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Love, the physical and emotional factors

Love can be confusing, especially nowadays, when there are many factors such as wealth, status or sex, that are considered within relationships. It is important for one to understand and have their own believe in what love is, because not only love affects each individual life, but also play a substantial role in society, keeping it as a stable whole. My intention is primarily to analyze and appreciate my favorite movie, but at the same time I also want to bring people attention to one of the views of love that I believe is uncommon but proper, that is the love that base solely on emotional intimacy, without any other influences including physical factors such as sex. The movie “Your Name” attempts to demonstrate sexual relationship in an unusual, traditional perspective, incorporating cultural symbolism and fictional elements within the story line to show the appreciation for love, creating a fictitious but logical story that promotes love in its purest form, standing independent from copulation.

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Confused about story’s timeline? Let’s walk through it

I have probably triggered a lot of people who have watched the movie by saying that it is logical. I do not disagree that the plot is very complicated, but if you can untangle it, everything will make sense, and I am here today to explain it. If you have not already, I highly recommend watching the movie, then come back here and analyze it together with me. However, if you are too busy, here is a brief summary. Mitsuha, who lives in a small rural town called Itomori, and Taki, who lives in Tokyo, the capital of Japan, are the two main characters. One day they woke up and realizing that they are in the body of the other. Thinking that it was just a weird dream, they realized after a few times of body-swap that it is not that simple. At one point, they stop swapping body, so Taki decided to go see Mitsuha in person. However, all he has are some sketches of the town that he drew out of memory. But with extreme determination, he finds the place, just to find out that it was destroyed be a comet 3 years ago and all the villagers died. Taki now realizes that the Mitsuha that he was connected to was from three years ago. Being desperate but refused to give up, Taki go to a shrine, where he went to as Mitsuha to worship the god of the village, pray and drank the sake that he (as Mitsuha) offered to the shrine. As he stands up and leave, he trips, falls, and knocked out, but he was connected to Mitsuha once again. He tries to save the town people and success, but all his memory about Mitsuha was lost, so does Mitsuha’s memory of Taki. All that is left is the sensation of missing “something lingers for a long time.” The rest is up for you to find out :)

The part that confuses most people, including me, is the time flow. Since the movie switch back forward between Mitsuha and Taki’s view, it makes us think that they are in the same time frame. While both appear simultaneously with in the movie, one is actually living 3 years ahead of the other. At one point, Mitsuha visited Tokyo to find Taki, but the Taki at that time had not yet known her. She managed to find him in the train (which is a crazy coincident, must be the work of fate), but quickly disappointed because she thought (young) Taki was pretending to not know her. While (Mitsuha) being pushed away by the crowd leaving the train, Taki tried to reach out and ask for her name, Mitsuha answered from afar and threw him her red yarn that she always wears. By receiving the red yarn from Mitsuha, Taki was linked with her 3 years later. If paying close attention, we can notice that when (young) Taki and Mitsuha meet in Tokyo, they are about the same height, but when they meet again later on in the movie (older Taki and Mitsuha), he is significantly taller (Precogvision). The attention to making the details appear consistent with the fluctuation of time is just incredible. Despite having a misleading narrative in the beginning, the movie can be unraveled after its first half. The beauty of “Your Name” is that it can be watched again and again, with each time, you come in with some takeaway from the last time, making the movie more and more understandable, thus you can decipher more hidden meaning.

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From standard-relaxing-teen-romance-comedy to dramatic-thrilling-literary-poetic-cognition evoking-rhetoric-profound work of art

The plot of “Your Name” escalates fast toward the middle of the movie. It starts off with a slow, slice of life, body-switching sci-fi mixed with some comedy, a show where you can just sit back and enjoy your popcorn while following the story. All fun within the first 1 hour, then you probably should get rid of the popcorn and straighten up because it is going to become intense as you are about to discover the truth behind some major events. If you pay close attention as the story uncover itself, you will notice a lot of symbolism, all cultural (such as braided yarn, sake), and all have strict and profound meaning. The most meaningful symbol in my oppinion must be the red braided yarn. It is an important item for Mitsuha, such that her friends get so surprised seeing her without it. Yet, she gave it to Taki when she first met him. In relationship, people give up part of themselves to their partners. Mitsuha offers part of her identity, and by accepting it, Taki let her in his heart (Morris). The yarn is representing their bond in this case. It also represents the flow of time, as it is described “twist and tangle, sometimes unraveling, then connecting again.” By comparing the braided yarn with time, the author foreshadows the climax of the movie, where time and space blend together, letting Mitsuha and Taki from two different timelines meet. The other symbol includes the kuchikamizake, sake that was made by chewing rice, then spit it out and let fermented. When Taki drank the sake at the altar, which was made by Mitsuha and thus represent part of herself, the idea of accepting part of someone you love once again was highlighted. All these symbols are similar in a way that they are all very authentic and cultural. They validate Shinkai’s uniqueness from his movies compared to other famous western animations such as Disney and Hollywood, as well as contributing toward his credibility as a Japanese filmmaker. With that much being said, I believe there are still at least a handful of symbols hidden within the movie that I have yet to discover. However, that is the beauty of “Your Name,” it is like a poem, which you can come back to as many times as you want and will still be able to figure out something new every single time.

