Your Name - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Your Name



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
I’ve been AWARE of Your Name for the last decade, but for some reason I never picked up the Funimation Blu-ray back in the day, and kept putting it off for “when this goes on sale I’ll grab it” despite some incredible word of mouth. Back in 2016, it basically took the anime world by storm, blowing up box office records in Japan, as well as becoming a cult favorite for anime fans all over the world. But back then I was much more interested in horror anime, or hyper action-oriented stuff, so my dumb self put it on the back burner until Funimation got sold to Crunchyroll, and by then it was too late to get a copy for anything less than $50 (at the time). But luckily for us, Shout Studios is continuing to distribute Gkids films, and has decided to give us a very classy 4K UHD combo pack steelbook to bring the film back to the masses. AND I get to experience this for the very first time in the best possible physical media format to boot!

Body switching in film and TV has been a thing for literally decades, but how it’s handled with Makoto Shinkai’s masterpiece is a bit different. The first 50 minutes of the film are essentially a cute slice-of-life comedy, with two teenagers by the name of Taki and Mitsuha randomly swapping bodies out of the blue. Neither of them knows each other, live in the same city, or have ANY idea what’s going on. All Taki knows is he randomly wakes up in the body of a teenage girl, and Mitsuha in the body of a teenage boy. The two eventually get the hang of leaving each other messages written on their arms and in their phones for when they swap back, only for the body swapping to stop as abruptly as it had started. And that’s when Taki decides to take matters into his own hands and figure out where Mitsuha is from, and track her down.

He and his friends try to track down Mitsuha with the memories of where she lived in Taki’s head, but their search is pretty much fruitless. That is, until the 45-minute mark in the film, where a random encounter with a cafe owner recognizes his drawings and points out that the village he’s describing was the village he had grown up in. A village that was destroyed by a falling asteroid THREE years ago.

I’m not going to describe the 2nd half of the movie on purpose, but Your Name is a veritable emotional rollercoaster at this point on. I initially described the story as a slice-of-life body-swap comedy for the first 50 minutes, but the second that Taki overlooks the remains of the pulverized village and realizes that the person he had been swapping bodies with for the last few months had been DEAD 3 years ago, things change drastically. Now it’s a heart-pounding drama that pulls at every heart string imaginable while keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat. And this is really where I respect what they did with Your Name. So many anime films like these are content with giving you a murky ending where you have to come up with your own head canon, and others just dump tons of exposition in your lap and make it overly syrupy and cliché. THIS does not in the slightest. Instead, the last 50 minutes are a non-stop emotional roller coaster, pulling you in one way, then the other, and then FINALLY wrapping everything up in a cohesive ball during the last 30 seconds. I was actually getting a little peeved, wondering if they were going to leave the viewer hanging simply because by the last few minutes we hadn’t gotten to the conclusion and there were literal MINUTES left. But, thankfully, this was the perfect combination of sad, sweet, and genuine romance in a format that didn’t dumb it down for the teenage generation. Usually these films tend to be watered down and diluted just a bit to appeal to Japanese teenagers, but Your Name blends childlike naivety with actual real-world drama and (a little) romance in a very adult way.




Rating:

Rated PG for thematic elements, suggestive content, brief language, and smoking




4K Video: Video:

According to the information I have available, there doesn’t seem to have been a modern restoration done on this, as it is an upscaled transfer from the original 2K master. That being said, this is still a nice-looking 4K UHD disc, as the HDR10 color grading really brings out all of the luscious greens, pinks, blues, and reds that adorn the film. Fine details are good, though I didn’t notice a massive uptick over the included Blu-ray (and I don’t have the Funimation disc to compare against). There’s some minor gauziness surrounding body part line art (such as hands, arms, etc.), but that’s very transitory and fades away once things get into motion. Black levels are impressive as well, and the minimal shadow details look nice. No banding is present, ent and overall this is a solid-looking 4K upscale.








Audio:

Instead of the 5.1 Dolby TrueHD tracks found on the Funimation release, Shout has re-encoded in the DTS-HD MA wrapper, which I ASSUME is not a remix, as I don’t see any press release information on that, but I’m just guessing. The result is a stunning track that plays well to the dramedy side of the game, with a front-heavy mix that relies heavily on dialog and mains to do the heavy lifting. But still, the surrounds get some heavy usage as the film goes on, with chirping of birds in the forest, rattling of trains as Taki takes the train across Tokyo, and that final act as they try to save everyone is just killer. LFE pops a good bit during the final act, but is mainly relegated to the score and ambient city aspects for the rest.

One thing I DID notice was that there is an audio glitch on the Japanese track right at the 30 minute and 5 second mark. It’s as if the audio skips like a skipping record for about 1.5 seconds, then goes back to normal. The same happens for a split second around the 12-minute mark as well, but it was so brief I almost thought I was imagining things. At first, I thought it was just an error in the video causing a skip, but the video worked fine, and it wasn’t there in the English track. I changed players, and it was replicated at the same spots on both the 4K and the Blu-ray disc, so it seems to be a brief flicker in the actual master. Not a big deal, but it was something to point out.

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Extras:

• Special TV Program
• Interview with Makoto Shinkai
• Behind the Scenes of Your Name.
• Makoto Shinkai Filmography
• Textless Opening Credits
• Teasers & Trailers

Final Score: ​

Your Name is about as close to a perfect anime film as I’ve seen since Belle, and I don’t like to give 5/5 ratings on films THAT often. Getting absolutely blown away by a filmic experience in the anime world is rare for me anymore, but Makoto Shinkai’s 2016 films did just that. I’ve already seen it twice today, and I’m actually waiting for my wife to get off this weekend so we can watch it together, as she’s never seen it either. Luckily,y Shout’s 4K UHD release is stellar, with great video, great audio (except for that minor glitch I mentioned above), and a few new extras that the Funimation release didn’t have. This is one of those must-own films that, if you’re an anime fan, you NEED to check out.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Ryo Narita, Aoi Yuki, Nobunaga Shimazaki
Directed by: Makoto Shinkai
Written by: Makoto Shinkai
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 HEVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, Japanese: DTS-HD MA 5.1
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish
Studio: Shout Factory
Rated: PG
Runtime: 107 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: August 25th, 2026

Recommendation: Must Own