A romantic movie and a beautiful work of art
Despite the public perception that anime movies are only for children, Your name was a huge hit in South Korea in 2016. It is a Japanese anime movie written and directed by Makoto Shinkai. It has netted $5,017,246 in box office revenues worldwide.
One of the biggest advantages that anime has is that there is less limitation on creativity and art than in movies set in the real world. (We can use computer graphics, but this sometimes does not blend well with the movie.) Your name make use of this advantage very well. The art is marvelous, full of incredible colors, and the music just fits the movie so well. The brilliant use of colors is evident in the sky and the lake in the film. The director also uses angles that are impossible in real-world movies, such as the low angle featured when a door slides open or closed.
The music of the film plays a huge role. Produced by Japanese rock band Radwimps, the soundtrack consists of twenty-seven different songs and lasts for an hour and twenty minutes. Some songs have vocals, and the others are instrumental. Considering that the length of the film is an hour and forty-six minutes, it is clear that music plays a major part in the movie. The director also revealed in an interview that he deliberately lengthened some scenes or deleted some lines to focus on the music. When the album was released, it ranked number one in the Oricon Chart for two weeks.
The storyline has a twist that is only obvious when you watch the movie for the second time. Hints towards it are literally everywhere in and outside of the film. First of all, the first few minutes of the movie actually summarize the whole story, only the director made it kind of impossible for first-time viewers to know that. Only people who watch it more than once will notice it. “The opening of the movie is deliberately made for a second-time audience. It is short but shows a compact version of the storyline of the movie,” the director said in an interview with the Korean agency Maxmovie. The official poster and the catch-phrase for the movie also hint at the twist in the movie. The poster shows two main characters in different places with a comet in the sky. Their faces are turned toward each other but they don’t seem to be looking at each other. This suggests that they were not able to meet. Although the English poster does not show the catchphrase of the movie, on the Japanese and Korean posters the catchphrase says, “I am looking for you, the one I didn’t meet yet.” There are so many more hidden clues that I can’t write about them all. I would recommend that anyone who has watched the movie search for the hidden hints in it to enrich their experience of it even more.
Though I have tried to avoid any kind of spoilers here, I have to say one thing that is a huge spoiler. Your name has a happy ending. The last scene of the film ends with the main characters meeting each other. This is a significant difference from the director’s past films, which usually have a sad ending where the main characters have to break up and never meet each other again. The director said that he wanted to give hope though this movie since it was inspired by the huge earthquake in Japan and the Seowol Ferry tragedy in Korea.
Overall, I loved the movie. I loved the art work, and though the storyline was a little bit cheesy I liked the twist in it. I really felt good at the end when the main characters bumped into each other. I would recommend it to anyone who hasn’t watched it yet.
4 stars out of 5
Bohyun Youn
The Rostock Review 