Title: your name. The Official Visual Guide
Author: Makoto Shinkai
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 128
Genre: Artbook
Publication Date: June 22, 2021
Final Thoughts
It all started as a movie in 2016. Then it received a novelization and a manga adaptation. Now, what once was the highest-grossing movie in Japan’s history before Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, is being showcased once again in an art book!
In case you haven’t experienced your name. before, the first 49 pages of the book retell the story of the movie while using selected scenes from the movie itself along with captions and text blocks that bring you into the worlds of Taki and Mitsuha. You can relive all of their body-swapping moments right up to that fateful final scene where they run into each other and state that famous line… “Kimi no Na wa…”
What comes next is a rather short section but we get interviews with Taki and Mitsuha’s seiyuu as well as an interview with Makoto Shinkai and Ryunosuke Kamiki (Taki’s seiyuu). Shinkai thinks very highly of the voice acting performances, even stating that they went above his expectations for the film. Kamiki even goes into detail about how he performed roles for Studio Ghibli and even compares different directors he worked under.
I felt this was a fun touch as a lot of fans, back in 2016 at least, we talking about how Makoto Shinkai was becoming the next Hayao Miyazaki. The talk over this really picked up when your name. surpassed Spirited Away in total revenue generated. However, to embrace his different roles and experiences was a bit of a humbling moment during the interview!
The interviews continued after that as the book talks to Makoto Shinkai, Art Director Masashi Ando, Character Designer Masayoshi Tanaka, the band RADWIMPS, and Arata Kanoh who handled the movie’s script as well as the novelization of the movie.
The interviews do take up a good portion of the book. Once we get to around page 86, the artwork begins to shine through in this visual guide. We are treated to a Map of Tokyo where we see a mixture of real-life shots vs scenes from the movie in different locations such as Yoyogi Station, Roppongi, Suga Shrine, and many others.
This is followed by your typical character guide where we are treated to sketches and full renders of all of the film’s characters along with the pieces of information and backstory that you would come to expect out of a section such as this. Added in the section after this were props and more location sketches which inspired a lot of the scenes in the film.
Then, we wrap it up with a backgrounds section. Of course, everyone believes that a film from Makoto Shinkai contains a desktop wallpaper at every frame so this section just shows off the amazing work CoMix Wave did on the film.
Overall, this was a decent artbook although I have some qualms with it. First off, I think it’s too wordy. While interviews are great and give insight to the film, I didn’t think it was necessary for half of the book to be taken up by interviews when it’s titled as a Visual Guide.
I really loved the retelling of the movie through visuals and commentary in the beginning and the sketches looked amazing in the character section. In the backgrounds section; however, I would have loved to have been full-page graphics rather than just multiple images per page. CoMix Wave does tremendous work on their art and I felt it deserved a much better showcasing than what was given here in this book.
Outside of that, I think that if you’re a fan of the movie, this is still a must-have for you. Just reading through and hearing the different perspectives from everyone involved was an education but it did leave me wondering where all of the art was. I think things could have been accomplished a bit differently and the scattered nature of the selected pieces just seemed like an afterthought.
I would say the book itself is about a 3/5 in terms of art books go. You can’t go wrong with it but I was hoping for something a little more.
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press.
