Stamping A New Future For Japanese Animation?

Ever since one of the great conjurer’s of animation, Hayao Miyazaki, departed from the directing high-chair in 2013, after making what was meant to be his last feature film in The Wind Rises, the most loyal of audiences have been pursuing a successor for this artistic medium/industry that is truly standing upon a defining knife-edge. To many, Miyazaki stands as one of the most famous and successful Japanese film-makers of all time and represents himself to be the definitive figure to evolve Japanese animation into a recognised genre. Yet, his departure has seen the likes of Western animation taking the cinematic spotlight instead; which has quashed Japanese animation from not only an economic standpoint, but from an entertaining perception as well. Nevertheless, with Miyazaki, once again, returning to complete his short film-project of Boro the Caterpillar, this is indeed an important and significant period of time for Japanese animation’s ‘resurgence’ and longevity. While many will ponder over his return and may even suggest that the ever popular strain of Japanese animation will reoccur through his re-emergence, it has to be said that an heir to the medium has already taken shape with Makoto Shinkai, a director dubbed many times as “The New Miyazaki” with his visually stimulating animation style. His latest and most ambitious work to-date, Your Name (Kimi no Nawa), not only encapsulates Shinkai’s thematic niche of ‘Romantic separation’ as well as a visual language that is breathtaking to take in, it is also a cinematic piece that could very well structure a new future for all drawn animations to come…

In the remote mountain town of Itomori, high-school girl Mitsuha longs for a completely different life entirely; pleading to be a “handsome Tokyo boy…” while performing her Shinto temple duties, which include the Kuchikami ritual, making sake out of chewing, and the braiding of Kumihimo cords, representing the whimsical moulding of time and space. One day, Mitsuha’s wish comes true as she awakens in Tokyo in the body of teenager Taki. Meanwhile in Itomori, Taki takes the place of Mitsuha which creates a scenario where their spirits are swapping back and forth at random and the two adjust their lives around each other. For a portion of time, their peculiar connection proves to be a benefit to them both; with Taki and Mitsuha learning about each other’s lives and subtly altering their own persona’s accordingly through notes, messages and imprints. However, something darker lurks in this awe-inspiring tale, with a spectral of comets lighting up the night’s sky that scuppers the tightly-closed bond that these two teenagers share, despite their distance from one another. Is the string of fate between Mitsuha and Taki strong enough to bring them together? Or will forces out of their control leave them forever separated?…

From the director who appealingly crafted the previous animated works of Voices of a Distant Star, 5 Centimetres Per Second and The Garden of Words, Makoto Shinkai once again dazzles our viewing experience with the whimsical and breathtakingly-beautiful Your Name which, vividly, provides a spectacle that would put many recent live-action films to shame. Throughout his 20 years of crafting short/feature-length animations, Shinkai is best known for not only adopting a filmography that is praised for it’s exquisite detailed and highly-stylised animation, but also noted in fabricating cinematic pieces that don’t have the necessary substance within the characterisation and the narrative. Putting those complaints aside, Your Name is a film where the vivacious young protagonists shine just as much as the glistening background details of every composition. Retaining much of the colour palette and fluid movements used in his previous workings, bringing forth a photo-realistic view of Taki’s urban Tokyo life and the verdant hues of Mitsuha’s countryside home, Shinkai’s careful deployment of juxtaposing the thrilling and spectral landscapes with the intricate close-ups of a door swishing open, or a phone screen scrolling, certainly provides the audience a rich grounded presence that many can relate themselves to, despite the film’s contextualisation elevating itself into the ever fanciful scenario. Even the scenes of the fantastical skyline and the natural disasters (a comprehensible motif of Japanese animation features), which appear later in the film, bestow to us a degree of grandeur that will enrapture even the most sceptical viewer to a reverie realm; a realm which that many live-action blockbusters can’t transit to the silver-screen. As much detail as their was in the previous filmic outings that this innovative director distributed, that contributed to this bewildered sense of wonderment, Your Name‘s animation is truly the pinnacle of Shinkai’s cinematic work that not only effortlessly goes to great length’s in being realistic and beautifully mystifying all at once, but it eloquently contributes to the story’s surprising continual emotional impact as well as its thematic complexities of ‘romantic longing’, ‘tragedy’ and the tensions between old and new Japan.  

