Two teenagers share a profound, magical connection upon discovering they are swapping bodies. Things manage to become even more complicated when the boy and girl decide to meet in person.
Initial release: 26 August 2016 (Japan)Director: Makoto Shinkai
Your Name (Kimi no Na wa) is a 2016 Japanese animated romantic fantasy film written and directed by Makoto Shinkai, and produced by CoMix Wave Films. It was produced by Kōichirō Itō and Katsuhiro Takei, with animation direction by Masashi Ando, character designs by Masayoshi Tanaka, and music composed by Radwimps.
Your Name tells the story of a high school boy in Tokyo and a high school girl in a rural town, who suddenly and inexplicably begin to swap bodies. The film stars Ryunosuke Kamiki and Mone Kamishiraishi. Shinkai's light novel was published a month before the film's premiere.
Your Name was distributed by Toho. It premiered at the Anime Expo 2016 convention in Los Angeles, California, on July 3, 2016, and in Japan on August 26, 2016. It was critically acclaimed for its animation, complex narrative, musical score, and emotional weight.
The film was also a major commercial success, with a total gross of $358 million. As of 2021, it is the third highest-grossing anime film and Japanese film worldwide of all time, the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, the tenth-highest-grossing traditionally animated film, and the 19th-highest-grossing non-English film worldwide.
The film won the Best Animated Feature Film award at the 49th Sitges Film Festival, the 2016 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, and the 71st Mainichi Film Awards, as well as receiving a nomination for the 40th Japan Academy Prize for the Best Animation of the Year. A live-action remake set in the United States is currently in development by Paramount Pictures.
Is Kimi no Na(Your Name) was a real story?
The story revolves around the life of a high school girl in rural Japan and a high school boy in Tokyo who swap bodies. Therefore, the movie featured many locations in Japan. Yui Mendoza spent an entire day on a pilgrimage to see the real-life locations of this animated movie.
Why is Kimi no Na (Your Name) was sad?
Movies like Kimi no Na wa or series like CLANNAD do that to you because they have unrealistic scenarios portrayed in a mundane fashion. That mundane presentation triggers this sad, longing feeling.
Plot
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Mitsuha Miyamizu is a high school girl living in the rural town of Itomori near Hida. Bored of the town, she wishes to be a Tokyo boy in her next life. She inexplicably begins to switch bodies intermittently with Taki Tachibana, a high school boy in Tokyo, waking up as the other person and having to live through their activities and social interactions for the day. The two initially believe these experiences to be vivid dreams, but eventually realize they can communicate with each other by leaving messages on paper, phones, and sometimes on each other's skin.
Mitsuha (in Taki's body) sets Taki up on a date with his coworker Miki Okudera, while Taki (in Mitsuha's body) causes Mitsuha to become popular at school. One day, Taki (in Mitsuha's body) accompanies Mitsuha's grandmother Hitoha and her sister Yotsuha to leave the ritual alcohol kuchikamizake, made by the sisters, as an offering at the Shinto shrine located on a mountaintop outside the town.
It is believed to represent the body of the village guardian god ruling over human connections and time. Taki reads a note from Mitsuha about the comet Tiamat, expected to pass nearest to Earth on the day of the autumn festival. The next day, Taki wakes up in his body and goes on a date with Miki, who tells him she enjoyed the date but also that she can tell that he is preoccupied with thoughts of someone else. Taki attempts to call Mitsuha on the phone, but cannot reach her and finds the body-switching has ended.
Taki, Miki, and their friend Tsukasa travel to Gifu by train on a trip to Hida, though Taki does not know the name of the town, instead of relying on sketches he has made of the surrounding landscape from memory. A restaurant owner in Hida recognizes the town in the sketch as Itomori, being originally from there. He takes Taki and his friends to the ruins of the town, which has been destroyed and where five hundred residents were killed when the comet Tiamat unexpectedly fragmented three years earlier.
While gazing over the impact crater in disbelief, Taki observes Mitsuha's messages disappear from his phone and his memories of her begin to gradually fade. Taki finds Mitsuha's name in the record of fatalities, and he wonders if the body-switching was just a dream. While Miki and Tsukasa return to Tokyo, Taki journeys to the shrine, hoping to reconnect with Mitsuha and warn her about the comet. In the shrine, Taki drinks Mitsuha's kuchikamizake then lapses into a vision, where he glimpses Mitsuha's past.
He also recalls that he had already encountered Mitsuha on a train three years earlier when she came to Tokyo in her own timeframe to find him, though Taki did not recognize her as the body-switching was yet to occur in his timeframe. Before leaving the train in embarrassment, Mitsuha had handed him her hair ribbon, which he has since worn on his wrist as a good-luck charm.
Taki wakes up in Mitsuha's body at her house on the morning of the festival. Hitoshi deduces what has happened and tells him the body-switching ability has passed down in her family as caretakers of the shrine. Taki convinces Tessie and Sayaka, two of Mitsuha's friends, to get the townspeople to evacuate Itomori, by disabling the electrical substation and broadcasting a false emergency alert. Taki heads to the shrine, realizing that Mitsuha must be in his body there, while Mitsuha wakes up in Taki's body. At the mountaintop during sunset, the two sense each other's presence, but are separated due to contrasting timeframes and cannot see each other.
When twilight falls (referred to in the film as "magic hour" or kataware-doki),[note 1] they return to their own bodies and see each other in person. After Taki returns Mitsuha's ribbon, they attempt to write their names on each other's palm so that they will remember each other. Before Mitsuha can write hers, however, twilight passes, and they revert to their respective timeframes. When the evacuation plan fails, Mitsuha has to convince her father Toshiki, the mayor of Itomori, to evacuate everyone. Before doing so, Mitsuha notices her memories of Taki are fading away and discovers he wrote "I love you" on her hand instead of his own name. The comet's fragments crash to Earth and destroy Itomori. Taki wakes up in his own timeframe remembering nothing.
Five years later, Taki has graduated from university and searches for a job. He senses that he lost something important that he cannot identify, and feels an inexplicable interest in the events surrounding the comet, now eight years past. The town of Itomori had been destroyed; however, most of its people survived as they had evacuated just in time. Meanwhile, Mitsuha has since moved to Tokyo. Sometime later, Taki and Mitsuha glimpse each other when their respective trains pass each other, and they are instantly drawn to seek one another.
Each disembarks and races to find the other, finally meeting at the stairs of Suga Shrine [ja]. Taki calls out to Mitsuha, saying that he feels that he knows her, and she responds likewise. Having found what each had long searched for, they shed tears of happiness and simultaneously ask each other for their.
