If you haven’t seen Your Name yet, put down everything RIGHT NOW and go watch it. Amazon has it for rent and for purchase. Its the highest grossing anime film of all time.

It is the most beautiful and sweet anime I have seen in a while. My eyes were leaking at several points in the movie, it’s that touching. The Funimation site gives away a ton of the story, so you can go look if you’d like but I won’t spoil it here.

The Director

Needless to say, Your Name deals with similar themes as the director’s first film – Voices of a Distant Star. The short was a feat of animation itself and dealt with themes of love, loss, and time travel. Voices of a Distant Star was created entirely by Makoto Shinkai and the music was written by a co-worker at the company he worked at prior to beginning production. The director’s attention to the artistry of the animation  is breath taking. The animation is so detailed that you can recognize locations in Tokyo from other films and anime. There are more than a few people on youtube and on other websites that have the locations from the anime photographed or video in real life.