Oscarless Animated Films Part 5

Oscarless Animated Films Part 5: Your Name. (2016)
 

Mitsuha is the daughter of the mayor of a small mountain town. She's a straightforward high school girl who lives with her sister and her grandmother and has no qualms about letting it be known that she's uninterested in Shinto rituals or helping her father's electoral campaign. Instead, she dreams of leaving the boring town and trying her luck in Tokyo. Taki is a high school boy in Tokyo who works part-time in an Italian restaurant and aspires to become an architect or an artist. Every night he has a strange dream where he becomes...a high school girl in a small mountain town.

As you might already tell, Your Name is a body-swap anime film, a bit like Freaky Friday. Instead of a teenage girl and an adult woman switching bodies, however, it's a teenage boy and girl who switch bodies.

What makes Your Name special is that it has a deep and emotional story, likable characters, and animation that rivals Studio Ghibli.

I first heard of this movie from a review from my friend Rachel, and she loved it! In fact, she even ranked it as her #1 movie (animated or not) of 2016!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA0BzAeaHtY

I also looked it up on iMDb, and it had an impressive rating of 8.7/10. It is currently the highest-rated animated feature on iMDb, better reviewed than The Lion King, Spirited Away, and just about every Pixar film.

While Your Name didn't get the Oscar nomination it deserved, I hear by bestow this movie 5 golden stars.

For those living in the US, I strongly recommend seeing Your Name in theaters while you still can. It'll either be in Japanese with English subtitles or have an English dub.

However, I have a warning for those who plan to see it in theaters: Your Name has some sexual references and an upsetting climax.
That's all I have to say about this week's Oscarless Animated Film. Tune in next week when I talk about Michael Ocelot's forgotten gem Azur and Asmar: The Prince's Quest!