Hacker Cinema
Your Name.
君の名は。
2016 · Film · 106 min
Directed by Makoto Shinkai
High schoolers Mitsuha and Taki are complete strangers living separate lives. But one night, they suddenly switch places. Mitsuha wakes up in Taki’s body, and he in hers. This bizarre occurrence continues to happen randomly, and the two must adjust their lives around each other.
22 positive9 neutralfrom 31 commenters
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31 comments on Hacker News
I generally agree.
But there are movies that can be spoiled because of the big plot twist.
Eg. The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, to name a few (and [anime] Your Name, even the recently released Cosmic Princess Kaguya)
And then there are some movies where the plot is so obvious that you could have a LLM one-shot predict the whole thing.
That said if the movie/game/whatever is released for a couple years, I think the spoiler warnings should be optional regardless.
Sharing some in my all-time top ratings which are not in the list (would be cool if other folks shared some of theirs as well):
- Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022): Newer than the cutoff date of the list.
- Your Name (2016): I'm not usually a fan of Anime but this newer film hit different.
- Sunshine (2007): This one I know I consider far better than most do, but it's one of my favorite variants on this kind of story for some reason. Also Cillian Murphy is my favorite actor in the modern era.
All 3 of these happen to be from after the original 2003 book from Steven Jay Schneider as well (though they aren't in the newer list either). I find he did a really good job of covering the classics, but I'm sure if I dug through my top 100 I'd hit something older I liked a lot that didn't make the cut. I'm just too lazy to :D
Remarkably similar to this popular film:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Name
I was just about to recommend Satoshi Kon! Unfortunately, he only directed four movies before he died of cancer at the age of 47. What a tragic loss!
I also enjoyed "Your Name".
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie
Your Name
Violet Evergarden
Perfect Blue
Paprika
Metropolis
There's a bunch of great animated movies.
If you're referring to series then among the best Seinen classics are shows like:
Berzerk (1997)
Monster (2004) [My personal favorite]
Cowboy Bebop
Steins:Gate
Vinland Saga (newer)
Frieren (newer)
There's a lot of Shounen classics as well, my favorite probably being
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
granted there's several tropes in it that aren't going to be as enjoyable to watch on repeat for older folks. But the storytelling and plot is practically like Breaking Bad but in anime form.
"A Silent Voice" is the best anime film of the 2010s in my opinion and comes closer to matching Miyazaki than anything else I've seen, in terms of the power of storytelling. Miyazaki is still better, but it's extremely good.
I also enjoyed "Wolf Children" a lot. As others have said, "Your Name" is stellar too, and "5cm/sec" is pretty damn excellent.
Your Name (2016, Makoto Shinkai) and Ping Pong the Animation (2014, Masaaki Yuasa) are both IMO top notch (and the creators are active and have extensive oeuvres). The Shape of Voice (2016, Kyoto Animation (RIP)) was also much acclaimed. Of these, I recommend Ping Pong the most (and Yuasa's other works as well).
I suppose for more sci-fi/fantasy, Rebuild of Evangelion (2007-2021) might be interesting, although to me, its popularity in Japan and why the retelling was made is actually more interesting to me than the works themselves. It didn't win any particular awards or acclaim, but I was a fan of the incredibly stylish manga series, and I personally enjoyed the Blame! (2017, Hiroyuki Shesita) CGI anime film for those into the Japanese post-cyber-apocalypse sci-fi aesthetic.
I think these days, the economics of anime has driven more interesting work into series rather than features. Recently some memorable ones I've enjoyed are Steins;Gate (2011-2015, White Fox), Devilman: Crybaby (2018, Studio SARU), Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022, Trigger), Pluto (2023, M2), and Frieren (2023, Madhouse).
FYI for "The Shinkai films" it's Your Name and 5 Centimeters Per Second.
The first is the second largest domestic box office ever for Japan (after Spirited Away) while also being critically acclaimed.
The latter is quite well received critically, but was less popular (without spoiling anything, the ending is somewhat divisive). Still at a 63 minute runtime it's well worth watching, IMO.
Also, I'll second the Wolf Children recommendation. Everybody in my family liked it, and that's rather rare for a film.
