why Your Name is my favourite anime

edit 05/02/25: i wouldn't consider this my favourite anime anymore but it still holds a really special place in my heart so i wont change the title on the review

(Warning! Spoilers Ahead)

Hello! I usually don't write in depth reviews about the anime I enjoy the most, but since Your Name is my favourite anime (and as I'm writing this, I have just rewatched it for the first time, and have also read the manga not too long ago), I figured I'd try to put into words why exactly was it this specific movie that ignited my love for anime as a whole, I hope I can make this coherent!

#Summary
For those who (somehow) haven't watched this movie yet, or to those who might not remember the plot very well, Your Name. is a 2016 anime film directed by the infamous Makoto Shinkai, it tells the story of Mitsuha Miyamizu, a high school girl from a rural, fictional town called Itomori, where she spends her days with her friends, while helping out her grandmother, together with her sister, to keep the local traditions of the region alive. However, pressure from her estranged father, who became the mayor of the town, and judgement from the people her age towards the shrine activities makes Mitsuha blurt out at the spur of the moment that she "wanted to become a handsome boy from Tokyo in her next life!".

The next day, what seems to be a dream shows Mitsuha swapping bodies with a boy from Tokyo named Taki Tachibana and living his daily life (while not even knowing the way to his school or his work), but after the swapping continues to happen a few times per week, both of them realized that they were somehow connected to each other by fate, so they set up rules for one another so that one doesn't ruin the life of the other (like Mitsuha not spending all of Taki's money on cafés, or Taki not acting like a lunatic in front of Mitsuha's classmates) and continue to live with the body swapping, up until one day where a comet was about to come within proximity to planet Earth, and after Taki started getting worried about losing contact with Mitsuha since that incident, he decided to go visit Itomori for himself to find Mitsuha.

#Story
I'll say it straight away, Your Name is not a revolutionary story by any stretch of the imagination, the romance parts are pretty standard (although more detailed and meaningful to the plot than in a movie like A Silent Voice, often compared with Your Name) and the fantasy, although really captivating and immersive for a first watch, gets pretty predictable after a rewatch of the movie. But that's not to say it's a bad story, Your Name has a really solid start, that helps to introduce the main characters in a way that allows the viewer to understand Mitsuha's problems with her personal life and how her connection with Taki starts deepening as she spends time "living his life", and with the development of the story, that culminates with the eventual discovery that Itomori has been destroyed by the comet and Mitsuha, her family and her friends have all passed away, a development of Taki's character (something extremely lacking in the movie, it's biggest flaw in my personal opinion) is shown more clearly, demonstrated by him going all the way to drink the kuchikamisake made by Mitsuha to go back in time and help her save Itomori's residents from their inpending doom.

The instances where the backgrounds of Mitsuha and the people around her are shown, it's clear to see that that was Shinkai's biggest focus. My biggest complaint towards Your Name is how shallow of a character Taki seems compared to Mitsuha, compared to her we know basically nothing of his backstory (for example what happened to his mother, someone who doesn't show up throughout the whole story and is not mentioned whatsoever) and, outside from the part where Tsukasa and Okudera go to the outskirts of Itomori with Taki to help him with his search of Mitsuha, his friends play no major role in the story, which makes his character seem so replaceable in the context of the story (for example, if the body swapping happened with another of his friends and Taki was just a side character, not much would change in my opinion), even more than a character like Tessie, who, in the context of the story, is supposed to only help prevent the death of the 500 people in Itomori, due to his knowledge with electricity, bombs, and things of the sort.

But in the end, I still do think Your Name is a story that holds up well, especially with how good of a story writer I think Shinkai is, it might not be perfect but it's still a really enjoyable watch that can get pretty emotional at times (katawaredoki), although I definitely do think there is a lot that could be done better (Shinkai himself says that he thinks Your Name's story could be better, and the improvement on those aspects on his next works, Weathering with You and Suzume are evident when compared to Your Name's story writing).

#Animation
Like most other Shinkai movies, Your Name was animated by studio CoMix Wave, and without a shadow of a doubt, they did a wonderful job on this, Your Name is one of the most visually attracting pieces of animation I have ever seen, all the small and big details put into making this masterpiece are something I value a lot when I think about this movie, from the breakfast scene with Mitsuha and her family or "Taki" and his friends at the café at the start, to the splitting of the meteor and the eventual explosion at the end, it is one of the biggest reasons as to why this movie is as praised as it is and I definitely have it as one of my biggest compliments about Your Name.

#Soundtrack
Your Name was the first of Shinkai's movies to have japanese rock band RADWIMPS as the producers of the soundtrack, and they nailed the vibes of the whole movie beautifully with their studio album named after the movie.

Songs like "Yume Tourou", used for the opening of the movie, and "Zen Zen Zense", at the point where the story starts to pick up, have an upbeat vibe that keep the viewer immersed into the story, while having lyrics that closely resemble the thoughts around Taki's and Mitsuha's heads.
While at the more sentimental parts of the story, songs like "Katawaredoki", an instrumental arrangement played when Taki and Mitsuha meet each other at the top of the mountain, and "Sparkle", played in the parts where the town is being evacuated up to the eventual explosion caused by the meteor, help accompany the feeling of momentary happiness, followed by melancholy and despair that follow it in a near perfect way.
The song "Nandemonaiya", played on the scene where Taki and Mitsuha meet again as adults and in the credits of the movie, is a beautiful way to close off the story, the vocal solo at the start alone is enough to make all my memories and feelings of my first watch come right back to me, and helps build up to one of my favourite songs of the whole soundtrack

While I also think RADWIMPS did an amazing job in the soundtracks of Weathering with You and Suzume, their work on Your Name far outshines both of them in my opinion, and it is definitely my favourite part about the movie.

#Final Conclusions
In this now really long review, I haven't made it a secret that I don't think Your Name is perfect (nor do I think any anime is perfect per se), but I also have made it clear that it's easily my favourite anime, and a lot of that has also to do with my personal experience watching the movie.

I haven't been an anime watcher for long, started watching very casually around 2 years ago (only watching some currently airing shows) and only got really back into it around July of this year (I had seen some images of Your Name not long before and it got me interested in the movie, even when I was never interested in movies growing up). Your Name was both my first anime movie and the first time I watched an anime that aired before 2020 (watching Dragon Ball and Pokémon on the TV when I was 10 doesn't count), and it was the first time I felt a genuine connection to an anime, that made me think "damn I might actually enjoy anime more than I thought", which snowballed into me going after more popular movies and shows with similar vibes, which led me to shows that weren't even romance focused whatsoever, and I probably would have never discovered this love I now have for the medium if it wasn't for this one specific movie.

To close off this review, I think Your Name is a fantastic movie, that even with a story that has glaring faults, still holds a lot of emotional baggage, accompanied by beautiful animation and soundtrack, that always prove to me again and again why me and so many other people love this movie.
I give Your Name, my favourite anime, a 10/10, and one of my biggest recommendations for newcomers to this wonderful medium