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Old but gold

One of the objections of the movie is to show appreciation for love, the kind of love where people get connected through destiny. “Your Name” introduce the concept of fate, through which love develops, which is kind of an old, traditional interpretation of love. It presents the idea that there is someone out there who you are destined to be with, someone who is attached to you by all mean except money or status, someone who you would know to be the one just by seeing them. Such pure attraction is illustrated through the love between Mitsuha and Taki, especially their encounter in the end. It is the work of fate that bring them across each other in Tokyo years after the incident. Despite being no longer remember each other, they both feel like they have been searching for each other for a long time. The movie demonstrates this through the way they stare silently at one another, and how they walk pass each other (their faces show that they would regret not asking for the other’s name, but at the same time I can see why they did not want to say anything, it would be creepy since they are stranger after all). The ending truly shows what it is like to find your fated love, but the rest of the movie described how well Taki and Mitsuha match and how pure are their love for each other. Both Taki and Mitsuha grow a strong fondness for another before they physically met. All Taki know about Mitsuha was through interacting with her family and friends, and it was the same way for Mitsuha. You can tell how treat people based on how they treat you, in this case, Taki and Mitsuha learn about each other’s personality through their surroundings. Their attractions are based solely on “the inside.” Both also complement each other’s life. Taki’s boldness makes him stand up against bullies while he was in Mitsuha’s body, while Mitsuha get along with Taki’s coworker better for her thoughtfulness. The whole body-swapping process shows that they are the ideal destined couple.

Last thing I want to mention regarding the love Taki has for Mitsuha, lies in the scene that I believe is the most iconic, emotional, wholesome, beautiful scene. When they finally meet (Mitsuha physically meet with Taki of three years later) during “half-light,” or “kataware-doki,” when the sun position perfectly in the middle of the horizon, the time of day when time and space is said to blur into each other (kind of like a magic hour), Taki returned the yarn to Mitsuha, which he had kept for 3 years. They decided to write each other’s names on their hand so they will not forget after “half-light” is over. Taki finished writing, but Mitsuha only have time to make one stroke when the sun completely disappeared into the horizon and both of them were pulled back to their timeline. The comet is striking soon at this point, Mitsuha remember her mission to evacuate the villagers, but her memory about Taki started to fade. At the same time, Taki in his own timeline also forget why he came to the place (to find Mitsuha). Why running to her father, who is the mayor, to convince him to evacuate the town people, Mitsuha trip and fell down the hill, everything seemed so hopeless at this point. However, she remembered that when they met, they wrote their name on each other’s hand in case their memory fade again, so she looked at her palm, to find not Taki’s name, but only his confession “I love you,” which gave her power to stand up and keep running. Taki did not care if Mitsuha remember his name, but he wanted her to know about his love. The reason he did this is also because he might have figured out that if he wrote his name, it would either disappear (like the note they left for each other when body swapping) or Mitsuha would forget the context of it (Rath and Leite). By writing “I love you,” Mitsuha knew that there is someone out there who was genuinely in love with her. Taki also let her know something that Mitsuha did not know about even before they started losing their connection. This is a highly emotional scene that describe such a beautiful love between the two main characters.

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Final Thought

By combining alluring fictional scene with traditional symbolism, “Your Name” create a reasonable story that finely shows how love used to be perceived within Japanese context. With emotion being the main target, Shinkai did a great job touching my heart while maintaining proper logic and pushing for audience to consider and analyze his use of symbolism. “Your Name” will continue to be my favorite movie of all time and be on my top list of movie recommendation.

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Works Cited

Morris, Louise. “The Brilliance of ‘Your Name.’” Medium, 19 Jun. 2020, https://medium.com/illumination/the-brilliance-of-your-name-9d74fcb8565b#:~:text=It%20plays%20on%20the%20hope,like%20to%20find%20your%20soulmate. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.

Rath, Katy and Marcelo Leite. “Your Name Ending Explained.” Screen rant, 10 Jul. 2023, https://screenrant.com/your-name-movie-ending-explained-meaning/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.

“Your Name: A Rhetorical Analysis.” Precogvision, 23 Nov. 2021, https://precogvision.com/your-name-a-rhetorical-analysis/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2023.

Your Name. Directed by Makoto Shinkai, CoMix Wave Films, 2016.