Your Name vs 5 cm Per Second vs Spirited Away
I watched the “Your Name (2016)” in the cinema. I know Makoto Shinkai’s works, and I always put “5 cm per second” as one of my favourite animated films. And I certainly enjoyed “Your Name” on the big screen! And with all the awful animation films and another car sequel to look forward; I shouldn't say anything bad about “Your Name”. But the primary four reasons caused me to write this review:
- Many elements are borrowed from Spirited Away (2001), but they are the weakest parts of “Your Name”. Poorly handled and even misrepresented.
- Although in style of animation, “Your Name” is very similar to the directors' previous major work: “5 cm per second”, it is substantially weaker in the plot (and maybe even soundtrack).
- I tried my best not to nitpick. I'm not saying why this anime is inferior to Ikiru (1952). Furthermore, I compared “Your Name” to two other recent anime film which lent many elements to “Your Name”: “Spirited Away” and “5 cm Per Second”. Moreover, Shinkai is considered as the successor of Miyazaki and “5 cm Per Second” is the work of the same director. I think I have not been unfair to this anime or expected too much.
And also, I try to avoid sounding like people with hipster syndrome: older and less-known one is better!
“Your Name” has the great graphics: better than “5 cm per second”. The story sounds meaningful, and the voice acting is very well done. The graphics are just breathtaking, even for the Anime genre and definitely worth to be watch in a real cinema.
However, after going home and have a couple of days to forget the magical graphics, I started to notice many weaknesses of “Your Name”.
The characters are not developed, and they represent the most boring and shallow clichés/tropes in anime or even film industry itself. A lazy, manipulative script for such a great graphics!
This can be considered interesting when we compare it to his another work: “5 cm per second”. In the latter, we had real characters, people whom due to forces beyond their power got separated, and this separation took them apart in three parts.
“Five cm per second” has three clearly separated parts.
I liked that in the first part, the girl is the emotional one and then in the subsequent parts, it was the boy who had the role. That night and travel put the boy in a thin but real layer that doesn’t let him find intimacy with anyone. In both (second and third) parts, he is in sort of relationships, but he cannot move on from his memory of that night of train travelling and emotional intimacy in the part one.
The “5 cm per second” is great because though it is a melodramatic to an objective eye, but it has its base in reality and modernity. The film doesn’t try to rehash the most common clichés and tropes such as modernity vs. (very localized/nationalized) traditions such as the film The Last Samurai did.
Titles such as a cosmonaut or mentioning the first class train causing the delay for economy ones sound real to me. As I said, the story has its roots in reality.
At the end of the “5 cm Per Second”, you desire to tell the boy to move on. You wish to ask him to stop looking for the past and go to his house, where a real person is waiting for him. I enjoyed the scenes that show the boy and girl are thinking about each other and looking for each other at different times & locations. But the film also established that the practical part of the story. By the end of the film, you know the boy is constantly looking for her unless a closure happens and when it happens you understand why the boy didn’t pursue it and move forward in his path. They both had their closures, though at different times. I appreciate that the “5 cm per second” didn’t try to finish it with the two finding each other in the middle of a bridge during a sunset.
In “Your Name”, I found the family scenes are cliché and weak. Of course, the Grandma teaches her grandchildren knitting and old Shinto traditions. Father is, of course, a workaholic depressed who is a bit of a jerk: a distance father who doesn’t listen. Now, I even appreciate more that the “5 cm per second” didn’t show the parents of protaganists in the film at all. It was a great move! Although it was the parent who had plenty of influence over these kids' present and future, still the story was clever enough to not create the cliché silly scenes such as a fight between the protagonist and the sad workaholic father, or even worse: a younger sister who just say oneeeeeee-chan every scene again and again. The story stuck with these two characters’ inner emotions and let our imagination create the rest. Shinkai doesn't create any memorable family in “Your Name”. And please, no more knitting grandma in any of your future work! I know the knitting part wanted to look like (rehash) the Ziniwa' hut in “Spirited Away”, but these clips were not the reason that Spirited Away is an ageless film! I'll come back to this point soon! Even in the cinema with the beautiful graphics on the big screen, I couldn't ignore the exposition scenes, such as the grandma talking to the girl: “Yes! This, body switching, happened to your mother and me too!” but of course, she doesn't remember how or who. Maybe for better!
