#MITSUHA SEEING THAT TAKI WROTE 'I LOVE YOU' ON HER HAND..................

[ace-touya]

So these are the anime in your pinned post : BNHA, JJK, Blue Exorcist, Hell Girl, Your Name, Weathering with You, and A Silent Voice...

Can I ask your top 5 favorite moments from each of the series/movies above (please pick at least 3 titles)? Thanks 🌷

Oo okay! This is gonna be long because I did all of them.

My Hero Academia - I adore Dabi’s Dance first and foremost, then all the flashbacks to his childhood in Season 6, Episode 17. Third, I loved Aizawa and Mic’s conversation with Kurogiri in the Villain Academia arc, and one of the scenes that’s stuck with me the most in MHA is when Aizawa says ‘don’t apologise for being alive’ to All Might, I think around the Christmas Episode? That would be fourth. Finally, the scene where Toga uses Ochaco’s quirk in the villain academia. Those aren’t in order at all but they’re the things that come to mind

Jujutsu Kaisen - the scene in the end of season 1 where Megumi uses Domain Expansion for the first time after remembering advice Gojo and Sukuna gave him was really cool. And the scene where middle school Megumi is sitting on a pile of bullies he just beat up as second. Third, the end of the hidden inventory arc where Gojo’s asleep having dream flashbacks of meeting little Megumi, then he wakes up and grown up Megumi is the first thing he sees. In the same episode, the scene where Geto is giving a speech to his cult and kills a dude on stage is so uncomfortable and kinda disorienting, but so cool, so that’s fourth. The scene at the end of the JJK 0 movie with Gojo talking to deathbed Geto is my fifth.

Blue Exorcist - the scene were Rin is reading the letter in the Impure King arc and he’s just like ‘…interesting…’ and they’re like ‘what does it say’ and he just goes, ‘I can’t read it’. Second, the scene way at the beginning of it when Rin is yelling about how Shiro isn’t even his real father and then Shiro slaps him. Third, the moment where Amaimon was opening and closing Rin’s sword and his flames were just going on and off was funny. Fourth, when Rin talks to Kuro about Shiro’s death and gets him as a familiar. Fifth, Kamiki being the only reasonable one after they found out Rin was the son of Satan and saying she doesn’t really care. I don’t know when any of these things happened but it’s all in season one and two

Hell Girl - Ai Enma singing the song her cousin used to sing with her while she’s making the pebble tower is probably my favourite moment in the show, it’s near the end of season one. That’s my first. Second is in the Bride Doll episode when Ren is watching Inori get tortured by her mother-in-law and says ‘women are scary..’ to which Honne Onna responds ‘have you only just figured that out?’. Third, the scene where Ai talks to Nina in episode 17 and gets her to remember she isn’t actually Nina. Fourth, any scene where Tsugumi says she doesn’t think Hell Girl is completely in the wrong, much to Hajime’s dismay. And fifth, the flashbacks to Ai and Sentarou.

Your Name - the scene where Mitsuha reads that Taki wrote ‘I love you’ on her hand and starts crying because she can’t use that to remember his name. The scene with Taki in Mistuha’s body where her grandmother asks him if he’s dreaming and he starts crying. The bit when Taki goes in person to see Mitsuha and finds out that the comet killed everyone three years ago. I don’t know when it happened but I swear there’s a scene where Taki refers to Yostuha as his sister and I found it incredibly cute. Finally, the scene where Mistuha yells ‘please make me a cute Tokyo boy in my next life!’

Weathering With You - Hodaka saying the McDonald’s burger is the best meal he’s ever had. Second, Hina telling Hodaka she’s disappearing, then cuddling, and him waking up with her gone and Nagi having had the same dream as him. The entire part of the movie where Hodaka is running from police and doing crazy shit to get away from them. Of course fourth is ‘Who cares if we never see the sun again?! I want you more than any blue sky!’ And fifth would have to be Nagi, Hina and Hodaka in the hotel just having the times of their lives as a found family

A Silent Voice - the scene where Shoya’s mum stops Shoko’s mum from fighting with Ueno. Yuzuru’s conversation with her grandma right before the grandma dies. The scene with everyone at the bridge where Shoya calls everyone else out on their bs. Shoya saving Shoko when she tried to kill herself. Shoko when she tried to confess her love to Shoya.

This was really fun to answer

[petratherrock]

I think it was Miyazaki or something from Studio Ghibli that said, the presence of two people of different genders in a story don't always have to mean they're romantically involved, or sumn like that i know I'm paraphrasing by a Lot

I was watching Suzume today and yes her bond with Souta is adorable. They bonded with each other thru their journey and there's nothing like it when it's life and death but

The thing I've noticed with both Your Name and Suzume is there's barely any scenes or time for them together to show us that they actually have bonded romantically; Weathering With You on the other hand had plenty of that ig, since the two kids spent a lot of more time together

On the one hand it's funny because the kids in Weathering With You are younger than the characters in the other two movies, but them developing feelings romantically makes more sense

But on the other hand, it feels like it's a little forced for the other couple esp in Your Name; when could they've possibly developed feelings for each other when they've never met, and spoken only thru the limited time they had in each other's bodies? Did they develop feelings because ayyy it's a quirky situation so they've only got each other that understood each other?

