My Experience of seeing Your Name at the IMAX

Date: 2017 August 17 13:38

Posted by Voxie

As I leave Cineworld Leicester Square, trying to pull together the memories of what I had just watched, I smile and sense a melancholic joy well up inside of me. Watching Your Name reminded me of all the subconscious thoughts, moments and dreams we might have all forgotten through the motions of everyday life, an inevitable cycle of the human mind... and yet there I was, trying not to let go of what I had just seen, trying to fathom the beauty of the film’s meaning and put it into words. Makoto Shinkai had done it again!

But I'm not here to review the film today (you can read our earlier, spoiler-free review here). Instead, I'm here to talk about the experience of watching the world’s first anime to be released in IMAX format!

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This was my first time seeing this film, and I sat right at the back, in the centre. For those who haven't been to an IMAX before, the screen is huge, it felt like I was watching the side of a skyscraper. Sometimes I feel a little dubious watching 2D animation on a big screen, as there have been times I've picked up little graphical imperfections that I usually wouldn't. But with Your Name, the IMAX experience blasted all those doubts away. Every character, every scene, every movement, every background has been lavishly created and optimised for the size. Should I have expected any less from Shinkai? His movies seem to always have gorgeously reproduced skies, especially those set at the twilight hours. I'd even go as far to call it his signature, as even his first movie, Voices of a Distant Star (which created on his Mac at home btw!), had that same celestial magic. This time, part of Your Name's story involves the glorious sighting of a comet on a 1200 year cycle. In one scene, Taki turns his head to gaze at the comet’s tail stretching across the sky, where it's also stretching across that IMAX screen of course, and I found myself turning my head and gazing right there with him! I was just, absolutely, enthralled.