Kimi no Na Wa or Your name is taking the Japanese box office by storm. The movie has recently surpassed Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo anime film, as well as James Cameron’s Avatar film. The only anime films to earn more are Ghibli and Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke. It premiered at the Anime Expo 2016 convention in Los Angeles, California on July 3, 2016 and later in Japan on August 26, 2016. It has a growing box office of $158.1 million and includes  fantastic reviews and a few wins from BFI London Film Festival, Bucheon International Animation Festival, Tokyo International Film Festival and Newtype Anime Awards. Expect this movie to get a lot of attention in the next couple of months.

Kimi no Na wa or Your name has been licensed by Funimation. Since it ran at the Laemmle Music Hall for one week, Dec 2nd to the 9th, it qualifies for the 2016 Oscars for Best Animation. A film must run for a week in LA county in order to qualify for a selection. A wider theatrical release is planned for the first quarter of 2017. After 52 days at the box office, it sold a total of 11 million tickets. This movie not only has a simple yet highly interesting plot it is capturing a lot of attention with a twist throughout the film and to fans loyal to the science fiction realm.

Your name is an animated youth science fiction fantasy film directed by Makota Shinkai. Makota Shinkai is a famous director of anime that has worked on previous gorgeous films of a voices of a distant star, 5 centimeters per second and the garden of words. The animation is by Comix Wave Films and distributed by Toho that have also worked on Makota Shinkais previous films. Without giving anything away the film is inspired by the novel, Your name written by Makota Shinkai. It was published in Japan by Kadokawa on June 18, 2016. The story is about a a high school girl named Mistuha Miyamizu living in the town of Itomori. She  is fed up with her life in the countryside and wishes to be a handsome Tokyo boy in her next life. Later, Taki Tachibana, a high school boy living in Tokyo, wakes up in a daze and realizes that he is Mitsuha, who herself has somehow ended up in Taki’s body. The story progresses with adventure, humor, science fiction and quite possibly some romance? I’m beyond excited for this film and I expect this movie to get a lot of praise during the Academy Award season. I do not expect this movie to win best animation overall but I do like to hope it gets the top 5 list of the category. Keeping my fingers crossed for an early release date in the United States.