Don't get me wrong, I gobble up the romance no matter what. I'm a sucker for that, it's cute and it doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense, because ig Makoto Shinkai's stories always rely on two people developing feelings when they've been thru the same weird 😆 circumstances--because they depend on each other and see each other a lot and they're very much thrown together to get thru it yada yada

It's just....i wish that the plot makes more space for us audience to believe it, rather than being like, hey ofc they love each other now !!!

Altho as a caveat, I'm not sure if Souta feels the same way for Suzume at the end, I love that Suzume didn't spell out her feelings for him because she's younger and a minor and she's probably shy about it but it's implied that she's become an important person to Souta. Girls get crushes all the time too; having a hot chair guy with a hot voice and hero tendencies is bound to be attractive lol i love Souta, he's s strong contender against movie! Howl hehe

I just wish Taki and Mitsuha's bond is written more like Chihiro and Haku since it wasn't as believable for me that they're romantic. Yes some of us would love it if Chihiro returns to the spirit world when she's older and they get together romantically, but the way it ended in the movie, we know that they had a special bond with each other even if it wasn't romantic; true love doesn't always have to mean it's romantic after all

Just some... thoughts. I could be wrong tho ik

Altho tbh my favourite of the three famous Shinkais by far is Suzume rn heh, with Weathering with You at the bottom lol

I may add, the believability of romance in all Studio Ghibli is quite 💯 to me. It's there. They wrote it in a way we know it is real (except Chihiro and Haku imo) (also someone mentioned that Howl and Sophie also had barely any time to develop feelings and I'm like you're right, it's like a greek tragedy, it's happening back scene???is that what Shinkais are depending on too?lol, and that makes movie!HowlxSophie a little less believable to me since then)

[ellsey]

Look there will never be a more devastating moment in cinema than in Your Name when Mitsuha looks at her hand to see that Taki wrote "I love you" instead of his name

[bonesandthebees]

Strings of Fate Ch8!!

Oh yes, Wilbur is at the shrine! A very confused boy. Poor guy also has a headache from that fall Tommy took. Ouch.

And he remembers dying! No that's horrible. Well, I guess kind of not. It was described as just a thing that happened. I'm sure he's shocked but he doesn't seem too broken up about it.

Now when he sees L'Manberg though...that hurts. Imagine waking up one day and finding that your home and everything you hold dear is gone:(

Bee! I love the change in POVs as they find each other. I could feel the urgency. The sun setting lower and lower as they try to follow each other's voices. And when they do find each other they are still in the wrong bodies. But then it switches and ahshsjh

So smooooth Bee

And they're just so happy to finally see each other. It's crazy to think that they have never actually interacted outside of time-and-space-texting. I'm so happy! We've waited so long for this moment and it's here! So worth itt:)))

You know I never actually thought about Mitsuha getting her ribbon back the day after she gave it to Taki. I guess it's because Taki had it for most of the movie anyway, so it just felt longer? I don't know. But yeah that is weird to think about. It must feel odd for Wilbur to get his cord back all faded from three years with Tommy.

Tommy is actually pretty cool. He managed to forge a plan to get a pretty good chunk of people out of the valley. I'm not sure how many people will end up dying from the comet but yknow. They did everything they could.

Poor Tommy didn't get anything written on his palm:( I know that if Wilbur wrote his name it would probably just disappear like the messages on Tommy's phone. That's why Tommy wrote what he did instead of his name. Hopefully, it'll be enough for Wilbur to at least recognize him when they do meet again:')

I am curious though. Did Wilbur just not feel the length of what Tommy was writing on his palm? Like Tommy is a five-letter word. Tommy wrote two whole sentences and then some lol

I will never get over how well you depict emotions in your writing. You are so good at it!! When I read your fics I'm either smiling like an idiot, trying to hide frowns, or trying to ignore the burning in my eyes how are you so good at it???

