Kudos to him, kudos for all those who enjoy this movie and will continue to enjoy this film, but Makoto Shinkai needs to go back to the drawing board. It seems with every release he gets closer and closer to perfecting his formula and style, and Kimi No Na Wa (your name), sadly was the exception to that trend. Although Shinkai is tweaking and refining all of the elements of his craft, It just left me asking the question "for what purpose? " The plot was more drawn out, and more convoluted, and even more crammed into a running time that it could not fit than any of his previous films.
The movie was not bad by any means. Shinkai has come to a point in his career where making a bad film for him would be a challenge. But, this movie has no focus, no direction, and barely any thematic cohesion.
For the sake of brevity I will leave you with this. Miyazaki, Oshii, Takahata,Shinichiro Watanabe, Satoshi Kon, while all of there movies had flaws, these guys knew how to craft a compelling story! Which is what made their films so memorable in the first place.
Do yourself a favor and watch one of Shinkai's stronger installments like 5 cm per second or The Place Promised in Our Early Days( if you haven't already) to fully understand my perspective.
