I used to watch anime because of the compelling stories. Then I got fed up with the endless fillers and the creepy fan service. An exemple :
Not long ago, my bro highly praised an anime movie that supposedly had a serious and sad story that would make watch anime again. I stopped watching when in the first ten minutes there's a body swap and the guy inside the girl body start groping themself in front of the mirror.
I read the synopsis and the "bully become lover" is one of the tropes I despise the most. As someone that suffered bullying I only feel the deepest hatred for them in my heart.
Oh no. It's not really like that. It's more about hardships and kindnesses than it is about bullying. The main character is flawed, but he also goes out of his way to try and make things right. It's a pretty good story, but I understand where you're coming from
Is there any anime where the main character is just a total unpredictable asshat? Like Voyager in the Xenosaga series? I’m fed up of all the happy endings and friendliness and main character people pleaser who doubts himself. Give me a flawed main character I want to hate, but make him relateable enough that I can not hate him!
It's pretty good it was released in a local film festival here before it released to the public. About the self groping... What do you expect a teenager boy to do in that situation... It kind of stops there with that stuff so don't worry, it would just be too unrealistic to not put it tbh.
Also, before anyone has weird ideas, the dude self groped a gender swapped girls body with pajamas on, for like 5 seconds and then the story moves on.
You have to put the scene in the context of "anime" the genre. Anime is known for its fan service and adding such a scene in your supposedly sad and serious anime make the viewer automatically believe it will be full of it.
Tbh, I got burnout from the endless fillers of anime as a teen after watching one piece, naruto and bleach, so my level of tolerance for anime bullshit is really low, and only studio ghibli works manage to never go above zero in my anime-bullshito-meter. I actually believe that, when used correctly, anime is one of the best medium to discuss complex and adult themes.
That's the thing though, I watched it in a very serious film festival, for context the last Ghibli movie was also released there this year, I expected a quality movie and was not disappointed. It was then released as a pretty popular movie in the west, which a "trash anime" would not achieve ever.
Calling Your name anime is kinda unfair because "anime" comes with tons of baggage with it, and honestly this movie doesn't have it. It's similar to the boy and the beast and all of those movies where the only thing that makes them "anime" is the Japanese ambiance, drawing style and Japanese origin. When people think of anime, besides all of these obvious facts they also think of tons of other tropes, plenty listed by you, that make it quite hard to recommend good Japanese animated content.
I don't watch almost any anime nowadays anyways, if it doesn't have a good animation studio it's just not really worth it tbh. I just read tons and tons of comics, be it Japanese, Korean webcomics, American webcomics... You name it, I read more than 70 chapters a week easily, and there's plenty of trash manga in there.
Your name is kinda light hearted btw, it has some adult themes but it's a +13 movie at most. If you want complex and adult themes you might enjoy psicho pass, it's a cyberpunk themed futuristic environment where citizens are controlled by the greater good, the protagonist is a cop. Not many apparent tropes, adult themes, typical cyberpunk-esque society challenging themes.
Or you know, just don't watch it lmao, live is too short to spend it in dubious content.