oof im gonna go read the epilogue now. thank you for these two treasures bones<3

-🧭

lol yeah tommy slammed his head into the ground when he fell and wilbur has to deal with the headache. poor guy he's going through so much

oh wilbur was 100% in shock about the whole remembering that he died thing. if he actually had more than a few hours to process it he would've had much more of a breakdown. in a way the loss of memories was definitely beneficial in that sense

i'm so glad you felt the urgency!! i wanted it to feel really confusing and also a bit hopeful as they try to find each other, and then right as the sunset really sets in that's when the window between time opens up :)

finally. after so long they're finally face to face talking to each other but they only have a few minutes bc ofc things can't be that nice

yeah i know!! i didn't think about it when watching the movie either, but when I was writing that bit I realized "huh the ribbon would've been worn down from taki wearing it as a bracelet for like 2-3 years even though mitsuha only lost it the day before for her time. that must've been weird"

while not everyone in the town ended up being saved, the majority of people actually did get out in time thanks to the plan. though it wasn't even really tommy who planned most of it. as soon as techno came in he and niki both took over everything, tommy just came up with the initial idea lol

wilbur literally just was not paying attention when tommy was writing on his hand. he was looking out at the sunset and thinking about stuff so he just didn't register how long it took tommy to write out his 'name' lol

aaa thank you i'm so glad the emotions came through!! tbh I was really struggling with that in this fic so it makes me really happy to hear the emotions still transferred over to the readers

[fmp2carolynnunn]

Your Name

Mitsuha is a high school student living in a rural town, she wishes in her next life she becomes a Tokyo boy. Soon she starts switching bodies with a Tokyo boy, Taki. On certain days they end up in each others bodies and revert when they go to sleep at night. This was a huge impact in each other go their lives as they both lives them very differently. They communicated through writing on paper for them to see when they wake.

"Taki and his friend went to go visit Mitsuha's town (Itomori) but finds the town almost entirely decimated by fragments that fell from Tiamat. Since the comet passed three years earlier, Taki realizes that he and Mitsuha were separated by three years, her living in 2013 and he in 2016. He finds Mitsuha's name among the 500 people killed by the comet's impact.

Taki realises he has a chance to save Mitsuha and the entire town, Taki convinces Mitsuha's friends to help him broadcast an emergency signal, evacuating Itomori before the meteor fragments strike. He then heads to the shrine, where Mitsuha has just woken up in Taki's body. As twilight falls, their timelines cross, allowing them to meet in person for the first time. Taki returns Mitsuha's ribbon, and they attempt to write their names on each other's palms, but twilight ends before Mitsuha can write hers.

She returns to the village to see that the evacuation plan failed but convinces her father, the mayor, to order an evacuation. Beginning to forget Taki, she discovers that he wrote "I love you" on her hand instead of his name. Taki awakens in his own time with no memory. Five years later, Taki is a university graduate struggling to find a job. He is obsessed with the impact of Tiamat, when the villagers of Itomori were miraculously saved by a fortuitous evacuation drill, but cannot remember why. One day, he glimpses Mitsuha, who has moved to Tokyo; they race to find each other. As they pass the stairs of a shrine, Taki calls out to Mitsuha, and the two simultaneously ask each other for their name."

[boringsprout]

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.

[beefmastersblog]

Your Name

Kimi no Na wa has long been one of my favorite anime movies ever since I saw it when it came out back in middle school. Back then, I was captivated by the piece itself, the characters, plot, music, and animation, but I had little concept of what the piece ACTUALLY meant. Now, after watching it on my 17-hour car ride to my meat judging competition in Chicago, I had a lot of time to think about what this piece is ACTUALLY trying to represent. And so this is probably going to be a long blog post.

This movie is about truly understanding a person (which you can’t do any better than physically being inside their body).

It is also about tradition, and the value it holds as it is passed down from generation to generation. We see this most significantly through Mitsuha’s grandmother and her family shrine. The grandma explained that many of the meanings behind the traditions they still do has been completely lost, but they still do them because it was interweaved into their culture and has individual meaning to them. This mainly pertains to the braided cords. Although they aren’t sure exactly why they do it, they braid these cords and believe wholeheartedly that a piece of yourself, your feelings and emotions at that moment, go into the cords. The concept of musubi, is introduced. This word has a multitude of meanings, but it seems to most closely refer to the flow of time and connections you make. Much like how as time passes, your relationships with other people might twist and tangle, sometimes breaking, the braided cord does the same.

But despite maybe not knowing what those traditions mean, the grandma recognizes their importance as a piece of herself and a piece of her ancestors and believes in passing them down. And although some people (Mitsuha’s father) might not understand why she does this, in the end, she is the only person in the entire film that recognized that Mitsuha is somebody else, and apparently, she also had that special ability to switch places with someone when she was young. She was also the only person that did not question Mitsuha when she told her to leave, and she had trust in her granddaughter and the ability gifted to her by their gods. The same is said with the creation of the special sake. At first, Mitsuha is embarrassed to be doing that in front of other people, but she understands its importance as a tradition in her family. And it is because she puts half of herself into that sake and brings it to the shrine, that Taki can drink it and save her.

