Director Makoto Shinkai isn’t as well known in the states as My Neighbor Totoro auteur Hayao Miyazaki, but despite a tendency to tap the same teen-apocalypse plot points over and over, the 50-year-old director has consistently crafted animated works that are among the most beautiful of the 21st century. The 2016 fantasy Your Name. became the second-highest-grossing Japanese film of all time, and though on paper it sounds like Freaky Friday meets Twilight, it’s much richer than your typical young adult daydream. The premise is as old as acne: why is my body changing? The film opens in a dizzy emo-rock collage as high school girl Mitsuha (voiced by Mone Kamishiraishi) is suddenly surprised by her breasts. This particular change goes beyond puberty, however. Mitsuha, a farmer’s daughter living in the rural town of Itomori, has arbitrarily switched bodies with big-city teenage boy Taki (Ryunosuke Kamiki). The switchover happens randomly, but the body-sharers help each other out, leaving notes on their cellphones to let them know when they need to get to work or school. Mitsuha even helps Taki out with his crush, turning the reticent boy into someone more sensitive, and helping him grow up a little in the process. Strangely, but ever so naturally, Mitshua and Taki begin to fall in love, but how can they get together in their own bodies? Shinkai paints subtle, ephemeral images of both Mitsuha’s simple country life and sweeping cityscapes of Taki’s Tokyo, and the soaring soundtrack by Radwimps sustains an aching adolescent yearning that plays like a Ryusuke Hamaguchi drama with an animated teen cast. The AFI Silver Theatre screens this and other Shinkai titles as part of their anime series, and they’re all worth seeing. But the 2019 feature Weathering with You (screening March 5–9) seems to retread the same material, while the 2002 short, Voices of a Distant Star (screening April 7)—created on the director’s early aughts Mac computer—seems like a dry run for the more expansive work. Your Name. is where Shinkai’s cosmic teenage impulses all come together, and its appeal is universal, suggesting that no matter what disasters may befall the world, everything is gonna be alright. Bring plenty of Kleenex. Your Name. screens at 9:45 p.m. on March 31, and again at various times on April 4 through 6 at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring. silver.afi.com. $11–$13.
Your Name.
