I really like Makoto Shinkai's work, and was happy to see your name's world premiere at Anime Expo a couple years ago. It's probably my favorite work of his and he feels like a writer/director who's really good at grasping relationships. And he tends to have a speculative bent to his stories despite setting them in what outwardly appears like modern day.
Anime getting a live action remake is nothing new, at least in Japan. And even in the US there have been stabs at it with properties ranging from Dragon Ball to Ghost in the Shell. Usually they're panned, though the recent Battle Angel Alita seems to be doing better than most.
your name is an unusual choice for a Hollywood remake because it's not an action film. Rather, it's a contemporary romance with a fantasy conceit involving two teenagers from different parts of the country involuntarily swapping bodies with each other. The opening segments are light-hearted and fun as Taki and Mitsuha wreck havoc with each other's lives and eventually come to a truce on how they're going to behave.
But, the thing about your name is that it's a very Japanese film. Though Taki and Mitsuha are modern day kids, there's significant amount of cultural mysticism involved and the movie does not neatly explain everything, which is also very Japanese. Western storytelling is more concerned about explaining how everything happened, and tends to get panned when the story doesn't make logical sense, but one of the biggest scenes of your name occurs with no explanation for how it's possible other the it feels right.
For the live action, we know that the Japanese rights holders wanted a western adaptation, because if they were going to set it in Japan with Japanese actors, they'd just do the movie themselves. Which is fair enough. Though it's disappointing for Asian Americans who would love a crack at the lead roles, the native Japanese film industry would do a better job of portraying their country themselves than Hollywood.
And it's not like they don't do their own anime-to-live action movies all the time. The special effects budget would be smaller, but they have their own bankable stars which don't necessarily include anyone with global fame and have different ideas of the types of actors they'd like to see in a role. (For instance, though Rinko Kikuchi is beloved for her role as Mako Mori in Pacific Rim, her casting was met with skepticism in Japan because she's not what the Japanese audience pictures for a mecha pilot.)
So instead we have a Native American girl in a rural area and a boy in Chicago (and since the boy's ethnicity is not mentioned it's safe to assume that he's white). And I'm pretty sure the Native American girl is being included to account for the mystical part of the story.
And here's why. Spoilers below.
When Taki realizes that Mitsuhi actually died three years ago, he tries to reconnect with her by drinking the kuchikamizake (spit sake) she made as a shrine maiden. This is obviously something intrinsic to Japanese culture. We don't have a whole lot of instances in the western world where a young woman's spit is used as a catalyst to ferment alcohol. But because it was Mitsuha herself who supplied the spit for this sake, and it survived the disaster that destroyed her town, Taki is able to reconnect with her by drinking it, sending him back in time into her body so he can save the town.
This sparks the climax of the story and obviously cannot be transplanted wholesale into an American adaptation as we don't have that kind of cultural background. I'm sure something can be done with American Mitsuha leaving something personal behind (just something a little less personal), but the sake itself would have to go.
While I like the idea of the role of Mitsuha going to another minority group rather than another white person, and goodness knows that we could use more actual Native American actors on screen, I'm really concerned that remaking Mitsuha as Native American is just so we could substitute in another "mystic" ritual. There may be a similar Native American custom, but there also might not. Each tribe is different and Native Americans aren't a monolith. We don't know if the movie intends to make remake Mitsuha part of a particular tribe, or if they plan on bringing in Native American advisers (which I'd hope they do!).
What I don't want to see happen is something made up so that it feels "Native American" and is done simply to slot in a magical experience that otherwise wouldn't be possible from the outlook of a generic white American dude.
End spoilers.
So I find all this concerning. While I like the idea of Hollywood broadening its interest in Japan beyond action properties, and I like that the scriptwriter seems to be a fan of the original film, I'm incredibly concerned that this is going to turn out to be another disaster.
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