I also thought that one specific scene regarding the lost records was very interesting, but I missed exactly what it meant when I watched it today, so I did a little bit of research to figure it out. But I will still explain my findings in this post, because I thought it was really important and gave me a deeper understanding of this piece. When Mitsuha read what Taki wrote in her notebook, “who are you”, and the teacher was lecturing about the grammatical format of those sentences, one student asked about a specific dialect of that word, one that was only used by the elderly now. I think that most closely ties into the core theme of this piece, truly understanding another person. I think that this is one of the things that was lost during the big fire, the true reason why the word exists, but it is important to note that the shrine people thought that this idea of knowing someone was so important that they created their own word for it. And without remembering exactly why, this is something they felt that they NEEEDED to pass down. This idea of asking who are you, at a deeper level than just what is your name.

And this ties into what he wrote on Mitsuha’s hand. She checked there to see his name, but instead found I Love You. And while the very first time I watched this piece I cried in frustration over that scene, I realized how beautiful it really is now. He didn’t write it to be cheeky or to mess up the plot. But this instead ties into that idea of looking deeper than just someone’s name. He loved her as a person, and that true connection will give her more strength than knowing something as superficial as his name. Because she can remember his name all she wants, but that is worth nothing if she forgets how he makes her feel. And we see that through this piece, as they search for each other years and years later, with no recollection of who the other person is and no retainment of the memories they made. But they truly understand each other, and I think that is what keeps them going.

Another thing I wanted to touch on was Mitsuha’s dad. He is an absent father in her life and left her up to the grandmother to raise. He blamed himself for his wife’s death and pushed away her traditions and culture, in favor of a corporate job as a corrupt politician. He explained to the grandmother as he walked out that he fell in love with his wife, not the shrine. He did not embrace her traditional way of living. However, we see the opposite with Taki. He has no reason to walk all the way to the shrine with Mitsuha’s family to put the sake in there. He also had no reason to carry the grandma all the way there and back. That was obviously strenuous work for him in Mitsuha’s body especially, but he respected the customs of the people he had started to get to know. And when he was exploring the city, after he found out what happened and had nowhere else to turn to, where did he go? The shrine. Taki accepted and trusted Mitsuha’s traditional culture, something her other classmates her age made fun of her for. And while other classmates laughed at her and called her disgusting for making the sake, he actually drank it. And it was because of this belief that he was able to switch back into her body and work to save her town. So I think this piece is also a sort of call-to-action to go back towards traditional beliefs.

But even just beyond that, Taki accepting Mitsuha’s culture is him accepting her in her entirety. And when Mitsuha dies, he still holds that connection to her. He seeks her out in life, for years and years. Why? Because he has the thread she wove, that piece of the shrine, that piece of her traditions. And even after the events of the town being saved, he still continued searching for her, looking for the other half of himself that was missing.

But we see that Mitsuha’s father does not retain that same after-death connection with her mother. And perhaps this is because he never really accepted her culture. He loved her as a person, but if he didn’t accept every aspect of her, including her abilities and her connection to the shrine, then maybe they weren’t soulmates like they thought.

Overall, I love this movie, and I’m sad that I am missing the discussion for it, but I am glad that I got to watch it today and really analyze it.

[thegirlwithmanynames]

anyway so I read the Your Name novelization today and I was like "I'm not gonna cry, I've watched the movie twice and this time there's no beautiful visuals or incredible voice acting or compelling music" I still cried like a baby and got sunscreen in my eyes

[shuttershocky]

yknow whatd be extremely sad? if Guda got old they one day start forgetting small things like chores, but then they slowly start forgetting the names of people they knew, and eventually go full dementia and start forgetting the servants they contracted with.

Memory is fragile and fallible. Not even the ones about the people you love are meant to last forever, but that doesn’t matter. Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Hollow Ataraxia wrote about exactly this.

You WILL forget people, especially the people you met from cruelly-temporary circumstances. Whether that’s from ages of not seeing them, or your mind growing old, or simply because you did not have enough time with them, it’s just an inevitability. 

But that’s okay. Your feelings are more than the sound of their voice, the details of their face, or the letters in their name. This is precisely why in the movie Your Name, Taki writes “I love you” on Mitsuha’s hand before he vanishes. He already saw that time correcting itself erased their texts and letters and the little quirks they knew about each other, but never how they felt. Writing his name on Mitsuha’s hand would not have stayed when he disappeared as time would not see their meeting as being “real”, but how he felt about her in that moment could not be changed by anything.

Likewise, even if Guda’s adventures come to an end and they return to an ordinary life, with Chaldea just being a distant memory that fades with time, it absolutely will not change the nature of the bonds they made with everyone. In fact, if the servants cannot stay with Guda after their mission is over, it will just make their adventures all that more precious.

One of my favorite Type-Moon scenes ever is a scene in Hollow Ataraxia where Illya loans her castle out to Shirou so he could treat Sakura like a princess for a day. After getting a dress, getting toured through a castle, fed a banquet, and then taken for a stroll in the gardens, Sakura says she’s never been happier, and Shirou says he could ask illya to let them do this all again soon. Sakura declines and says she would rather this be the only time she’s given a day like this in her life, and never again.

