kimi no Na wa<\/span><\/i> was something that built gradually, like a groundswell. There were occasional mentions online, and I watched the trailer at one point. But then the bombshell: that <\/span>Kimi no Na wa<\/span><\/i> beat Miyazaki\u2019s <\/span>Spirited Away<\/span><\/i> as the highest grossing movie in Japanese box office history. As of this writing, there seems to be a little confusion on this point. Most of the sources I\u2019ve checked have it sitting at number four (below <\/span>Spirited Away<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Titanic<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>Frozen<\/span><\/i>) but clearly it was kind of a big deal, and the suggestion that it could even approach the greatness of Studio Ghibli\u2019s masterwork necessitated I take a look.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notwithstanding the fact that I\u2019d seen the trailer a year or so before screening, I went into the movie fairly blind and I\u2019d suggest that\u2019s the best way to see it. So, I\u2019ll say right here: It\u2019s good. You should watch it. The story concerns two teenagers, a boy from Tokyo and a girl from out in the sticks who find themselves swapping bodies every few days. Hijinks ensue. He helps her be more assertive and she helps him romance a coworker. The plot proceeds about how you\u2019d expect for the first half hour or so, but then the movie takes a turn and things (as the kids say) get real. This much can be gleaned from the trailers and is all I\u2019ll say about the story in the interest of avoiding spoilers.    <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were two main issues that marred my enjoyment of <\/span>Kimi no Na wa<\/span><\/i>. One is the soundtrack, specifically the vocal tracks contributed by the band, RADWIMPS. Almost every one of the movie\u2019s many emotional waypoints is accompanied by an upbeat pop song complete with story-relevant lyrics. Now, as it happens, I speak some Japanese. I\u2019m not fluent by any stretch, but I know enough to know that the dialog subtitles were pretty spot on. But translating song lyrics is a tricky thing. It\u2019s easy enough to get the meaning accurate, but preserving the cadence and flow, particularly for something that\u2019s supposed accompany a poignant scene, is another matter. The fact that I didn\u2019t feel particularly moved as the song played made me wonder if something fundamental wasn\u2019t lost in translation.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But more to the point, whenever another song started, it seemed like the movie was punting on its emotive content. I\u2019m a firm believer in the importance of a movie\u2019s soundtrack; the best scores can take the impact of a scene to a whole different level and there\u2019s nothing quite like listening to a piece of music after it\u2019s been emotionally charged in this way. But, too often, it seems like <\/span>Kimi no Na wa<\/span><\/i> is relying on the songs to carry more than their fair share of the sentimental load rather than simply enhancing the on-screen action. This is unfortunate, because a lot of the time, the on-screen action seemed perfectly capable of handling this on its own, but it\u2019s almost as if the movie didn\u2019t trust itself to pull it off without the added oomph of a lyrical pop ballad.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enlisting a pop music artist to provide a significant portion of a film\u2019s soundtrack without turning the whole movie into an extended music video can be a delicate balance to maintain. Queen famously provided all the music to <\/span>Flash Gordon<\/span><\/i> and, to a lesser extent, <\/span>Highlander<\/span><\/i>, and Prince contributed multiple songs to <\/span>Batman (\u201889)<\/span><\/i> but these were campy action movies that didn\u2019t rely too much on the emotional subtleties of their scenes. Reading that some story points in <\/span>Kimi no Na wa<\/span><\/i> were changed to better compliment the music written by the band makes me wonder if the production would have been better served by a more traditional instrumental film score. But, then again, maybe it\u2019s just a cultural thing.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings me to the second potential issue with <\/span>Kimi no Na wa<\/span><\/i>, which is that a lot of the plot in the second half of the movie hinges on some cultural assumptions with which foreign viewers might not be totally familiar. Now, granted, by the time you\u2019ve gotten this far into the movie you\u2019ve already suspended enough disbelief to accept the whole body-swapping business, but this is different. Rather than being an overt, extraordinary phenomenon, this is more of a ground-level mysticism that the movie just assumes its viewers accept to some degree (Sort of like how Feng Shui or acupuncture is treated in China). These sort of disconnects are inevitable when watching foreign films (I\u2019m sure foreign viewers feel the same about Hollywood movies) but in a story that\u2019s so heavily dependent on its relatability to universal human emotions and situations, the plot conveniences that these low-level magical bits engender end up being a bit more jarring than they need to.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kimi no Na wa<\/span><\/i> is a good movie, but I can\u2019t really call it great, and I\u2019m honestly a bit stumped at the stratospheric heights of its success; Even if it didn\u2019t dethrone <\/span>Spirited Away<\/span><\/i>, it\u2019s clearly gotten to within shouting distance of doing so. <\/span>Spirited Away<\/span><\/i> is also steeped in Japanese culture and superstition, probably more so than <\/span>Kimi no Na wa<\/span><\/i>, honestly, but was smart enough to set itself in a kind of Asian flavored Neverwhere (as Ghibli is wont to do) in which any kind of oddness could be easily accepted. <\/span>Kimi no Na wa<\/span><\/i> is set in the real world, more or less, and even though it sets up some paranormal antics early on, I ultimately felt that it went to the supernatural-explanation-well a little too often.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But maybe this is just what it feels like to be out of the loop. Don\u2019t get me wrong, the movie has flaws, but they are by no means fatal. Most of humor is genuinely touching, the quieter character moments ring true, and the emotional turns can be powerful. I laughed, I cried, I felt genuine tension. <\/span>Kimi no Na wa<\/span><\/i> takes some shortcuts where I wish it hadn\u2019t, and I\u2019d stop short of naming it among the top films of all time, but it is an excellent viewing experience and well worth your time.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Score: A-<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beautifully animated and emotionally resonant, <\/span>Kimi no Na wa<\/span><\/i> is a very good film that gets in its own way a bit too much to be truly great.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trailer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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