The friendships sound exaggerated! The boy and the girl have sassy friends who do anything for them; including exploding stuff! The boy has friends who are nothing like boys in secondary schools, but instead older brothers/sisters who do anything for the younger orphan brother. The film tried to solve this issue with funny jokes; which here is done well in the first half of the film. We don’t mind these exaggerated unreal friends because; hey, they are silly and comic. On the other hand, the film never reaches the depth of “5 cm per second”'s second part: cosmonaut.
I don’t mind that the story has the supernatural elements and all the emphasis on remembering names; these parts were borrowed from “Spirited Away” and I like them in Spirited Away. But here, it sounded like the end of Lost TV show, with its many time lapses and so on. I think it could be handled better. The whole drinking old sake and then seeing her again sounds like Deus ex-machine, though it was done well. The entire scene leading the mountain was extra melodramatic and silly though, as always, they put some funny jokes there to make it bearable. Let’s compare this scene with the train scene in Spirited Away. Watch these two scenes after each other to see why this film failed.
I am a kind of person who only re-watch the Spirited Away until the train scene. For me, this is a moment that this spoiled weakling, the only child of a yuppie family, becomes a mature, decisive, and separate from her class. Chihiro's evolution at the train scene, for me, is the perfect ending. And everything else afterwards was just busy work and exposition. It could be avoided, and still, it was one of the best animations of all time: Chihiro's story was done. I don't see this in “Your Name”. “Your Name” tries to follow the Spirited Away formula, but fails. It becomes an entertaining film instead of an influential one. I believe this film will age very soon, like other overpraised films of our time.
I didn’t like the ending of “Your Name” though I want to avoid arguing about it. Surprisingly, some years ago when I watched “5 cm per second” for the first time, I had this guilty pleasure to look forward to their reunion at the end (I mean to be together; they had each other phone numbers!) but I was glad to see the film took itself and us seriously. But in “Your Name”, it was the opposite. In “Your Name”, by altering the timeline the girl and boy had to sacrifice their memories together (like the end of “Spirited Away”), but here we had a twist. The boy and girl see each other in opposite trains; so they found each other in the next station (how?!) and walk by each other in quiet, empty, alley/stairs and ask each other name. I don’t know; it seemed little more than a little forced. In contrast, in “5 cm per second”, the crowded trains, stations, streets, and … were correctly shown as what they are: obstacles.
I know it could sound cold heart, but the love between the girl and boy was superficial and forced. In “5 cm Per Second”, we had a real relationship: the girl and boy spent time with each other during school and afterwards. Try their best to reach each other, even if it means travelling for hours in the middle of cold, snowy nights and the memory of their time together hunt them for their rest of life. Here, what can we say for “Your Name”?? The boy and girl don't have any specific memory of each other. They have to write notes to each other because they cannot remember what happened the day before. Our love couple has no memory of each other; I am not joking. The girl especially tries to pursue new relationships, such as the beautiful older manager, but who cares? Suddenly in the middle of the story, the boy, and the girl are madly in love. This new-found love bothered me least because I was expecting them to fall in love with each other and looking forward to searching each other like “5 cm Per Second”. Nevertheless, I think this is fundamentally and substantially weaker than “5 cm Per Second” and out of the blue. In “5 cm Per Second” the reason the boy cannot fall in love or even start to notice the local girl, in the second part, was the memory of his memory of her. What was the reason for “Your Name”? I repeat, it was a good move that the girl and boy fall in love with each other, but I think it was handled poorly. The local girl in the second part of the “5 cm Per Second” wasn't just a nice tool for the story. I think the local girl in the second part of “5 cm Per Second” was the character who many people find themselves in her, including the voice actor the boy! What do we know about the manager? She deserved better.
The last thing; the soundtrack. I believe the soundtrack of “5 cm per second” is substantially better than “Your Name”. Not just the melodies, but also the last song by Yamazaki. I know people who are not familiar with Japanese anime or music, but love this film’s soundtrack. I think “Your Name” could do a better job. Still this point is subjective.