[sakuralikestars]

Yume Tourou (夢灯籠)

 “I wanted to tell you that… Wherever you may end up in this world, I will be searching for you.”

A Kimi no na wa drabble

A/n : I wrote this right now . It's very sudden and very not edited . A symptom of my ongoing depression . But it will alright . It's nothing . Nandemonaiya.

" Taki-kun".  

The name rolls off her tongue in the most beautiful of ways and his heart flutters softly when he meets her eyes . 

" Mitsuha . "

Her name . Imperceptibly delicate on his own . Their lips curve into a twin smile . After not knowing them for almost a decade , they greedily savour the sound of the others' names . They say it at the most random moments and in the morning next to each other and the nights they stare at the fated stars. 

They say it now with his hands cradling the soft baby blue bundle . 

" Kumi " . 

For the wishes of their ancestors that are blessed onto her skin . And for the braids of time that brought them together even when the stars fell on them . 

She holds the baby's wrist now and gifts her her own cord. A beautiful blue with violet threads entwined into them . The colours echo a memory a lifetime ago . Of a twilight that they shared across time.

" Katewara doki " He realises with a gasp . 

Mitsuha smiles . 

" For the day I saw you for the first time ."

They both cry now , tears streaking across their faces . The agony of losing each other in the game of time is burned into their memories . But they have each other . And now they have Kumi . And things will be just fine .

Kumi takes her first step in their kitchen . It's an early morning and his sketches are scattered on the dining table . He vaguely remembers to redraw the one with the coffee stain on it . 

" Taki ." The haze that clouds his mind clears at his wife's stern voice .

" Clean up the counter at least . I know you have a deadline to reach but we need to eat breakfast somewhere . "

" Why can' we , " his yawn cuts him off, " have some on the Zataku table ? " 

" We went over this before . Kumi has  spilled my tea more than once there . I don't want to send the carpet for another dry cleaning . " 

She must have heard them calling her name . That's what he thinks . Because while they are squabbling about the correct place to eat , they don't notice Kumi wobbling towards them . 

" Mama " . Her voice is gleeful and when he turns around he is met with his daughter walking towards the pair with shaky legs . 

His eyes water . His little blessing is walking on her own. He wonders if he spoke too soon because the next second she stumbles over her feet . 

But they are both there to catch her . Their warmth enclosing around her . A tangle of limbs on the floor.  They both keep crying while Kumi giggles in their laps . 

The sheets stay forgotten on the table . 

Kumi is two when Mitsuha gifts him another pair of baby shoes.  

" But they won't fit her . " His confusion is met with the slight upturn of her lips . 

" They aren't for her . " 

Realisation dawns on him . Her eyes are bright and when he presses his lips to her he thanks her for this . For Kumi and for this blessing . 

As her belly grows , Kumi keeps poking it .

" Don't poke the baby . " Mitsuha tells her . 

" But I want to meet him . " Kumi pouts and Taki has to stifle his grin when he sees his wife soften at her expression. He has been on the receiving end of this for years now due to Mitsuha . About time she got the taste of her own medicine . 

" How do you know it's a him ? . " She asks the child . 

" I saw it in my dream . " Her words make the two of them stare at her with astonishment .

Later that night he asks his wife . 

" Do you think she will be like you ?"

Her palm meets his own over the curve of her belly . 

" I hope so . " 

" Why ? " . The gift of seers was beautiful but also a curse . He wonders what could possibly be reason enough for his wife to speak of this way .

" Because it brought me you . " 

His eyes burn and his heart grows heavy with love for her. But over all the sentiment , his mind turns around in jealousy at the thought of another person whisking his little blessing away. He sulks the entire night . 

It's the eighth moon . And their funds are dwindling down . He has been taking extra shifts and working overtime but one of his bigger projects has become stuck on some bureaucratic protocol . Without it , he would probably loose on months of his hardwork's monetary gains . 

" We will figure something out . " Mitsuha rubs circles into his back but even her touch serves as a reminder of his own shortcomings . 

They argue . They scream and cry and he knows it's bad for the baby but dammit he is trying his best . Mitsuha sinks onto the couch and silent sobs, while his own hands twist in his lap in desperation to comfort her . 

" Papa . " 

Her voice breaks the silence of the room .Kumi stands near the door and her eyes are shining with tears . Her gaze flits to her parents figures with fear .

He feels regret pool into his gut . He is a father now . Not a boy who should throw tantrums . 

So he tells her gently,

" Go back to bed, my little blessing . Mama and papa are fine now . " 

When Kumi goes back into her room , he holds Mitsuha in his arms until she falls asleep . 

