You don’t think this movie will make you cry until it does. In no moment was I taken out of it. Your Name’s director and writer Makoto Shinkai also directed the drama 5 Centimeters Per Second, famous for its emotional vignettes of slow-moving life. Here, too, it’s the small details, like Mitsuha braiding her hair or Taki serving a pizza, that immerse you in their lives. Those are also the details that baffle them and, eventually, draw them to each other. Taki can’t braid Mitsuha’s hair and wears it in a messy ponytail to school; Mitsuha has no idea how to wait a table.

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Its top-notch animation only benefits its granular storytelling, too. The movie’s bright palette makes every little detail stand out in the way I’m sure they would have to Mitsuha and Taki as they explored these unfamiliar worlds. When a new wrinkle is thrown into the plot that raises the stakes, my heart rate skyrocketed. Each slice-of-life moment made me more invested in the movie’s final, thrilling minutes. You know when a movie gets dark and you don’t think anything, even in real-life, will ever be okay? Your Name does that in full force.

I was most excited that Your Name breaks most of the conventions of body-swapping teen movies. The supernatural aspect doesn’t end with the switching of personas. Often, with these types of movies, I’m distracted by the fact that body-swapping takes place in a world where everything else is completely normal. Here, Mitsuha’s grandmother, who leads the family shrine, puts the body-swapping phenomenon into context, making it almost believable. Her faith in the unknown helps stoke ours. Where Your Name does not break convention is its use of gender as a plot device. Taki, upon waking up in the morning in Mitsuha’s body, can’t help but grope “his” breasts. And Mitsuha’s feminine qualities are a draw for those in Taki’s life. It’s not so distracting because it’s what we’ve come to expect. Anyway, Your Name more than makes up for it in its final moments.

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Kotaku’s editor in Japan Brian Ashcraft has pointed out that the themes of duality in Your Name extend beyond the simple body-swap trope: “This is a powerful, deeply spiritual film that deals with a whole host of themes: the contrast in Japan between rural and urban, religion and science, male and female as well as traditional and modern.” Those big themes come through by the end, but moment-to-moment, Your Name is grabby and fun—until the dreamy drama of its first hour becomes a hair-raising nightmare.