Best Film, Animated and Not, I have seen in years.

Rating: 10/10 (10 March 2017)

Disclaimer: This review is spoiler free and for the lazy reader, I will give ratings based on main categories:
Story:9
Art:10
Sound:10
Character:9
Enjoyment:10
Overall:10.
Now that we have gotten that out of the way, I want to give my personal opinion on the film, with a rather unconventional review:
What is beauty? Is it the sound of the sea during a storm? Is it the sound of grasshoppers on a humid summer's day? Is it determined by any one single dominant element, or the fusion of several threads that come together, interconnecting, to form a myriad of colors in a tapestry?
What is a masterpiece? Is it a magnum opus? Is it something that fills us with pathos, until we are at the brink of tears, be they of joy or of sadness?
But more importantly, I ask you, reading this, how do you decide what constitutes a masterpiece and what doesn't?
Makoto Shinkai's latest work, Kimi No Na Wa, is all that and more. Setting the bar very high for following works, it sits comfortably among the greats in animation, if not filmmaking in general. He (Shinkai) has earned his place among the great directors of our time, and western animation could learn a lot about storytelling by example. I recently went to see this expecting to see your average slice of life/romance anime, and had my doubts, figuring it would have had all the usual clichÃ¨s, boy meets girl, falls in love, etc etc at least, that is what the trailers would lead you to believe. But this film is anything but average, moreso I wouldn't even call it a film, but an almost two hour experience. A delight for all the senses it satisfies from the beginning to the end and it has a completeness to it that few other films may boast, not only among anime but among films in general.
That being said, this film is not perfect. In fact it very well may have several imperfections, mainly characters and storytelling (though it was a completely new topos for me); imperfections which more likely than not have been discussed at length by other people. All I can suggest to the reader, is to see it and decide for themselves. Anything else would do you, the reader, and the film quite an injustice.
Art, being human, is, by definition, imperfect in itself. But does that make the emotions that it evokes in us any more or less valid? A painting may have corrections, and a book may have errors. Are those works of art any more or less masterpieces just because they aren't perfect?
The truth is, nothing is perfect, nor will it ever be, not while created by imperfect beings. But why does that matter? Why strive for objective perfection, when we perceive imperfect things to be perfect?
It isn't a perfect film, but it is, possibly more importantly, a perfect experience.
What really else matters?