( The project passed the week after . His pocket has never been fuller . )

Haru is born on the first day the sakura tree blossoms . He is born with a weak heart and his own pulses with pain at his small figure laying in the glass cage . 

" It's not your fault . " He tells Mitsuha . The doctors tell her so . Her grandma. Tessie and Sayaka tell her . 

But he knows she cries when she thinks he is asleep .

When Kumi asks him about her baby brother , he tells her that he is hurt . That he needs to heal .

She unravels the cords on her wrist that have been there since the day she came to them .

" Give him this . "

He ties the braid to her sibling's wrist . 

The next week their home is filled with a baby's gurgles and a daughter with no ties on her hand . 

He gifts her another one that new year 

Haru is 12 when it happens . He is sitting on the porch enjoying coffee with Mitsuha when he runs in . 

" Onee Chan is acting strange . " 

" Strange ?"  She asks him . 

" Yeah she keeps asking me where she is . It's like she is someone else " 

The parents' eyes meet each other in realisation . 

So it begins .

[nuclear-tea]

I live texted @pure-egotism while I watched Your Name again. Spoilers ahead.

The music from the title screen is already fucking me up

Watching with headphones is truly shiver-inducing. Because the surround sound is right in your ear

Best line of the first act: Teshi, keep your fool mouth shut!

Wait. Little sister: what a jackass

I love this movie but if you dont know the basic premise then the amount of self touching at the beginning is off putting

CAFE DOGS

Who tf talks about the timber work in the fuckin cafe????? Taki's friends are middle aged women.

"When is this nightmare going to be over" -Mitsuha as Taki. Also me irl.

"Take off your skirt!" Not weird between friends. Def weird between coworkers.

Oh my god

Oh fuck

The fuckin

The pen

The pen that he doesn't wrote his name woth

That she drops before she writes her name

She uses it. Right at the beginning

When she's him for the first time. She writes her name

I'm dying

Fucking poetry

I feel

Like crying

Bisexual boy friend admits that his friend was cute

Listen. I like both characters. But is it just the bisexual coming out? Cause badass Mitsuha and cute Taki are better.

I love the subtle implication that Teshi likes Mitsuha in the beginning but kinda moves on because they become bros mostly due to Taki.

Also. Bless the small town girls who confess to Mitsuha. I hope they live their best woolawooo lives once they all get out of the small town.

Taki is legit having a spiritual awakening. So strong that he's gonna do some crazy shit later. It works out, but it's still nuts.

The grandma acknowledging the dream and waking Taki up gives me shivers every time.

"It was a date I wanted to go on" sounds pretty gay, Mitsuha.

Not something I just realized, but seeing the Nostalgia photo exhibit before the plot thickens gets me.

The utter sadness, which turns into tension, of the music in the moments leading up to the first comet scene.

Like. That piano is giving me feelings

The way Taki leaves the bits of tape on his sketches and then shoves them in his bag enrages me.

Taki. I am begging you to do a reverse image search

Ogudara: I had feelings for him. He's been cute recently

Guy friend: mood

Can you imagine how nuts his friends would've gone if he'd gotten them to go up the mountain?

I absolutely love the sake acid trip

@pure-egotism "sake is good tho"

But normal sake doesn't make you trip balls and see a girl get inseminated

Grandma: body swapping in dreams, I will buy. The comet destroying the town, not so much.

Well technically she just says "the town won't buy it

Going to see the mayor was a mistake. It tipped him off and they probably tracked them down faster because of it.

"If I suddenly show up will it be a nuisance?"

Big mood

No way Taki looks basically the same at 14 as he does at 17.

That's the biggest plot hole

It low key breaks my heart that he gives the cord back. Like. She can make a new one. That one is your fate.

When they pass each other up on the mountain and you briefly see the chord of fate/ her chord tug at both of them. *chefs kiss*

That chord is the only real time traveler. It is 3 years older than it should be.

Every time she drops the pen I cry

I cry again when she sees her hand

Also all the commentators and broadcasts talking about the contest and how it's beautiful and they're fortunate and it won't hurt anything 😭😭😭

I think Ogudara and Mitsuha are probably the same age.

"I didn't even know anybody in that town" 😭😭😭😭😭😭

Good I love this music

What a good movie

[recentanimenews]

Kimi no Na wa. (Your Name.)

Simply diving into a review immediately after watching a film as devastatingly gorgeous and emotionally affecting as Kimi no Na wa is probably not a great idea, but this is an anime review blog, so here goes.

Kimi no Na wa isn’t just a charming body-swap rom-com, or a time-travelling odyssey, or a disaster prevention caper, or a tale of impossibly cruel temporal and physical distance between two soul mates, or a reflection on the fragility and impermanence of everything from memories to cities, or a tissue-depleting tearjerker.

It’s all of those things and more. And it’s also one of, if not the best, movies I’ve ever seen, anime or otherwise.