Again, I think the graphics and visual presentation in “Your Name” is greater! Although they are many similarities between style; “Your Name” is substantially evolved and enhanced.
I don't mind the plot holes about body switching, such how they could remember each other phone numbers but not the year or the name of the town she lives in… I think these comments are nitpicking. For examples, I love “Who Framed Roger the Rabbit” though it was the easiest detective story ever! The answer is the “JUDGE”, of course! But it doesn't decrease anything from the quality of film. The scene that my dear Bob Hoskins as Valiant look at his brother's desk is still a great scene for me. You can take one or two elements in animation film without nitpicks as long as the characters are well-developed, and the script is strong.
I am very interested in astronomy. And I always found the astronomical aspects of “5 cm Per Second” and “Your Name” equally fascinating.
Many peoples find similarities between “Your Name” and many other animations movies such as Ranma ½. I just reread all 38 volumes of Ranma ½ during May after many years; so I have to agree. I wonder if anybody mentioned the Kieslowski's “Three Colours: Red”. Furthermore, I wonder if Shinkai watched “Three Colours: Red” and inspired by it.
In general, I found the infamous anime trope (said by Ian Jomha in 2013) in “Your Name” more than in “5 cm per second”:
… like some anime, where the main protagonist is just an innocent dude, going through daily grind of life, and then some magical … happens. He either gains some powers or something terrible happens, and he starts his journey. And of course along his journey, he meets nothing but hot anime chicks.
Finally, the question of the popularity of the “Your Name” in Japan comes to the mind:
As one of the biggest Japanophile I ever knew, Justin Carmical, once said: the Japanese films, in general, are cliché and in numerous instances are adapted from American or European films. Even though I have almost every work of Kurosawa in library shelf; I have to agree. By retirement of Hayao Miyazaki, we didn’t have that many ambitions, emotional anime films for a long time. Although the comparison makes me sick, and it is very unfair, but here in Western counterpart audience fail for cheap shots such as Suicide Squad.
We all needed this anime. I re-watched my a good deal of favourite anime again after watching “Your Name” in the cinema. I haven’t watched such an interesting anime for a long time. It made many people revisit this great genre: anime.
The strong element of natural disasters. I believe many Japanese people find this element in the film with the different eye and appreciate film elegance better.
I have one last major point to say: to critics and not general abidance. If you are a critic who disapproves Star Wars: Force Awakens and gave this anime full five stars.
You are not objective and consistent. How can you give the new “Star Wars: Force Awakens”, which has great visual, charming characters, and good pace a poor rate due to being just a rehash of previous films and don't see the many rehashes of “Your Name” such as “the girl who leapt through time”, “Ranma” and the list goes on.
Since last decade, many people are looking for a Miyazaki's heir and called Shinkai as one of them. After the success of “Your Name”, this notion has become popular again. If I am not mistaken, you were the same group of critics who were looking for the Spielberg's heir and selected a young, talented director: Shyamalan. Just remember how it turned out.
The dull-faced and spoiled (Spirited Away), violent & loyal (Princess Monoko), detached from family and self-called ugly (Howl's moving castle), working-class (Castle in the Sky) are not in the same line as these petite bourgeois in Your Name. The cute town girl who want to go to big city and eat in cafés, take pictures of her food, and a handsome city boy, who was just living his life: study and working simultaneously and just dragged into this story for the convenience of the plot. I think one of the wonders in many of Miyazaki's works is his ability to let us look through the characters' facades and see their real personas. Where did you find this trend in “Your Name”?
I read one of the Shinkai's recent interview. He was genuinely surprised with this sudden success and was reflecting new idea based on this new success. And he was thinking about the new film which makes everybody happy and laughs in three years. I thought to myself, here is another lost talent. I hope I am wrong: I believe he is a modest but very talented person.
In the end, I should admit I am criticizing “Your Name” harshly. I enjoyed it while I was in the cinema! I laughed to the jokes. I was breathless by the hand-drawn graphics. Not only that, but I am eagerly awaiting to watch Shinkai’s later works. And currently, by all awful but manipulative animations such “Sing”, it is just sad to say anything against “Your Name”.
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#FilmReview #YourName(2016) #5cmPerSecond(2007) #SpiritedAway(2001)