I already forgot their names...

You’ve probably already seen this movie but regardless, mild spoilers for the premise that truly reveals itself whole past the synopsis and maybe a few specific spoilers along the way

When most people think of Kimi no Na wa, they think of a simple emotionally gripping, beautifully animated masterpiece that touched them at their very core. When I think of Kimi no Na wa, I think of a tedious, convoluted, contrived, and ultimately misguided emotion-based time travel story blessed with wonderful visuals and cursed by its confusingly bad time travel narrative and equally hard to stomach main leads.

I know, I’m a buzzkill.

So, why my cynicism? Before you try to answer, let me take two of them out for you. It has little to do with it being in the top 10 on every anime aggregation website, or the fact that this not only outsold every single Ghibli movie such as the insanely popular Spirited Away, or that it is the highest grossing anime movie of all time as of writing. I don't feel it was anywhere near good enough to warrant any of that, but it would be incredibly petty of me to call that a reason I dislike the film. With that out of the way, let's begin with the writing.

A boy and a girl suddenly wake up from a dream, only to realize that their bodies have switched. I must say, right out the bat, I like the fact that each new day is told from the perspective of one of the two characters while switching perspectives to suit a new day in the beginning and that it starts on a character being explained to how she was acting weird, and putting two and two together allows us to see that this is the aftermath of one of these body-switching incidents that occur a lot throughout this movie. This is where the compliments of the story end for a while.

How long have these two been switching bodies? Given the montage especially, it's insanely hard to keep track, and I know it's all thanks to a comet, but I doubt a comet would remain visible for a small country like Japan for so long that the montage sort of hints at weeks of this happening? How come these characters start off thinking they're in a dream, even after feeling pain (especially given the whole gag cliche based around this exact trope of waking up after pain in a dream) and seeing the entire day go by in real-time? I know full well that no dream lasts that long without entering at least one period of long, non-R.E.M. sleep (and R.E.M. lasts for about 15 minutes and that's when you dream, and dreams are never this coherent)? How come after so long, nobody tries to put two and two together about this whole thing with their own theories until the second half? Speaking of the second half…

The second half is where this movie turns from just irritating to convoluted and contrived. A comet from 3 years ago is seen 3 years later (I can't fathom how that's supposed to work, especially in such a short amount of time given a comet or a star) by these two main characters and that's what caused them to switched bodies with each other every day, and only them for no adequately explained reason, and that's a missed opportunity. We could've had scenes of some other people acting weird because of that too, though they would still need to explain it well beyond time travel-esque bullshit that doesn't explain anything. It turns out that two people end up, for no good reason, figuring it out: the grandmother of the girl, and the girl’s father. An explosion happens at one point in a major facility and no one considered that a dangerous threat after being told that more of this can happen (though it's a diversion to evacuate the people from 3 years ago because apparently the comet splits and destroys the city that the girl was in, including her, meaning it would make no sense how she could connect with him, especially since the ending sort of rewrites that, which sort of changes the future but people can't do a good time travel plot for shit). The ending also just ends with the two sort of recognizing each other and then rolling to credits after panning up towards the clouds, so...that's something, I guess.

I had to go back and research literally every character’s name, they were that forgettable. It's not even like Rogue One where they either say most characters’ names once or not at all, they say these guys’ names constantly. This has never happened to me before for any anime. Let that sink in...and then realize how funny it is that the movie is translated as “Your Name” given these circumstances.

Taki and Mitsuha are dense, extremely dense. I mean, I’m a bit of a dense person myself as anyone who knows me IRL for longer than a small bit will tell you, but these two are infuriatingly dense to the point of actual stupidity. There was the “dream” example from earlier but also, these guys constantly set rules for each other to not interfere much with their lives, only to constantly break them. They conveniently forget things for the sake of the plot, though to be fair, that's just the plot actively forcing them to forget things for no reason and not then being idiots, so back to that. When Mitsuha meets Taki in the emotional climax of the film, she straight up calls him an idiot over the fact that he often played with her tits when he woke up in her body...and this is the first thing g she says to him in the middle of an emotional climax. Not “I finally found you” or something befitting of such a scene where they first sorta meet each other truly within the little time they have before convenient BS makes it so they physically don't see each other anymore and proceed to go on their way to accomplish a necessary task, but “Baka”. Fucking really?

It's insanely hard to talk about any of the characters’ personalities since while outside of the protagonists, none of these are truly bad characters, they are insanely forgettable. I forgot everything about these people by the time I finished the movie, aside from the fact that Mitsuha's little sister doesn't like taking shit from people, and that she conveniently forgets something too (not even for plot convenience this time, just her being an idiot at one point in the final act). I genuinely cannot describe these people, and again, this has never, ever happened to me before! That is a cardinal sin for a movie so focused on pathos! So, fuck it; moving on!

If nothing else can be said, let it be known that this is a rather gorgeous film. CoMix Wave Films did an amazing job with the visuals and digital effects here, especially with the environment. Shoutouts to how jaw-dropping the comet was and how despite many shots being busy as hell, they all still look beautiful. Sure, the character designs are pretty bland and I don't enjoy the equally plain and sometimes malformed art style in general but it's all animated incredibly well for the most part. Sometimes it seems as if the characters are animated in CG with 2D artwork put over them as the movements can feel almost uncanny every now and then, but rarely was it that distracting. There are some moments looked insanely choppy with blatantly low frame rates in comparison to everything else, though as per usual, this is apparently fixed in blu-rays and cinemas. Regardless, the film still looks amazing, even if the studio apparently ran out of budget for this film, and the fact that such a thing isn't noticeable at all is astounding, probably thanks to good cinematography and stellar digital effects.

RADWIMPS does several vocal tracks for the film's opening, ending, and background. None of them stick out, unfortunately, though that doesn't mean they're bad. In fact, after relistening to some of them, I find them mediocre at worst and decent at best. If there are any non-vocal background tracks, I don't remember them either. Ironic given what this film is about, which leads me to my final thoughts.

For a film about remembering, this film is awfully forgettable, especially in terms of its characters. As visually stunning as it is, I felt more annoyed than touched. This is easily the most forgettable film I've seen in quite some time, and it's not all that terrible but it's certainly not good in the slightest either from anything other than a visual perspective. Certainly not Number One anime film worthy, especially not when it's this contrived and unintentionally convoluted at time travel. I remember there was something about the director, Makoto Shinkai himself telling people to stop seeing this movie. He claimed that he didn't want people to see this as his magnum opus and for people to hold all of his films to that standard from now on, especially given the production issues that occurred towards the end. For me, I wouldn't know if this was his best film yet, but if so, then I dread his current filmography. With all that said, I bid you adieu.