After a cryptic prologue, Kimi no Na wa starts out modestly: Miyamizu Mitsuha, Shinto shrine maiden and daughter of a mayor, has grown restless in her small town world, so one night, shouts out tot he night that she wants to be reborn as a boy in Tokyo.

This, mind you, happens after an odd incident in which Mitsuha essentially lost a day, during which all her family and friends say she was acting very strange and non-Mitsuha-y…like a different person.

That’s because she was. She and a boy from Tokyo, Tachibana Taki, randomly swap bodies every so often when they’re dreaming. As such, they end up in the middle of their couldn’t-be-any-different lives; the only similarity being that both of them yearn for more.

Despite just meeting these characters, watching Mitsuha and Taki stumble through each other’s lives is immensely fun. And because this is a Shinkai film, that enjoyment is augmented by the master director’s preternatural visual sumptuousness and realism. Every frame of Mitsuha’s town and the grand vastness of Tokyo is so full of detail I found myself wanting to linger in all of them.

As the body-swapping continues, the two decide to lay down “ground rules” when in one another’s bodies—albeit rules both either bend or break with impunity—and make intricate reports in one another’s phone diaries detailing their activities during the swaps.

Interestingly, Mitsuha makes more progress with Taki’s restaurant co-worker crush Okudera than Taki (she like’s Taki’s “feminine side”), while the more assertive Taki proves more popular with boys and girls when Taki’s in her body.

Taki happens to be in Mitsuha’s body when her grandmother and sister Yotsuha make the long, epic trek from their home to the resting place of the “body” of their Shinto shrine’s god, an otherworldly place in more ways than one, to make an offering of kuchikamisake (sake made from saliva-fermented rice).

While the three admire the sunset, Mitsuha’s granny takes a good look at her and asks if he, Taki, is dreaming. Just then he wakes up back in his own body to learn Mitsuha has arranged a date with him and Okudera—one she genuinely wanted to attend.

Okudera seems to notice the change in Taki from the one Mitsuha inhabited; she can tell his mind is elsewhere, and even presumes he’s come to like someone else. Taki tries to call that someone else on his phone, but he gets an automated message.

Then, just like that, the body-swapping stops.

After having cut her hair, her red ribbon gone, Mitsuha attends the Autumn Festival with her friends Sayaka and Teshi. They’re treated to a glorious display in the night sky, as the comet Tiamat makes its once-every-1,200-years visit.

Taki decides if he can’t visit Mitsuha’s world in his dreams anymore, he’ll simply have to visit Mitsuha. Only problem is, he doesn’t know exactly what village she lives in. Okudera and one of his high school friends, who are worried about him, decide to tag along on his wild goose chase.

After a day of fruitless searching, Taki’s about to throw in the towel, when one of the proprietors of a restaurant notices his detailed sketch of Mitsuha’s town, recognizing it instantly as Itomori. Itomori…a town made famous when it was utterly destroyed three years ago by a meteor created from a fragment of the comet that fell to earth.

The grim reality that Taki and Mitsuha’s worlds were not in the same timeline is a horrendous gut punch, as is the bleak scenery of the site of the former town. Every lovingly-depicted detail of the town, and all of its unique culture, were blasted into oblivion.

Taki is incredulous (and freaked out), checking his phone for Mitsuha’s reports, but they disappear one by one, like the details of a dream slipping away from one’s memory. Later, Taki checks the register of 500 people who lost their lives in the disaster, and the punches only grow deeper: among the lost are Teshi, Sayaka…and Miyamizu Mitsuha.

After the initial levity of the body-swapping, this realization was a bitter pill to swallow, but would ultimately elevate the film to something far more epic and profound, especially when Taki doesn’t give up trying to somehow go back to the past, get back into Mitsuha’s body, and prevent all those people from getting killed, including her.

The thing that reminds him is the braided cord ribbon around his wrist, given to him at some point in the past by someone he doesn’t remember. He returns to the site where the offering was made to the shrine’s god, drinks the sake made by Mitsuha, stumbles and falls on his back, and sees a depiction of a meteor shower drawn on the cave ceiling.

I haven’t provided stills of the sequence that follows, but suffice it to say it looked and felt different from anything we’d seen and heard prior in the film, and evoked emotion on the same level as the famous flashback in Pixar’s Up. If you can stay dry-eyed during this sequence, good for you; consider a career being a Vulcan.

Taki then wakes up, miraculously back in Mitsuha’s body, and sets to work. The same hustle we saw in Taki’s restaurant job is put to a far more important end: preventing a horrific disaster. The town itself may be doomed—there’s no stopping that comet—but the people don’t have to be.

Convincing anyone that “we’re all going to die unless” is a tall order, but Taki doesn’t waver, formulating a plan with Teshi and Sayaka, and even trying (in vain) to convince Mitsuha’s father, the mayor, to evacuate.

