Before delving into this disappointment, I want to mention the outstanding animation, backgrounds and sound design in Your Name. This is perhaps the cleanest looking film I've seen thus far. It is easy to be absorbed into the world of Your Name due to how well the film is presented. I would argue that Your Name is even better than 5cm Per Second in terms of visuals.
Now, while I could go on about the visuals, at the end of the day the purpose of these visuals is to tell a story, and here the story fails. On the surface, the initial plot to Your Name seems like it could work. The trailers covered the first half of the story, where the characters have to overcome their predicament of switching bodies every so often. Then comes the plot twist and from there, everything falls apart.
SPOILERS FROM HERE
Somehow, these characters are not only switching bodies, but they are also traveling through time. Yet, somehow they never realise they are traveling through time. This makes no sense at all. The characters would have picked up on this almost immediately through simply looking at their phones. But no, we're meant to believe that these characters are that stupid that they didn't realise what the date was every time they switched bodies. Both characters are then surprised when they try to find the other and notice the time difference. Mitsuha doesn't even question the idea that Taki is a few years younger in her timeline. This leads to the crisis where they need to change the past to save Mitsuha's town.
The rest of the film dealing with the evacuation of the town is ridiculous. At the very least they could have had a scene where Mitsuha opens up to her friends about the whole time travel thing to make things feel a bit more grounded, but instead they jump straight in to blowing up the power plant. The main conversation that is meant to convince the mayor to evacuate the town is done off screen, so we don't even get to see how Mitsuha has grown as a character in standing up to her father. Nevertheless, this is not as poorly handled as the main story of the film; the romance between our protagonists.
The biggest question I have for this film is this; at what point do these characters fall in love? During the first half of Your Name they are casually dealing with the body switching problem, then during the second half of the film they're in love. At no point do we get to see them doing anything that would lead to any romantic feelings developing. The only explanation we have is the usual for Shinkai; that they were destined to be in love even if they barely know each other. The worst part of this portrayal of romance is that when they finally get to have a discussion with each other, Taki just writes "I love you" on Mitsuha's hand instead of his god damn name so she can't even remember who he is. Then we're meant to assume that many years later, even after forgetting all the events that happened, that these two characters were waiting for each other to fall in love again. These people barely know each other, have almost no chemistry, and what they did learn about each other they forgot due to amnesia. It seems like Shinkai read Romeo and Juliet and assumed that's how a successful romantic relationship works and completely missed the point that its a tragedy about stupid teenagers making terrible decisions because they decided they are in love after barely knowing each other.
It seems that Shinkai still has no idea how relationships work. Your Name falls in to the same category as the rest of his films where the main characters are in love forever and we're meant to feel sad when they long for each other for years/decades. This view is simply too naive to be taken seriously. I can't recommend this to anyone unless you view love like Shinkai does.
