Film

Your Name.

Name: Your Name.
Genre: Animation, Romance, Drama
Released: 2016
Cast: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Ryo Narita, Aoi Yuuki, Nobunaga Shimazaki

A body-swap romance that turns into something stranger and sadder than its premise suggests — two teenagers trading lives across distance, then racing against a disaster only one of them remembers. Shinkai's animation is breathlessly beautiful, the score by Radwimps hits like a gut-punch, and the whole thing builds to a finale that earns its tears honestly.

TMDb rating

4.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love romances built on longing and near-misses, and you enjoy animation that finds emotional weight in ordinary school days, small town routines and everyday textures.

Skip it if you want a brisk plot, since its first act lingers on everyday routines before the story gathers momentum and the emotional weight builds slowly.

What it asks of you: Around 106 minutes, a gentle opening that rewards close attention, then a shift toward melancholy; expect patience to be repaid rather than rushed.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Weathering with You2019

Shinkai's very next film, and it deepens everything Your Name did — teenage love set against catastrophic weather, the same aching visual grammar, the same sense that the world itself is conspiring against two kids trying to find each other.

But It's messier and stranger, and the ending divides people — some find it a betrayal of the earlier film's hope, others find it braver.

A Silent Voice: The Movie2016

Another beautifully animated Japanese teen drama from the same year, trading fantasy for the harder work of guilt, bullying and forgiveness — just as emotionally devastating, without a single supernatural excuse.

But It's heavier and slower, dealing with bullying and self-harm directly rather than through metaphor — not an easy watch.

Spirited Away2001

The Ghibli film that taught a generation what Japanese animation could do with wonder and dread at once — a girl navigating a world that keeps changing the rules on her, gorgeous and strange.

But It's a fundamentally different kind of story — folklore adventure rather than romance — so the emotional hit lands somewhere else entirely.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Your Name.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Perfect Blue1998

Same medium, same country, even overlapping visual DNA — but where Your Name treats losing your own body as a tender mystery, this treats it as a horror. It's the film Shinkai's warmth is quietly answering.

A pop idol's sense of self starts fracturing under stalking and industry pressure, and the animation becomes a tool for genuine paranoia — one of the most unsettling things anime has ever produced, and hugely influential.

But It is genuinely disturbing — sexual violence, self-harm and psychological collapse are all on screen, nothing here is gentle.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time2006

Mamoru Hosoda's breakout film gets there first: a teenager granted the power to redo her days, learning the hard way that changing time changes what you love. Same bittersweet ache, simpler animation, huge heart.

But The animation budget is a fraction of Shinkai's, and the pacing is gentler — it asks for patience before it pays off.

Suzume2022

Shinkai's most recent film returns to disaster and destiny with a road-trip structure and a talking chair — genuinely, that description undersells how moving it gets by the end.

But The talking-chair premise is a real hurdle for some viewers, and it leans harder into Japanese folklore specifics than Your Name did.

About Time2013

A British time-travel romance that swaps anime beauty for Richard Curtis warmth, using its fantastical premise to ask the same question — what would you do differently, and what would you never touch — from the other end of life.

But It's soft where Your Name is aching, and the humour is very English — tonally almost the opposite film despite the shared machinery.

Wolf Children2012

Mamoru Hosoda again, trading teenage romance for a mother raising two half-wolf children alone — the same generosity of feeling, the same sense that growing up means losing something you can't get back.

But It's a family drama, not a romance, and the fantasy element is mostly backdrop rather than plot engine — a quieter, sadder register.

The Lake House2006

A live-action Hollywood romance where two people fall for each other through letters across a two-year time gap, never quite meeting in the same present — the same yearning-across-distance structure in a totally different key.

But The mechanics are shakier and the chemistry more restrained; it's a solid star vehicle rather than a masterpiece.

Sliding Doors1998

A scrappy '90s London rom-com that splits into two parallel timelines the instant its heroine catches or misses a train — the same fascination with the fragile hinge-points where one life becomes another.

But It's small-scale and dated in places, closer to a clever gimmick movie than the emotional swell Your Name delivers.

Freaky Friday1976

The body-swap mechanic Your Name uses for longing and fate, this uses for slapstick — mother and daughter trading bodies and learning to survive each other's lives. Different century, different tone, same trick.

Disney's original body-swap comedy, decades before the trope became a genre unto itself — funnier and sharper about family than its reputation suggests, and the ancestor of half the swap movies since.

But It's broad '70s family comedy, dated in look and rhythm, with none of the melancholy or visual poetry Your Name trades in.

Cloud Atlas2012

Both insist that two souls can recognise each other across impossible separation — Your Name across a few years and a mountain, this across six lifetimes and centuries. Same faith, wildly bigger canvas.

A sprawling, gorgeous mess of a sci-fi epic that follows connected souls across six different eras, arguing that love and courage echo forward through time regardless of the body carrying them.

But It's nearly three hours, structurally chaotic, and critically divisive — ambition outstrips coherence more than once.