Haven’t we met?

The award-winning “Your Name” follows two students in wildly different parts of Japan who have been waking up in each other’s bodies. In addition to being the strangest way to start a long-distance relationship, their unique situation may also be the key to averting the destruction of an entire town.

Kirk Speaking: When I first watched “Your Name,” I was a single young man on his own, finally settling into a full-time job, who wanted to see a promising new anime film in theaters with his friends. I walked out of that film with the dozen-or-so others that accompanied me dead silent; I was doing my absolute best not to bawl my eyes out. The beauty had overwhelmed me; this wonderful, hopeful, soul-soothing balm of a film had cradled my heart and reminded me that I, too, both craved and deserved real human connection. I was so moved, in fact, that I was compelled to reach out to one of those friends that same night just to help me process it all, leading to the richest and most fulfilling relationship of my life.

While I was perhaps uniquely primed to receive the film going in, this still speaks to the power of Makoto Shinkai as a writer and as a director. He, with his talented production teams, is able to present all the lovely, hateful, hopeful, familiar, messy facets of relationships in such a real and meaningful way that audiences can’t help but connect with these characters. “Your Name” is one of his best and obviously my personal favorite, and I encourage everyone with a working heart to give it a chance. Even the stoniest among us can appreciate the intriguing disaster plot and the inherent humor of a Freaky-Friday scenario.

I’d call it PG-13 just to be safe, mostly for a couple of boob jokes, but this is a family film through and through. Presented in Japanese with English subtitles.