Sorry, Spirited Away. You will always be beloved, but you’re no longer the highest-grossing Japanese animated feature film. With a whopping $331 million international gross, as reported by the UK Independent, Your Name now has the top spot…and it hasn’t even really hit the U.S. yet, save a barely publicized one-week run for awards qualification.
That short run was enough to net the movie a Best Animated Feature award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and as a member of that group myself, I can tell you that it is unusual for anime aimed at teens to attain that honor. But the uniqueness of the movie, especially its original storyline and specific editing challenges, made it stand out. What starts as a fish-out-of-water comedy, in which a teenage boy and a teenage girl in different parts of Japan find themselves waking up in each other’s bodies on alternating days (in the Freaky Friday kind of way, not the X-rated way!) turns into something much larger when the presence of a large comet threatens impending doom.
Your Name opens April 7 here in this country, and you can check out the trailer above. Expect it to create a renewed interest in director Makoto Shinkai‘s earlier anime features, like the alt-future saga The Place Promised in Our Early Days, and the segmented coming-of-age film 5 Centimeters Per Second.
If you really want to make an annoying nerd-joke, any time somebody asks you “What’s your name?” from here on out, answer back, “A great movie!” If they get it, you’ll have made a friend.
Are you looking forward to Your Name, here? Leave a comment below under any name you like.
Image: Funimation
