This past Monday I had the chance to watch the anime film Your Name (2016) by SHINKAI Makoto. Some of my students had seen it at its world premiere at Anime Expo 2016, so needless to say, I was quite late to the naming party.
I had, to be honest, not been terribly enthusiastic about watching this film. I've watched a good number of Shinkai's other works (that is to say, all of his feature films), and I am very public about the fact that I am not a huge fan of them. I had a suspicion that I was not going to feel much different about this new one either.
But of course, as a professional, I knew I couldn't hold my head up high in class if I didn't at least give it a chance. And give it a chance, I did. Twice, in fact. And after my two viewings, I think I feel much more comfortable saying to the world, "I told you so."
Let me start with the positives. The artwork in Your Name is beautiful. And by "artwork," I'm mostly talking about the backdrops and sceneries. But Shinkai has always been good at that—his 5 Centimeters Per Second (2007) and The Garden of Words (2013) are so lovely that you feel like you can just step into the screen. The improvement is more with the characters: whereas the characters from his debut feature film Voices of a Distant Star (2002) and the more recent Children Who Chase Lost Voices (2011) look like they are positively lopsided or from a '90s (or even '80s) anime (or both), the characters in Your Name actually look like contemporary anime characters. The problem with that, though, is that they look like they stepped out of a HOSODA Mamoru film and into this new Shinkai film. Hey man, if you can't maintain integrity in the way your characters look (like the way MIYAZAKI Hayao can), then stick with the lopsided peeps. (In fact, I would argue that the characters in The Garden of Words look both refreshing and fitting for the mood of the story—I'm not sure why he couldn't employ that style again here.)
The other positive is the four songs by RADWIMPS included in the soundtrack. While it took me a while to get into them, after a few listens, I think I really like all of them. I can't say the same for the English versions (I don't care how fluent the lead singer is, I'm not backing down about this or the Utada English album), but the Japanese songs are quite lovely.
The negatives, however, far outweigh the positives for me. Even the soundtrack—beyond the four songs—seems ordinary and not particularly evocative of the mood that, I assume, I'm supposed to get from the story, given the kinds of reviews (er, headlines) I've been reading of the film. The score by NODA Yōjirō of RADWIMPS doesn't hold a candle to music by folks like TAKAGI Masakatsu (who's done music for Hosoda's Wolf Children and the documentary Kingdom of Dreams and Madness about Studio Ghibli), and it just about disintegrates when listened to after HISAISHI Joe's still-classic works for some of Miyazaki's films. I mean, stuff by Takagi makes you want to fucking DANCE. That stuff is genius.
And the story. Oh, the story. I'm not unsatisfied just by the fact that the story, like most of Shinkai's works, revolves around a vacuous romance. I'm not unsatisfied just by the fact that there's absolutely no good reason why the two protagonists should be in love with each other. I'm more upset by the fact that the story of Your Name is basically the story of every other Shinkai film that's ever been released. If you listen to the voiceover narration from The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004), you'll think you were listening to the beginning/middle/end of Your Name. And just as I tell my students, you can't submit the same work twice and get credit for it both times.
I've read many, many manga works about body swaps that are so much more compelling than this one. If you want to watch an anime film about time travel that will make you weep until you think you've turned into a raisin (and where the emotions of the protagonist make so much sense that it pains you), go rent Hosoda's The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. If you want to hear really good songs that you can sing along to while bawling at the same time, you can probably try the OKU Hanako songs from the same film. It's all been done before, and better. Sometimes by Shinkai himself (though in that case, they weren't necessarily better, they were probably about the same quality). Anime viewers, please, please explain to me why people are giving Your Name such positive reviews. I just... I just...
I've read magazine articles that pick up on the feelings of Mitsuha, who feels trapped in her non-urban hometown and feels strongly the desire to move to Tokyo for university and work. That, I can understand, might be a poignant element within the story. But that seems not to be a throughline at all, replaced by the age-old, fairy tale quest to find "the boy". I wished I could have seen more in terms of Mitsuha's longing for a maternal figure, or even just for a cool female senpai that she could learn from, given the loss of her own mother and her developing relationship with Okudera Senpai when she is living life as Taki in Tokyo. But those elements of absent parents (which also feature in 5 Centimeters, Garden, etc.) are so underemphasized, even when they seem to form such a large part of the characters' psychological states. Distance, loneliness, desire, longing, love—those are all beautiful and crucial elements of Shinkai's stories. But can you really produce story after story based on just that? Can you not give us something more?? Do you take us for fools, who only think about finding (or being apart from) our heteronormative partners in a melodramatic scene in outerspace, surrounded by comets and meteors?!?!
Please, Shinkai. I am quite gleeful about the fact that the Japanese Academy Film Prize for Best Animation of the Year went to KATABUCHI Sunao's In This Corner of the World for 2016. I also do not care how many box office records your film has broken. Every time I meet people who rave about how good Your Name is, I will understand that we have our differences, and that it is not my place to tell them how limited their worldview is. Nope, I shall not do that. But as someone who's lucky enough to watch anime for six hours every weekday, I can confidently say: I AM ON TO YOU. I know your tricks, and as long as I am living, I will not let others fall for your sneaky, self-serving ways. There is so much more to life and cultural texts than simply the boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl shtick you keep playing. And one day, the world will agree with me.
[Photo courtesy of Nan-Cheng Tsai on Flickr. Thank you!]