„Bodyguard“, the BBC miniseries, and „My Name“ from South Korea, both on Netflix, as well as „Your Name“, from 2016 (now THAT was one final act and ending!).
I’m not sure if I agree with the articles thesis. There have always been bleak anime.
There’s so much more out there now. Some of it is whimsical and hopeful. Some that come to mind from the last decade:
- Yuri on Ice - A Place Further than the Universe - Your Name - Sasaki and Miyano - Given - The last Evangelion movie (which was a real holy shit moment for me) - Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet - This one is an odd pick but the Cyberpunk anime Netflix came out with last year was so so good. I know it undercuts my point given how it’s set in a dystopia but I felt like humanizing these characters that are criminals in a broken world and showing how they still have hopes and dreams and love… I found it very touching. - The Stranger by the Shore
Also Chainsaw Man is really really good, though it is dark and gory.
This is not it, but the plot is somewhat similar to Makoto Shinkai's movie "Your Name."
I first saw Spirited Away when I was ten years old or so, and then watched it a bunch of times until I was 16 or so. Many years later, last year when I was in my mid twenties, I rewatched it and it was such a totally different experience.
I think in the time between, I've developed a much better appreciation for the beauty of a lot of the scenery in the movie: even the day later I still had the flower garden scene before my eyes, even if it's so short itself. It just gives and gives and gives, it is so amazing. I think I lacked that appreciation when I was a kid.
I also realized how much my fear of losing my parents has changed. When you are a little kid who loves and is so dependent on his parents, this is the worst catastrophy that can happen to you, and instills such fear. It strikes so different years later when you are a proper adult who has moved out and I only realized that once I actually rewatched it.
It is a movie about the first job, the first love, about independence, about travel, about human's destruction of nature, about japanese religion, and many more things. It is such an amazing beautiful movie. In our field of work you can find many fans of japan's cultural exports, and that's fine, but I was never really deeply into most of it. But Studio Ghibli stuff is just so amazing, I am a great fan (plus Your Name).
Howl's Moving Castle really falls apart at the end, and it's a shame.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky are the most similar in feeling to Princess Mononoke. High fantasy, adventure, against all odds. (This is my favorite batch of Ghibli / Miyazaki / Takahata films.)
Spirited Away is an otherworldly coming of age treasure that cannot be missed. Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service feel similar. Whisper of the Heart is this too, just aimed a little older. (And if you like that, check out Your Name by Shinkai or Wolf Children by Hosoda - not Ghibli films, but very deserving of a watch if you like this sort of film.)
Grave of the Fireflies is a very poignant anti-war film.
FWIW, I bought the old Miramax domain name for Princess Mononoke and kept the website online [1]. It's one of my favorite films. I wish Miyazaki made more films like Mononoke and Nausicaa - they're sublime.
[1] http://princess-mononoke.com
I share the same experience of preferring subtitles over dubs, coming from an English country. This is most popular with Japanese media like anime (like movies like 'Your Name'/'Kimi no wa na' or Attack on Titan). It also fits for foreign language films (e.g. preferring the original German for The Lives of Others/Wings of Desire).
Crucially, outside of preference, subtitles are occasionally necessary for translating text on the screen (e.g. on building signs, newspaper front pages, posters, chalkboard writing), as information is conveyed solely through writing without spoken dialogue.
For example, consider the chalkboard scene in "Komi san can't communicate": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoH8I-NC5tM . It's key to the story that a character has trouble communicating verbally, so subtitles are essential to understand the written communication on the chalkboard. (You can then compare to a more extensively subtitled version that translates all the text on the board; good subtitles make a difference to storytelling: https://old.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/qdjgba/the_blackboard_scene_komi_cant_communicate/).
Nah.
I'd push things like Spirited Away or Tokyo Godfathers first, as far as anime-movies go actually.
EoE is good for the Evangelion fans. But honestly, Tokyo Godfathers hit me way harder.
EoE probably doesn't even hit my top 5 list of anime movies.
#1: Spirited Away
#2: Tokyo Godfathers
#3: Girl who Leapt through Time
#4: Summer Wars
#5: "Voices of a Distant Star" for #5? Hmm, or maybe "Time of Eve" ?? A lot of things I wanna fit in here but not EoE yet.
