Sometimes life gives you a friend that lets you borrow an entire Steam Deck™, and sometimes you hold the Steam Deck™ hostage for many weeks as you make very slow progress on a game about an ex-superhero and his first corporate job (💕). I have been playing Dispatch, and I like it so far at 57% of the way through. Big claps to Aaron Paul for playing somebody other than Jesse Pinkman. I really wish I could romance the bat man, but we can't always get what we want.
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half alive announced a tour. Happy news.
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I haven't been big on karaoke since I was a wee lad; I thought I left that life behind. But take a girl to karaoke and tell her she has a nice voice and the mic will probably not leave her hand for the rest of the night. This is what I learned. Have a list in my phone of songs-for-next-time.
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Your Name. (2016) - directed by Makoto Shinkai
why movie so good, question 🥺
Watched: August 19, 2026
Rating: ★★★★★ / 5
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Friends, I really liked Your Name. I've been torn between wanting to write about it before I forget things and being nervous that I won't be able to find the words.
I didn't know anything about this movie going in, not the basic premise, not the genre, and nothing about the characters. And honestly, I did that by accident. Someone recommended it to me a long time ago (2025), and I said, "okay, I will watch" without doing any further research than that. It might be the first movie I ever added to my Letterboxd watchlist, and this is evidence that that list is not just a black hole for movies to disappear into. I watched. You should also watch simply because I say so. That's it, post over.
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My only reference for Japanese animated movies is Studio Ghibli, and I haven't watched a wide variety of those either. The Ghibli movies I've seen are beautiful and cute and whimsical, and I enjoy them. I expected Your Name to be a quiet movie. A beautiful movie. I expected the music to be good. I expected nice visuals. I expected to think it was stunning, and I expected to sob, but I also expected to be a tiny bit bored.
Your Name is all of the above, except it's not quiet (not particularly loud though) and it's certainly not boring. The movie starts with two teenagers who begin to swap bodies, and that's not even a trope I usually like, but it's engaging and pretty funny and kept me invested while building towards something more. The movie bends your mind a little in a fun way without feeling intentionally trippy or pretentious. It has a cool concept while also being emotionally moving. It was poetic and also a bit silly. It's not an easy balance to strike, but it worked for me.
This is a story about love above all else. It probably can be interpreted as a romance, but the platonic love and care I felt between these two characters is what moved me the most. (It's something I appreciate about PHM as well. If I find enough connections between movies I like, maybe one day somebody can make The Ultimate Pratima Movie.)
Your Name could've easily felt like an emotionally manipulative movie to me, like it's intentionally trying to evoke an emotional reaction that it doesn't deserve. But the part that actually made me cry was not too over the top at all. I just wanted these two characters to get to be friends so bad.
There are many ways this movie could have ended, and I probably would have been happy with any of them. It's about the journey. The Climb™.
A lot of my excitement might just be due to this being my first watch. The element of surprise is a wonderful thing. But the way everything fits together made my brain really happy. You can nitpick about logistics, but I never felt like I had to. I think there's enough here that a rewatch would still be enjoyable, just different.
I appreciate the accurate depiction of the fleeting feeling of a dream. It's so universal, but I've never thought about putting it into words.
It was neat to see Japan onscreen shortly after visiting. The ever present vending machines and shrines felt so familiar to me. The Japanese countryside depicted is beautiful. I saw the Tokyo trains, and I was like: whoa I've been there <insert Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme>.
I'll be recommending this one to a lot of people :)
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Your Name was in theaters for its 10th anniversary in August, which is what moved me to go watch. The Big screen was a good choice; I am a Big fan.
Now the least-recently-added movie on my watchlist is The Fast and the Furious. That was also playing in theaters recently for its 25th anniversary, but I'm not watching it. Not yet.
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