Your Name

Youre is a 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 eponymous light novel was published a month before the film's premiere.

The story

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 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. Hitoha 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 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. Some time 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 name.

Unknown facts about Your Name

Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, and Makoto Shinkai are some of the biggest names in anime films right now. Miyazaki is tied to Studio Ghibli, and Kon is responsible for masterworks such as Perfect Blue and Paranoia Agent, but, unknown to many people, their work is connected by one man: Masashi Ando. Ando worked on the character designs for Spirited Away, Paprika and Paranoia Agent, as well as the animations for many other Ghibli movies. With this kind of resume behind him, it's no wonder he was brought on to lead the animation team for Your Name.

Before Your Name became known to the world, Spirited Away held the title of the highest-grossing anime film since its release in 2001. Although domestically, Studio Ghibli's masterpiece still holds the position, from a worldwide point of view Your Name is the crowned king of anime films.

Weathering With You is the latest release by Makoto Shinkai. Centering around Hina, a girl who can control the weather, and Hodoka, an aspiring writer who wants to use Hina's unique skills to help pull them out of hardship.
While the film isn't a direct continuation of Your Name, the two leads both make appearances as adults throughout the film, taking place concurrently with the ending of Your Name. Taki is revealed to be the grandson of one of the group's elderly clients, and the shop clerk where Hodoka buys Hina's birthday present is Mitsuha.

The lastest Makoto Shinkai film isn't the only one connected to Your Name. The Garden of Words, released in 2013, focuses on Takao Akizuki, an aspiring shoemaker, and Yukari Yukino, a teacher who struggles with her students bullying her. Both of the leads make an appearance in Your Name, as Yukari is the Classical Japanese teacher at Mitsuha's school, Ms. Yuki, and her partner, Takao, makes a silent appearance near the end of the film among a crowd of people.

In the lead up to the film's release, a novelization written by Makoto Shinkai was released. While the overarching story is the same as the film, there are some differences between the two pieces. For one, the novel is written in first-person, so some scenes from the film where neither Taki nor Mitsuha were present aren't in the novel.

At the beginning of the film, it's not made clear as to the time-traveling nature of Mitsuha and Taki's body swaps, with the audience, as well as the characters, assuming that it is all taking place in the same time period. However, if you pay close attention to the dates and days of their messages to one another, the days and weeks do not line up as they scroll through their phones.

Although Mitsuha's family may have no naming connections to an English speaker, their Japanese meanings are all connected to one another. Mitsuha's grandmother, Hitoha, means "one leaf" in her native tongue, and begins a naming trait that follows down the female side of her family. Mitsuha's mother, Futaba, is "two leaves," Mitsuha herself is "three leaves," and her little sister, Yotsuha, is "four leaves." We can only assume that if Mitsuha had a daughter or niece, they would be named "five leaves."

In Japanese culture, there is a legend that two people are connected by a red string of fate. In a nutshell, it's the idea that two people are connected by a red string that keeps them in each other's lives forever. The red ribbon is used throughout the film to represent the red string of fate, as Mitsuha is often seen wearing it, as well as Taki later on in the film. Mitsuha's grandmother, who reveals that she also had a similar experience in her youth, wears a ribbon in the same way as Mitsuha.