Not even getting to the "classics" like Akira, Eden of the East, Ghost in a Shell or whatever. These above movies have some mainstream appeal but still manage to hit that thoughtful analysis and depth. I'd still put something like Ghost in a Shell or "Your Name" above EoE...
There are also 'kid anime movies' like Patema Inverted that really were excellent and deserve recognition.
EoE is niche and fine for Evangelion fans though. Absolutely beautiful, and some of the best fight scenes I've ever seen. But you gotta see some of the __good anime movies__ out there. They all stand above EoE IMO.
There's a great, and almost impossible to translate, scene in the movie "Your name", where, after the female protagonist character finds herself in the body of the protagonist male characters, almost gets in trouble for using the wrong "I".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iowh6UxahKs
> I went to see a Makoto Shinkai (Your Name) movie festival, and some of his early work was less than impressive.
whaaaaa? Everything that he's written (which is everything except his first two and fifth short film) has hit.
Yeah, quite a bit. I watch anime online 1-2 times a week with some friends from high school and it's a lot of fun to chat with something we all enjoy.
I understand a lot of the comments talking about some of the pervy nature of some anime, and it's absolutely true. Usually you can tell if an anime is going to rely on that kind of stuff right from the first episode or two, and I avoid those, as they're uncomfortable to watch.
I guess the main appeals to me are that I get to see another culture (Japan) that I find very interesting and if we consider the fact that many cultures have big domestic entertainment production, they're all going to have some good content. I spend a lot of my time with the Japanese stuff (manga included) because I like a lot of the themes they touch on, but I also enjoy Indian, Korean, German, English, etc media as well. Anime just happens to be one portion of that.
To limit myself to just American media would mean I'm missing out on all the best stuff around the world.
For anyone that maybe has a dislike for anime, I'd consider watching "Garden of Words", "Your Name", "Weathering with You", or "Flavors of Youth". All are very popular films between 45 minutes and two hours that have classic coming of age stories that are common in American culture, so I'd imagine they'd be a good place to start if you wanted to give anime a shot.
>Anime is not the dominant form of media in Japan, and is largely targeted at a relatively narrow age band
But it seems very popular, out of the top ten highest grossing films in Japan, 5 are anime (Spirited Away, Demon Slayer, Your Name, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle), and the top two are Spirited Away and Demon Slayer.
In North America's top ten you will only find one animated feature, Incredibles 2, and it is at position ten.
A recent, fairly famous anime movie that I would recommend is Kimi No Nawa/Your Name. Very emotional, and just a great movie all around. I would also recommend any Studio Ghibli movie, particularly Spirited Away. If you want to watch some great artistic style anime series, watch any of Shinichiro Watanabe's shows, or if you're into psychological stories, watch Death Note.
There really is something for everyone if you look hard enough. There is a reason anime is so popular.
I know this is completely off topic, but seeing these pictures reminds me of one of my favorite movies Your Name (2016). If anyone has a spare 107 minutes in quarantine, I would highly recommend watching it, or at least adding it to your "queue."
https://myanimelist.net/anime/32281/Kimi_no_Na_wa
It would be a crime to watch anything directed by Shinkai Makoto (Your Name, 5 Centimeters per Second, ...) in anything less than the best possible image quality possible. "Every frame a painting" indeed !
People absolutely talk about great more recent animated movies, like Your Name, Into the Spider-Verse, and Kubo and the Two Strings.
Princes Mononoke is actually my favorite movie, I obviously agree that it's really excellent, but objectively I think Spider-Verse is just as good, even if it doesn't fit my preferences quite as much.
For TV series, Mob Psycho 100 is absolutely top tier, I'd put it against Cowboy Bebop easily. Loved Bebop, but I think MP100 is the better series overall, both for story and animation quality.
This is a combination of rose-tinted glasses, plus things accumulating social value over time. Eminem didn't rap about playing N64 games until long, long past the N64's heydey; it wasn't cool to mention that back in 1998. Pokemon is mainstream with adults now, but it was for real (young) nerds and dorks back when it started. Retro games are currently cool with those who scoffed at them when they were new. This phenomenon is especially prevalent with 'cult hits', like Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, which has a much more positive reputation now than it did at its own launch.
