500 Days of Summer (2009) is superior to Kimi No Na Wa (2016) but nobody wants to know

I was so exited when Kimi No Na Wa came out and I finally got a chance to see it. After finishing the movie I felt underwhelmed because it was so similar to another movie I saw that was identical. My brother then told me that I already saw this movie before and that it’s called 500 Days of Summer. I looked into it and yes they share the same plot and story line and it makes me wonder how someone can steal a movie so easily and get away with it. You can’t copyright a movie and it’s plot line so no wonder he got away with it. But let’s compare the two movies. One film was made by a relatively new director of the industry at the time named Marc Webb. This film came out in 2009 and it was made on a 7.5 million dollar budget. Kimi No Na Wa was made on a 150,000 dollar budget. You can tell right off the bat which movie looked the best. Kimi No Na Wa had better visuals and was very impressive. So now let’s go on to the plot and storyline. Both films have a girl and a guy character who met each other but both characters are “strange” in their own way. I will refer to the characters in both movies as their character name in Kimi No Na Wa.<br><br>In 500 days of Summer we are introduced to Summer and Tom. Tom is an architect but he works as a writer at a card company. Summer just moved into the office and Tom is immediately drawn to her. One day he finds out that Summer is not a fan of love and doesn’t believe in it. Summer tells Tom that she doesn’t want a boyfriend but Tom goes against it and tries to be with her anyway. Both characters are polar opposites as Summer is more outgoing and reckless while Tom is more reserved. It’s very clear to the viewer that both characters are incompatible but Tom tries to make it work anyway. In the end it doesn’t work out but Tom is finally able to realize that and move on with his life. And that’s pretty much it<br><br>Kimi No Na Wa is basically the same movie with a different plot but very similar to 500 Days of Summer. In this movie we are introduced to Taki and Mitshuha. Takai is a student and lives in Tokyo. He has a part time job at an Italian restaurant where he met Miki Okudera. Mitshuha is a high school student who lives in the mountains. She is a Shinto priestess and lives with her dad and little sister named Yotsuha. One day they randomly woke up in each other’s bodies. They started talking to each other through notes.left around their homes and found out what they did when they were in each other’s bodies. They worked out a system to coordinate each other’s days and lives. Takai tries to convince Mitshuha to let him control her body so he could get with Miki but she said no. One day their body swapping stopped and Taki couldn’t contact Mitshuha anymore. He found out that Mitshuha was from three years ago and was going to die in a comet crash. He went back three years ago to her town and met a young Mitshuha. Ever since she made a promise to herself that if she ever met the person who was in her body again, she would tell them how much she loves them and they would be together. After the movie ends we find out that they have been looking for each other for three years and finally met up with each other again in the train station. Both characters are different because Taki is outgoing and Mitshuha is more reserved and shy. But in the end they were able to be together.<br><br>In conclusion, I’m not saying that Makoto Shinkai stole the movie but he definitely got some ideas from the movie. It’s outrageous how much he copied the movie and got away with it. I admit that Kimi No Na Wa had better visuals but the story line was overhyped so much and was not as good as everyone says it. It’s so unfortunate that a movie like this gets over hyped and the director gets away with stealing a movie.