Your Name. (2016)

Gee, it had been four months since my last reviewed animation and nearly eight since my last reviewed anime. I opted to jump back in with a recent picture that enjoys immense popularity, especially in its homeland, where it broke box office records.

Mitsuha, a modern high school girl in the fictitious backwater town of Itomori, wishes she could be a handsome boy in Tokyo. She kinda gets her wish when she swaps bodies with high-schooler Taki, a switch repeated every time they sleep. Initially, both take it as a realistic dream; when they return to their old selves, they find compelling evidence to the contrary, including acquaintances' behavior around them. They take to writing in smartphone diaries and otherwise leaving messages for each other, hoping not to ruin their lives. This lasts only until the second act, after which Taki misses Mitsuha enough to try to track her down. But he was never prepared for a major complication....

You might expect a cartoon along the lines of Freaky Friday with a gender-bender twist to be a comedy. Instead, it features only enough humor to be more or less credible in a magical realism sense. This is much more about exploring the serious implications of two youths connected in a remote yet exceptionally intimate way. They drive each other nuts, of course, but they can't help developing affections for one another.

It's also not half as perverse an anime as it could have been. Taki does take to squeezing Mitsuha's clad breasts each morning despite her ground rules, but there's no evidence of him doing anything worse than that, as I surely would have at that age. Mitsuha, meanwhile, touches Taki's lowers only upon discovery and, presumably, to use the bathroom. They probably both bathe only when in their proper bodies, which is extra important in a land of communal baths. (The rating's PG, so no onscreen nudity anyway.) Some viewers might be more concerned that Mitsuha sets Taki on a date primarily for her own benefit. The story doesn't make her orientation abundantly clear.

Things get confusing sometimes, not least at the very beginning, but all becomes clear eventually. It does turn out to be quintessentially Japanese, inspired by several native tales and relying on Shinto dogma for a key part. Thinking more broadly of East Asia, I recognize the symbolic use of red string to indicate a fateful romance.

I might as well tell you now that the element of time travel comes up. In the past, that's bothered me when introduced fairly late in a serious work, but the starting premise is strange enough that I could accept it. As in many time travel stories, memories can slip away in the face of altered courses, leading to the significance of the title.

While I didn't always appreciate the pacing (it seems to get slower across 106 minutes), I did find it first intriguing and then poignant, almost as if I, too, had somehow been involved in it all. Throw in the excellent graphics and it beats The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which I also enjoyed.