CHESTERFIELD, MO — A locally-owned theater has been forced to apologize after duping patrons eager to see Makoto Shinkai’s award-winning film Your Name and instead screening the first five episodes of the 2012 anime Kokoro Connect. The theater has been having showings for the last six weekends, but their charade was finally unmasked by an eagle-eyed movie-goer who previously saw Your Name in another state.

“We really wanted to attract people to our theater, but we couldn’t afford Funimation’s screening fees so we figured we’d just show another anime about body swapping and no one would notice,” theater owner Jason Owens told Anime Maru. “And we would have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.”

According to reports, moviegoers regularly walked out of the theater praising Makoto Shinkai’s beautiful animation and deep narrative — oblivious to the fact they just watched Kokoro Connect, a TV anime directed by Shin Oonuma.

“In hindsight, I probably should have realized something was up,” said James Livery, one of the hundreds of people defrauded by Owens. “I thought the ‘movie’ was fine — way better than Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo — but nowhere near deserving of its hype; I didn’t want to say anything because everyone I went with was gushing over how great the sky and the clouds looked and I didn’t want to look stupid and disagree.”

Even on the internet, posts praising Kokoro Connect character Himeko Inaba as the “best girl in Your Name” went unchallenged as most people have not actually had the chance to watch Your Name and were in fact bluffing.

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