A Rare Gem, Beautiful on the Inside and the Outside

Rating: 9/10 (1 May 2017)

Gorgeous anime in which a big-city teenage boy and small-town teenage girl swap places at night and affect change in each other's personal lives (just as soon as they've finished exploring their new bodies). The plot starts out fairly generic, but takes a twist in the middle that rescues it from ho-hum mediocrity and transforms it into something greater. It's very Japanese, in that both main characters speak in rapid-fire bursts, enunciating their every thought in a dreamy, poetic monologue, which alternately works for it and against it. There's a level of spirituality and self-discovery, too, that's left silent but constantly present, and a message about how important it can be to get in touch with the male and female aspects of our personality. Beautiful on many levels, not the least of which is its raw visual splendor. It's one of the most staggeringly lovely animated films I've ever taken in, stealing my breath with almost every scene; in many cases, I cursed myself for not speaking fluent Japanese because my eyes spent so much time on the subtitles. Both the rustic landscapes of a small, classical Japanese village and the crawling steel chaos of downtown Tokyo are fantastically rendered, sharing both a stunning aesthetic and a sense of warmth and familiarity by the closing scenes. A fresh, wonderful, touching tale with a little something for everyone, I'd dare to rank this with many of Studio Ghibli's finest.