Immensely popular anime (record-breaking in Japan), writer/director Makoto Shinkai’s time-shifting/ teenage transference romance (think SOMEWHERE IN TIME/'80 meets FREAKY FRIDAY) makes his earlier work look like warmup exercises. Any training wheels are off in this gamechanger about metaphysically linked High School teens, big-city boy/small-town girl, experiencing unexplained personality swaps which strike like dreams, but able to communicate back-and-forth via text messaging. Then, about halfway in, the situation really gets complicated thanks to a time continuum element. (Shinkai must like pulling the rug out in the middle of things since his last, CHILDREN WHO CHASE LOST VOICES/’11, uses a similar gambit.) A past master of landscape, architecture & transport (trains, cars & subways a specialty), Shinkai’s characterizations finally hold their own against his elegant & propulsive backgrounds. Inevitably, if inaccurately, he’s being called the new Hayao Miyazaki. Better to celebrate him finding his own voice.
DOUBLE-BILL: Within its abstract manner, the final episode of Shinkai’s multi-part 5 CENTIMETERS PER SECOND/’07 offers his early best.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Bonus points here on the super ‘Pop’ score from propulsive Japanese rock band RadWimps, sounding quite a bit like the music in DEAR EVAN HANSEN.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: NAME brought in over a third of a billion WorldWide, but only a meager 5 mill Stateside. Instead, a Hollywood remake is rumored. I’m depressed already.
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