Makoto Shinkai is, in no uncertain terms, a genuine underdog
story in the annals of anime history. Starting out by essentially going for
broke in more ways than one, just to bring his first short film Voices Of A
Distant Star into fruition, he has since gone on to become one of the most
celebrated anime filmmakers of the modern era. That may not mean much to those
outside of the fandom, but just to be clear, this guy’s work is so incredibly
lauded that he has often drawn comparisons to Hayao friggin’ Miyazaki. Even if
Makoto himself doesn’t take much credence to those comparisons, that’s pretty
high praise and, even with the little of his work that I’ve seen thus far, I
can’t help but feel that it is entirely warranted. Voices Of A Distant Star is
easily one of the most emotionally potent works of fiction, let alone anime,
ever conceived, and the fact that it’s only 25 minutes in length makes
that feat even more astounding. And now, he has a new feature-length production
out that is also gaining high praise. Time to dig in.
The plot: Rural high school girl Mitsuha (Stephanie Sheh [Yes, I went out and saw the dubbed version; sue me]), growing tired of her boring life, suddenly wakes up to find herself in the body of city boy Taki (Michael Sinterniklaas). It seems that, as they sleep, they swap bodies and have to carry out the rest of the day as each other. As their forced connection grows stronger, and a nearby comet continues its trajectory across the sky, it seems that things are only about to get weirder.
The animation quality here is strangely inconsistent, and
no, that doesn’t equate to the usual budget-cut moments that most anime films
end up running into. Instead, I mention this about the animation in reference
to itself. When it comes to the character designs, it frequently goes into the
realms of chicken-scratch with how lacking in detail they get. Sure, the
close-ups are good in that they convey the appropriate emotions required, but
once we get into shots from a farther perspective, especially if it involves
more than one character, it can look rather jarring. As for the background
details, this is exceptional in how much effort has been put into making the
scenery feel as vibrant as it is. What’s more, this actually manages to
incorporate CGI into the more traditional line drawings with remarkable
smoothness, far better than any other animated film I’ve seen so far from this
year. Add to this a good sense of camera movement and framing, even considering
we’re looking at rendered drawings, and you have a very nice-looking film, to
the point where even the relatively cheaper-looking characters don’t detract
nearly enough from the overall quality.
Screwball farces involving two people ending up quite
literally in each other’s bodies, and gender-mismatched bodies at that, is
hardly anything new in this day and age, especially in Japanese storytelling.
Now, even though I readily grew up watching both versions of Freaky Friday, I
can’t help but feel definite cringe whenever I see a story like this. The whole
idea of being forced to enact what is stereotypically considered ‘masculine’ or
‘feminine’, or even ‘juvenile’ and ‘mature’ mannerisms just doesn’t sit right
with me, knowing how fabricated a lot of those mannerisms are in the first
place. That said though, this film does a decent job at conveying that part of
the story. Sheh and Sinterniklaas do well at not only showing their own
characters’ emotions, but translating them to each other’s characters without
anything feeling left out for convenience. Not only that, because of how the
body-swapping itself is portrayed and how both characters end up learning and
adapting to the situation with reasonable intelligence (if not the occasional
spout of bickering), it actually ends up holding back on just enough of the
cringe for the comedy of the situation to ring through.
Of course, by the time the comedy completely sets in and the
tone is properly established, the film makes a very sudden turn. What was
previously a pretty light and awkward mismatch distaff comedy ends up turning
into a heart-wrenching romantic tragedy that is as stunning as it is slightly
jarring. But then again, even with how sudden it can feel, it actually plays
right into Makoto’s strengths as a filmmaker. Even when he was working with the
most wallet-scraping of budgets, the man has always had a serious aptitude for
tapping into emotions and making the audience feel them at their fullest. And
sure enough, without delving too deeply into spoilers, that is precisely what
happens here. Now, on the surface, this can come across as he is making a
melodrama with how intense the emotions can get within a relatively small
frame. But labelling this as ‘melodrama’ would imply that this aims solely for
the heart and sends logic and real-world instincts to the wind, and Makoto is a
lot more clever of a writer than to just settle for that. So, basically, this
has all the magnitude of melodrama with the poignancy of legitimate drama.
In the past, I’ve brought up how certain romantic films can
often feel like the filmmakers, and by extension us as the audience, are just
counting down the minutes until our romantic leads eventually unite. This,
however, might be one of the rare instances of that where not only does that
style of story progression work, but succeeds at delivering pathos at an
astounding rate. The emotional investment created once the big drama of the
story makes itself known is among the most potent of the entire year, even
considering how truly emotionally-crippling a lot of this year’s cinematic crop
has turned out. It ends up creating a similar effect to Don Bluth’s An American
Tail in how, by being constantly teased with the prospect of our main character
eventually meeting the person he/she has been looking for, it makes the
audience tense up in their seats. This is made even stronger by how Makoto
makes it excruciatingly clear that he is capable of throwing his characters
into seriously depressing situations, and therefore making the possibility of a
downer ending actually feasible. There’s nothing worse than going through the
usual fabricated notions of whether or not this will end up happily, when you
know that it very easily might not.
All in all, this is yet another solid winner by Makoto
Shinkai, starting out with a pretty ridiculous concept and then, over the
course of the film, fleshing it out into the kind of drama that holds tightly
onto the heart and refuses to let go until the narrative reaches its
conclusion. The acting is stellar in how the leads juggle their respective
gender portrayals, the animation and music give a grand backdrop to what is
ultimately a very intimate story and the writing… holy shit, this is some of
the most tear-jerking material I’ve seen in far too long, anime or otherwise, and it ensures that every single skipped heartbeat it causes in the viewer is deserved.
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