Your Name and the 2 Gundam Thunderbolt movies have 4K BDs, but I don't know if they are upscaled or native 4K. There's also a Gundam F91 and Space Adventure Cobra movie 4K remaster, but those were animated with cells, so I don't know how useful those would be for testing an upscaler.
Wow, and I haven't even jumped up to 4K yet. It seems like technology might be advancing faster than many producers can keep up.
As I understand it, in the anime world most airing shows are still being animated at 720p or at slightly higher resolution, with a handful of them occasionally being animated at 1080p. Although the best studios typically clean things up and make a huge number of improvements for their 1080p BD release. Movies are generally animated at 1080p.
Older cell-drawn anime are being scanned at 4K / 5K to produce new 4K releases, and I'm told the level of detail in those is incredible, which makes sense given that they're hand-drawn with extreme care. Currently the best known release is probably Ghost in the Shell (1995).
Even the incredibly popular movie Your Name was animated at 1080p. The special edition is upscaled 4K with HDR.
The high cost of 4K releases also creates a barrier. A standard 4K Blu-ray movie seems to go for around ~$80. If you want both the English and Japanese versions of Your Name at 4K you're looking to pay around ~$195, admittedly that's for the 5-disk collector's edition. Compare that with a typical ~$20 1080p Blu-ray release.
Being unable to prepare a personal backup is also a problem. Ideally I'd dump the movie right away so the physical medium can be stored in as pristine conditions as possible. It would feel very frustrating to spend that much money, only to have it casually damaged.
5 centimeters per second: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0983213/
Visually stunning,leaves me with profound thoughts of fate,missed opportunities and connections between humans.
Your name is similar as well: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5311514/?ref_=tt_rec_tt
Slice of life films tend to depress and/or stress me. I tend to avoid them because I empathize too much. Just reading the wikipedia summaries of the films you wrote about, got me anxious, especially `Only Yesterday` because I'm at the same age with the protagonist and my career and love life are lacking.
If a film has a [redacted-for-spoilers] aspect, even with all the drama, I enjoy it more. If you're like me, you'll definitely enjoy `Your Name`. I cried more than when I watched Lion King for the first time.
To quote bitwize from this thread: Well-done anime has a way of focusing on the mundane in order to establish an emotional connection to the setting.
For anyone who wants to understand this aesthetic, I strongly recommend watching The Garden of Words (言の葉の庭), which is only 46 minutes long. There is something breathtakingly beautiful about this film and other ones like it. They engender a strong feeling of longing and gentle sadness (nostalgia?) by bringing focus to the little things in life. It's a sentiment that tugs at the human soul.
Look up mono no aware (物の哀れ), which may be translated as 'a gentle sadness at the transience of things', as well as wabi-sabi (侘寂). Both of these are central to Japanese culture and history.
Edit: I also recommend checking out '5 Centimeters Per Second' and 'Your Name', both directed by Makoto Shinkai. To quote Ronnie Scheib's review:
Shinkai has been hailed as the next Miyazaki, and his dreamy mindscapes often equal or surpass the anime maestro in breadth of detail and depth of emotion. Shinkai extends the innate possibilities of the anime dynamic, reapplying its principles of lush effects, inflated background detail and sometimes undernourished character animation to mirror the interiority of the characters in every nuance of their surroundings.
Some images from 5cm/s: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=5+cm+per+second&oq=5+cm+per+second
It isn't just powerlines. Anime -- especially well-done anime -- has a way of focusing on the mundane in order to establish an emotional connection to the setting.
Thr anime movie Your Name is riddled with brief, but sumptuously animated and richly detailed, close-ups of doors opening and closing. These include simple doors on a rustic rural home as well as the automatic sliding doors on a Tokyo railway car.
It sucks when official subtitles for even movies like Your Name can sound off to someone who has only picked up a few words / phrases from watching anime. Same with popular games like Persona 5. :(
Wow. This is such an excellent work. Thank you so much for it.
This is unrelated. I recently went and watched Markoto Shinkai's latest film : Kimi no Na wa. (Your Name.). Like his previous works, it's extraordinary. I encourage everyone to give it a try.
While Markoto Shinkai won't be Miyazaki, his work are pretty good and he's still very young so I really hope to see him making great ones like Miyazaki.