For all it’s creative efforts of meticulously providing a thoroughly glamorous and explicit drawn fantasia, one of the distinguishable aspects to note of Shinkai’s latest Japanese Animation of Your Name, is the surprising story-line it ambitiously presents itself and how the structuring of narrative events and thematic intricacies converge to create an accessible viewing experience. In similar vain to Mark Waters’ Freaky Friday, Your Name’s story begins by diligently and comically balancing the scenario’s that Taki and Mitsuha both get up-to. While many may critique the opening 30 minutes for it’s dedication of presenting the lives of the two buoyant young protagonists, there certainly wouldn’t have been any emotional pay-off by the end of the film if Shinkai decided not to build-up the characterisation of these teenagers that many will engage and relate with in the 1st act. Indeed, by comically instilling coming-of-age ‘problems’ of clumsy dating and lifestyle embarrassments for both Taki and Mitsuha to deal with not only creates a filmic framework that the teen demographic can endorse and relate themselves with, rather than associating with the bland live-action young-adult novel adaptations that are outlandishly have the same premise, but it’s another subtle contextual add-on that increasingly permits to this films quirky verisimilitude. This realism, distinctively, progresses from the well-written comedic gestures of the characters swapping places from one another, to a animation that cleverly mixes it’s genre tropes intriguingly; ambitiously implementing a time-travelling supernatural that complements with not only Shinkai’s signature plot-element of romantic yearning between boy and girl, but also the tragedy of a natural disaster that disrupts the protagonists charming connection. For sure, to gaze at the meteor strike that threatens Mitsuha’s lakeside town of Itomori in the film’s 2nd and 3rd act can be clearly seen as a visual metaphor of the Tōhoku tsunami/earthquake that ravaged Japan in 2011. However, for the first time in all his day’s of animating vivid and abstract worlds, it’s intersting to see Shinkai passionately mould narrative and visual aspects in Your Name to advance his own theme of couples separated by time or distance in a dramatic and appealing fashion. The constant juxtapositions of the attitudes of male and female, the differences of the city and countryside and the entanglement of the past and present, all culminate into a moulded urban fairy-tale that compellingly vary between the comic interplay of the body-swapping and the melancholic and poetic romantic infringement that Taki and Mitsuha have to deal with the spectral tragedy is bestowed upon them.  

To further advance this light-hearted love fascination that the characters of Taki and Mitsuha have for one another and for their opposing lifestyles, Shinkai’s employment of the ever-known popular Japanese rock band of Radwimps, certainly exemplifies the mystic-relationship that we’re presented with in a relatable angsty mode of means that many teens will correlate with. For the many different films that have been released in this mediums long history, the implementation of music, or general sound, has always functioned to serve many purposes, whether it’s used to elaborate on the emotional side of a character’s choice within the feature, or to enhance the story-telling in a dramatic or comedic sense. Despite there being a few sequences in which the power-ballads/pop-infused musical tones temporarily jeopardise the story’s emotional peaks through the 2nd & 3rd acts of the story, the music that Radwimps compose, especially the songs of “Previous Previous Previous Life”, “Sparkle” and “It’s Nothing”, contribute to the stories idiosyncratic way of poetically exhibiting a charming coming-of-age tale that upholds it’s emotionalism through the course of the running time.    

While there hasn’t been a director like Miyazaki, nor a studio like Studio Ghibli, in the East that has produced a feature-length animation that has engage the worldwide audience in a high-magnitude, it’s a certainty that Makoto Shinkai’s latest imaginative cinematic work of Your Name will change the face of Japanese Animation once again, and should receive the plaudits it deserves in the West. Very much so, with it being the truly first Shinkai feature to employ a vibrant photo-realistic visual language and a narrative that advances Shinkai’s distinctive contextual themes of romantic longing in an emotional and dramatic sense, it’s no wonder Your Name became the highest-grossing in Japan this year by taking more than 10 billion yen at the box-office; a feat previously achieved by Hayao Miyazaki’s fantasy-adventure animations. Along with Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s charmingly-mysterious Ghibli animation of When Marnie Was There, Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name is not only one of the best films to be released this year, but it stands firmly as one of the most beautiful animations to be released in recent years…

With that, it’s time for me to end. As always everyone, thank you for reading my latest film review of Your Name and I hope you’ve enjoyed the read!! If anyone has an opinion on either my film review or on the film itself, please feel free to drop a comment down below. Honestly, if you have the chance to see Your Name, do go ahead and watch it!! You won’t be disappointed!! Next week, I will finally be bringing you the film review of David Yates’ return to J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I do apologise if anyone was expecting that review this week, I will make it up to you and bring you a worthy film review of it!! Once again, thank you to everyone for reading my latest film review, I’ll see you all next week!! Have a nice day and weekend!! Adieu!! 😁😎✋✌

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ – Alex Rabbitte