Your Name (2016)
This is a tough film to pin down. Based on what I'd read, I was prepared for how it started, descendant from a long line of body-swap comedies, and the smaller sub-set of gender swap. And aside from it being a touch slow out of the gates on actually finding the swapees interesting, this is what the first act delivers. I could be a bit disappointed that it doesn't take a deep dive into gender ramifications, though it has hints at certain constraints of gender expectations and ways that blurring the lines might make things better. In this latter way, the relationship that Taki nominally fosters with a co-worker is rather sweet. I'd say that clearly what I need is for a girl to inhabit my body every few days to help me develop a relationship, but then in the gender theory sense, a girl inhabits my body every day and it doesn't do me a lot of good (such that I'd argue the film is perhaps overly rosy).
But then the film takes a pretty sharp turn that I'll be very delicate about, but I think it is safe to say it suddenly becomes much more in Shinkai's oeuvre, that of examining relationships over space and time, and the focus on gender melts away completely to focus on these two characters who have swapped bodies and their bond. The middle act that is the largest part of the film is perhaps the most complex and flimsiest at the same time, but it effectively moves the dramatic pieces into place for the film's final gambit when it drops the emotional boom, and effectively so.
It didn't ultimately connect with me like 5 Centimeters Per Second, but is definitely another strong effort from the animation director whose work I most anticipate with the somewhat retirement of Studio Ghibli.