Your Name

"How high can a high-concept film go? For Makoto Shinkai’s body-swap, time-travelling, coming-of-age, animated romance, the sky’s the limit – and this film loves the sky. A young man and a young woman switch places every other day, saving notes on each other’s phones as a way to communicate before the night wipes their memory. It sounds dangerously convoluted on paper, but Shinkai unfolds this carefully-plotted origami of a story in a way that’s mightily impressive and immensely satisfying to watch. It’s enough to recommend Your Name on that merit alone; it just also happens to be very sweet and look superb."

"This vividly realized and emotionally satisfying feature ought to make Shinkai a household name - certainly in Japan, and with any luck, in other countries as well."

"For animation fanciers new to Shinkai, it could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship."

"What a thing of beauty this film is."

"Nice enough - just not quite the knockout advance word promised."

"This sci-fi infused anime is a powerful and poignant tale that deserves to be seen on the big screen."

"First-rate Japanese anime is a taste that anyone can acquire in the time it takes to watch a film like this, and it should confirm Shinkai's reputation to genre-lovers around the world, who know his poetry-inspired The Garden of Words."

"Part body-swap comedy, part long-distance romance, part... something else. If you only see one Japanese animated feature this year, see this one, and see it more than once."