ANIMATIONWorld — December 5, 2016
Makoto Shinkai Shines at Screening & Appearance for ‘Your Name’

Director Makoto Shinkai’s body-swap time-travel disaster movie, Your Name (Kimi no Na wa), is stunningly gorgeous, with reviewers calling the 2D anime feature “dazzling” and “endearingly loopy.”

A story of two young souls journeying to find each other through time and fate, Your Name marks the first commercial success for the largely self-taught Japanese filmmaker, who began his career a graphic artist and illustrator. It follows high schoolers Mitsuha and Taki, two strangers living completely separate lives who suddenly switch places: Mitsuha wakes up in Taki’s body, and he in hers. This bizarre phenomenon continues to occur at random, but the two somehow manage to adjust their lives around each other. They build a connection, communicating by leaving notes, messages, and, more importantly, an imprint. But when a blazing comet threatens an entire town, Mitsuha and Taki must find a way to reach each other, and save the town.

Following its world premiere at the Los Angeles Anime Expo in July, Your Name has topped the box office for 13 of its 15 weeks in theaters since its release on August 26, taking in more than $197.5 million domestically to become the number-one box office hit of the year in Japan, and earing the peculiar distinction of being the first animated film not directed by Hayao Miyazaki to gross more than $88 million.

Shinkai’s 2002 short film, Voices of a Distant Star, was a true labor of love created almost single-handedly with a Power Mac G4 running NewTek LightWave and Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. The film, which employed the director’s signature hyper-realistic backgrounds, was enthusiastically embraced by the anime world, and Shinkai went on to release, in 2004, the critically acclaimed feature The Place Promised in Our Early Days. The director’s next project, 5 Centimeters Per Second, released in 2007, comprised three short films: Cherry Blossom, Cosmonaut, and the titular 5 Centimeters Per Second, followed by the feature-length Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below, in 2011, and The Garden of Words, in 2013. (Read full story…)