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For this SPOOKY HALLOWEEN edition of Anime World Order, we’re um…not even attempting to review anything scary whatsoever, as Gerald weighs in on one of the most popular and beloved anime titles of the decade, the 2016 anime film Your Name by Makoto Shinkai.
Introduction (0:00 – 25:24)
It’s been pointed out to us that a lot of the old THE TRUTH image links are currently broken. Worry not, all of the images are still there. We just need to fix the links…someday. As far as emails go, what are our thoughts on all this “yuribait” in anime, anyway? This predictably goes off-topic FAST.
Promo: Right Stuf Anime (25:24 – 27:01)
With Your Name about to come out in a week, now’s a fine to point out that Right Stuf offers 25% off all preorders. In the case of Your Name, that means with a Got Anime? membership, the price of the regular edition works out to $25.54 for the standard Blu-Ray/DVD combo and $55.84 for the limited edition that includes the soundtrack and hardcover artbook. Those are way better prices than Amazon, especially if you live in states where Amazon charges tax like we do!
Review: Your Name (27:01 – 1:04:45)
Gerald offers a mostly spoiler-free review of Makoto Shinkai’s new movie, and in the process touches upon his filmography to date since it turns out that we’ve not really talked about the guy’s work since 5 cm Per Second back in 2010. But what is there to say about one of the most commercially successful, most critically acclaimed, and most fan beloved anime titles of the decade that hasn’t been said already? Is there even anything to add to the conversation? Wait, is this going to be one of those deals yet again where Gerald hates the cartoon?! THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY FOR YOU TO FIND OUT THE ANSWER.
I gotta say, it’s a weird experience to listen to Gerald reading an e-mail get interrupted by Gerald squealing in fear during a Halloween Twitch stream.
I don’t think I have much to add on top of what the episode has said. I will say that for anyone trying to get practice watching anime in Japanese audio without subtitles this is a really great movie to do so as the dialogue is not too complicated overall and people speak pretty clearly. I coincidentally happened to be in Hong Kong when it was in theaters there so I was expecting to have to rely entirely on my Japanese listening ability; it turned out to be subtitled in both English and Chinese. My friends were quite envious since the US theatrical release was still several months away by that point.
– karageko / Austin
I imported the Japanese 4K Bluray version of Your Name when it came out this summer, as I’m one of the lunatics with the appropriate TV and 4K Bluray player. The resolution improvement from 4K is surprisingly easy to spot, even if it might not be dramatic. On the regular 1080p Bluray the outlines around characters and the brushes used on backgrounds blend together slightly, whereas on the 4K version you can clearly make out exactly what kind of brush was used for each line. In 4K it looks like you’re getting every single pixel of resolution the film has to offer, like you’re seeing each frame as they looked when they drew them in the software, whereas the 1080p version loses that effect. Not dramatic, but it jumped out at me immediately.
But the real reason I got the 4K Bluray version is that it’s in HDR, which has greater contrast. This movie wasn’t conceived with HDR from the start, so it was a remaster done under the supervision of Makoto Shinkai. Because it’s a remaster, they didn’t have time to fully exploit the capabilities of HDR. Not every frame of the film has been improved. For example, there are a couple scenes when characters wake up and eat breakfast that look identical to the regular Bluray. But then there are several sequences which are improved dramatically, like the opening shots, all the music montages, and key dramatic scenes like everything on the mountain, basically every sequence told primarily through visuals with few words.
I spent about an hour comparing the normal Bluray and 4K Bluray versions of this movie by having them running on separate inputs on my TV. I jumped around in chapters and watched entire scenes, to get a feel for the differences. With the greater contrast, you get a completely different kind of depth and sense of scale to the image. If you haven’t seen a movie or game in HDR, the difference doesn’t look unnatural or exaggerated. It more closely emulates how light and contrast appears in real life. Like the stalls at the festival near the end. The light bleeding out from within the stalls, and how it’s occluded by the canvas, they gave it a more natural appearance in HDR, as they had more steps of brightness gradation to work with, so each section of the stalls could be emphasized differently by the light. I feel like in the regular Bluray they sort of run out of nuance in the high end there, so it mushes together a tad. The regular Bluray is still an immaculate looking disc. But the scenes that were improved in the remaster are just obviously better. Like the mountain twilight scene. I never noticed the mountain ranges in the far distance until I saw the HDR version, as they pop out of the image more clearly. Anyway, if it ever comes out on 4K Bluray in the US, it’ll be worth rewatching in that format.
Yeah, I had the same impression of Garden of Words as Daryl did. I saw it late last year after it had been discussed in the ANNCast on Your Name (and they had gotten similar a similar impression from the movie as well). The scene that I thought most demonstrates that is where they show him very thoroughly measuring her feet, so that he could make her shoes, as he was trying to become a shoe maker, focusing on women’s shoes, which also seemed like circumstantial evidence in that direction itself. That is far from the only part that points in that direction, but it seemed the easiest to understand without seeing it. It is still a beautiful movie even if one doesn’t have such interests, so to speak.
SPOILERS! [I have removed all of your specific spoilers, because this movie comes out here in like, a day. –Daryl]
I don’t like the ending part of Your Name. It felt less personal. Shouldn’t Taki be like: “Why is Gangnam Style on radio?” Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a really good movie, but for me Your Name is 9.9/10 instead of 10/10.
Now, to make a SERIOUS comment, I have been living under a rock, not knowing Your Name was THAT big, and is THAT popular. However, I will remain living underneath the same rock, and will not watch this movie for some time still.
Also, I still cannot understand your choice of episode title. Aside from being a reference, what does it have to do with the episode’s content.
Great episode! Enjoyed Gerald’s review.
I just wanted to point out that I don’t think Doctor Who will have the effect Gerald posits on bisexual representation in Japanese media, for a few reasons.
1) While Sherlock was indeed successful in Japan, Doctor Who was not. In fact, I don’t think it was even aired past the Tennant years. I think there’s a few possible reasons for this. Japan has its own glut of live-action SF in the form of tokusatsu, for one. I don’t think it helped either that Japan had little relationship with Doctor Who prior to the 2005 series (though there were some interesting attempts at translating doctor who novels – with some very atypical illustrations of the Daleks and the TARDIS by Japanese illustrators). As much as 2005 Doctor Who was its own thing, I think it relied on some cultural knowledge of the original (which even America had a trace of, with references to Tom Baker in things like The Simpsons).
2) I think Gerald is a bit confused when he states that the next Doctor is a bisexual woman. It’s highly unlikely that the Doctor will be referred to as bisexual. The Doctor has been attracted to both genders since the reboot, but it’s used primarily to point out the Doctor’s alien qualities (it’s sometimes suggested in the new series that the doctor has trouble differentiating between male and female sexual characteristics – which makes little sense, but there you go). I think we’ll get a few knowing winks at the audience about it, but nothing more, and I very much doubt we’ll have this new incarnation of the Doctor in a relationship with a female character.
Having said that, RTD’s run was really good for queer representation in general (he previous wrote Queer as Folk, and went on to showrun the fascinating series Cucumber). Even in his run, however, the male Doctor was always placed in heterosexual relationships. The last season had a lesbian companion, a pretty good character I feel (she provoked some grumbles from Guardian’s TERF correspondent Julian Bindel).
Above all though, I don’t see western media having such an immediate effect on Japan’s cultural politics. Japan has its own unique relationship with gay, lesbian and transgender identities and concepts, one that I would suggest is evolving in its own particular ways, slowly, but also, I hope, surely.