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I was recently in Japan and did a theater marathon of this film and Koe no Katachi (the latter of which I really enjoyed).

I would say that leaving Kimi no Na wa gave me the same feeling I had when I left the theater for Avatar in 2009. "That was ok. Really pretty but the writing is kind of bad." Meanwhile everyone jumps on it as the greatest achievement in filmmaking and it's forgotten a few years later.

While I'm being pretty harsh, I actually do think Kimi no Na wa has a lot of cultural value. Its style, tone, music ... choice and story feels distinctly 2016. I feel like we will look at this movie thirty years from now in the same way that we look back on Back to The Future feeling like an 80s film. So it's not to say that this movie wasn't enjoyable or has no cultural importance, it's that the writing and characters are bad. And to me, that's the defining characteristic of what makes great film.

Story and Characters - I have tagged the beginning and end of the spoiler sections.

The story in Kimi no Na Wa is not at all straightforward. The plot is needlessly convoluted. The main character is a girl who lives in Lake Suwa, Japan (which I recently stayed at and recommend visiting!) and wishes she lived in the city instead of the country. Her family owns a shrine, and she is stuck doing these ancient traditions.

The main guy is a guy who lives in Tokyo. He is painfully average and has almost zero character development. We know only of what his social life is, and not really anything significant about him.

One day out of the blue, the main characters switch bodies, and realize that they switch back and forth every other day. They begin to alter each other's lives. The boy starts acting feminine and vice versa.

The direction is VERY fast during these scenes, as it's all treated like a music video. However the visual storytelling is effective at relaying what's going on. They have a lot of fun making these scenes, the boy gropes himself every morning as the girl and acts the opposite of the girl, and the girl makes an older co-worker fall in love with him.

The movie then enters its second half, which is where the mess comes in. It's hard to be critical of this movie without explaining spoilers, but let me throw out a warning here.

--SPOILERS BEGIN--

A comet comes down and destroys lake Suwa three years before the timeline event where the girl switches body with the guy. For some reason she jumps ahead three years and spends two weeks swapping bodies without thinking of checking the year on a calendar, or finding his contact information so she can meet him when she gets her body back every other day. Honestly, the first thing that I would do in this situation is find out who's life I'm invading, but whatever, it's fun I guess.

The main guy goes on a quest after two weeks to find her and learns that all his body switching happpened three years ago, and that a meteor wiped out the town. He has to go on a long road trip journey in order to discover the crater took everything out. You would think that if a small town's inhabitants got slaughtered by a meteorite a mere three hour train ride away from Tokyo, that it would be a widely known national tragedy for years to come. But the main character has to figure it out by going to the country and asking about a town that people tell him doesn't exist, because it was blown up. He doesn't figure it out until he sees the damn crater. How does this make any sense?

Then he goes and finds some magic sake that the girls placed in a shrine cave, and he drinks the sake, which makes him learn her backstory as a child. Which isn't exactly character development, but at least we learn more about the girl character.

Then they have a phantom conversation that makes no sense and is only there for plot convenience. Lots of crying, music videos, and epic camera spinning occurs. This scene is a melodramatic headache for me.

Finally the main character's decide to go back and spend their last day saving the town in the girl's body. She convinces her friends to help evacuate the town because "a meteor will kill us all, I saw it in a dream, trust me guys." So they trust her.

Her guy friend steals his dad's dynamite and blows up a power station to get the town to evacuate. I wish I had that much faith in my friend's dreams. Maybe I don't actually.

The meteor falls and the town's people are saved. Yay.




--SPOILERS END--

I'm not really sure what the theme is, but what bothers me is that the film throws plot convenience in with supernatural occurrences with no explanation other than that it will push the story where they want it to go. These things happen in plenty of movies, however, we are not given proper time to connect with the supernatural happenings. It's already ridiculous that a meteor takes out a town, let alone the part where people are switching bodies every other day. Why every other day? Why two whole weeks before the meteor happens? Why the main character? Why is his timeline three years later? Why three years specifically? What does all of this have to do with the big picture of the movie? What is the theme of the film? Like all of Shinkai's works, thematics, poetics and symbolism are thrown all over the place, but if the overall theme is as weak as "Save the people in the town and fall in love.", I don't really see what the point is.

If you boil Kimi no Na Wa down to its core, it's an incredibly simple movie. The town is in trouble, a guy from the future tries to save it and a girl. So why is it dowsing me in artistry and theme? Koe no Katachi had thematics that I could write a massive analysis on. There was a strong purpose to everything, and it was an excellent film documenting the human condition, which is the objective of most good film. Kimi no Na Wa tries to be deep but in the end it's just masking its shallowness. It's fun to watch, but boy is it flawed.

Story - 5
Character - Strong 6



Art/Sound -

The art is breathtaking, as always with Shinkai's films. The animation is fluid and the visual direction is always interesting. Attention to detail is all throughout the film, and atmosphere is HEAVY in each scene. Quiet scenes are very tranquil, and loud scenes are booming with color and brightness. The only complaint I have is the damn 3D spinning shots around the crater. That was just way too over the top dramatic, to the point where it was corny.

The music is well scored, and a big draw for the Japanese audience is the many songs by the band RADWIMPS. This movie may as well have been a visual album for RADWIMPS, because they released so many hits. I was in Japan for a month and was hearing all five or so songs they did for this movie EVERYWHERE. Rural cafes, and big cities. Everywhere was playing the music. It's a memorable soundtrack, and they place the songs like music videos during the film. There is an opening that plays, and a credits track, but there are actual music video like breaks during the drama of the film. It's interesting to say the least, but certainly a strength of the movie.
Art - Strong 9
Sound - Strong 9


Overall - I rate the film with a strong 6 or a light 7. In many ways it's above average, but in the writing department I would say it is full of holes and below average. There's nothing worse to me than a super dramatic story where I don't connect with the characters and don't feel the emotions they're trying to throw at me. I'm glad other people are enjoying it, but it is very flawed in many areas.