A serious let down

Rating: 1/10 (8 December 2016)

The film reminds me of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. It's also a teenage, slice of life, romance with supernatural/sci-fi elements. In Your Name, a teenage boy and girl begin mysteriously swapping bodies at random. They end up using this power to help each other, leaving messages on each other's bodies Memento style to communicate. The girl has confidence issues but the guy finds it easy to be confident in her body. The boy can't talk to girls (well one girl) but the girl finds this easy in his body. It's an interesting idea that gets dropped 30 minutes in for a weirdly disconnected plot.
The art design was an issue for me. The film opens with a TV anime style opening, with a bland J-pop song and visuals straight out of any generic Naruto or Bleach OP. It's people running and reaching out for stars with eyes that do that little wobble thing. The character designs are too generic. They're almost devoid of personality- made to be purely attractive. Even the backgrounds are distractingly garish. While often detailed, they sap the atmosphere from scenes as they just try to look pretty at odds with the usually dramatic tone.
The characterisation is just as bland. The boy puts his hand behind his head and closes his eyes while he talks to girls and- well that's it as far as his personality goes. I don't know what motivates him for most of the film, his likes, or his dislikes. He works at a restaurant and that's about it. I don't even remember his name. The girl has breasts (which the movie likes to highlight) and she's also a bit nervous. It's weird trying to talk about these characters when they don't have any defining traits, they just do things. They say anime stuff like baka and oneechan and all that Jazz. Tropes just feel shoved into the characters in place of a personality. It's especially jarring when I've heard the director compared to Hosoda and Miyazaki, directors known for strong characters.
Instead Your Name tries to be more plot focused. To properly explain my feelings, I have to go into spoilers. The body swapping mechanic, as I mentioned earlier, mostly just happens in the first 30 minutes of the film. This accomplishes some small improvements in each character's lives even though their personalities are still one- dimensional. Suddenly, the girl dies in an unforeseen meteor crash. We see this happen but the next 20 minutes of the movie are the boy figuring this out. This is despite the fact that he knew the meteor crash was going to happen and it's frustrating that it takes him so long. Nothing happens in these 20 minutes to establish any personality or connection with any characters. It felt like wasted time and I was confused why they abandoned their most interesting plot device. The boy then realises, because of blatant foreshadowing earlier in the film, that he can time travel to tell the girl about the meteor and he does that. Then she tries to get people out of her town but it doesn't work. But then we find out that it did work. We're also told that the boy and the girl are in love. A few other things happen, then it ends.
Although I love the animation process I'm not interested in watching most anime. It's not that most of them are generic, that's the case with every type of media from Hollywood films to video games. It's the pornographic power fantasy aspect in so many of them that makes them feel immature and amateurish. Once again, in Your Name a personality-less guy and a personality-less girl with bouncy boobs get together. There's no humanity in this. It's just vacuous but pretty plot events happening in a row. Not that I don't like movies that are about spectacle but this is a drama- I should at least have a reason to care about the main characters.
The movie did nothing to make me care about them. In a 2-minute montage to another bad J-pop song they mention that the boy and girl invented an elaborate system to communicate with each other while body swapping. That sounded cool and I wish we'd seen them developing this instead of just telling us it happened. It's literal telling instead of showing. The bigger issue is that these small scenes are the only time these characters go through any development. These minor issues facing the boy and girl are solved less than halfway through the movie. The movie then just invents unconnected problems, solutions, and plot points to fill the other hour of its run time. The climax, where the girl warns the townspeople about the comet, was more engaging. The animation's good and it was more exciting. But the flat characters and direction held it back far too much.
I'll compare it to Hosoda's The Girl Who Leapt Through Time which is similar in terms of plot, but far better (Spoiler alert for the movie). In TGWLTT (at least Your Name has a shorter title) the movie constantly hints at a romance between the main character and one of her friends. It's presented as comedic so we don't take it seriously though. The girl's personality is established early on and we see that she's generally nice but unlike her peers she just wants to mess around and doesn't take life seriously. This is relatable and it's fun to watch her play around with time. This makes the reveal that the romance was serious and that her time travelling destroyed their chance for a relationship tragic and engaging. There's nothing this emotionally engaging in Your Name. Things just happen that are not set up or paid off well at all. There wasn't anything or anyone I could relate to. It's straight up bad film making.
Rated 1 star to lower the ridiculously high rating.