While the stakes couldn’t be higher and the potential devastation still clear in the mind, it’s good to see some fun return. Sayaka’s “we have to save the town” to the shopkeep is a keeper.

Meanwhile, Mitsuha wakes up in the cave in Taki’s body, and is horrified by the results of the meteor strike. She recalls her quick day trip to Tokyo, when she encountered Taki on a subway train, but he didn’t remember her, because it would be three more years before their first swap.

Even so, he can’t help but ask her her name, and she gives it to him, as well as something to remember her by later: her hair ribbon, which he would keep around his wrist from that point on.

Both Taki-as-Mitsuha and Mitsuha-as-Taki finally meet face-to-face, in their proper bodies, thanks to the mysterious power of kataware-doki or twilight. It’s a gloriously-staged, momentous, and hugely gratifying moment…

…But it’s all too brief. Taki is able to write on Mitsuha’s hand, but she only gets one stoke on his when twilight ends, and Taki finds himself back in his body, in his time, still staring down that awful crater where Itomori used to be. And again, like a dream, the more moments pass, the harder it gets for him to remember her.

Back on the night of the Autumn Festival, Mitsuha, back in her time and body, takes over Taki’s evacuation plan. Teshi blows up a power substation with contractor explosives and hacks the town-wide broadcast system, and Sayaka sounds the evacuation. The townsfolk are mostly confused, however, and before long Sayaka is apprehended by authorities, who tell everyone to stay where they are, and Teshi is nabbed by his dad.

With her team out of commission, it’s all up to Mitsuha, who races to her father to make a final plea. On the way, she gets tripped up and takes a nasty spill. In the same timeline, a three-years-younger Taki, her ribbon around his wrist, watches the impossibly gorgeous display in the Tokyo sky as the comet breaks up. Mitsuha looks at her hand and finds that Taki didn’t write his name: he wrote “I love you.”

The meteor falls and unleashes a vast swath of destruction across the landscape, not sparing the horrors of seeing Itomori wiped off the face of the earth—another gut punch. Game Over, too, it would seem. After spending a cold lonely night up atop the former site of the town, he returns to Tokyo and moves on with his life, gradually forgetting all about Mitsuha, but still feeling for all the world like he should be remembering something, that he should be looking for someplace or someone.

Bit by bit, those unknowns start to appear before him; a grown Sayaka and Teshi in a Starbucks; a  passing woman with a red ribbon in her hair that makes him pause, just as his walking by makes her pause. But alas, it’s another missed connection; another classic Shinkai move: they may be on the same bridge in Shinjuku, but the distance between them in time and memory remains formidable.

Mitsuha goes job-hunting, enduring one failed interview after another, getting negative feedback about his suit from everyone, including Okudera, now married and hopeful Taki will one day find happiness.

While giving his spiel about why he wants to be an architect, he waxes poetic about building landscapes that leave heartwarming memories, since you’ll never know when such a landscape will suddenly not be there.

A sequence of Winter scenes of Tokyo flash by, and in light of what happened to Itomori quite by chance, that sequence makes a powerful and solemn statement: this is Tokyo, it is massive and complex and full of structures and people and culture found nowhere else in the world, but it is not permanent.

Nothing built by men can stand against the forces of nature and the heavens. All we can do is live among, appreciate, and preseve our works while we can. We’re only human, after all.

And yet, for all that harsh celestial certainty, there is one other thing that isn’t permanent in this film: Taki and Mitsuha’s separation. Eventually, the two find each other through the windows of separate trains, and race to a spot where they experience that odd feeling of knowing each other, while also being reasonably certain they’re strangers.

Taki almost walks away, but turns back and asks if they’ve met before. Mitsuha feels the exact same way, and as tears fill their eyes, Taki asks Mitsuha for her name. Hey, what do you know, a happy ending that feels earned! And a meteor doesn’t fall on Tokyo, which is a huge bonus.

Last August this film was released, and gradually I started to hear rumblings of its quality, and of how it could very well be Shinkai’s Magnum Opus. I went in expecting a lot, and was not disappointed; if anything, I was bowled over by just how good this was.

Many millions of words have been written about Kimi no Na wa long before I finally gave it a watch, but I nevertheless submit this modest, ill-organized collection words and thoughts as a humble tribute to the greatness I’ve just witnessed. I’ll be seeing it again soon.

And if for some reason you haven’t seen it yourself…what are you doing reading this drivel? Find it and watch it at your nearest convenience. You’ll laugh; you’ll cry; you’ll pump your fist in elation.

By: sesameacrylic

[machihunnicutt]

Beautiful

(Or read on ao3.)

It became so commonplace to wake up in her body that it took him awhile to realize how beautiful she was. He woke up early enough to stare at her properly in the mirror one morning. Her eyes were still clouded with sleep and her hair was a glorious mess around her face. She had a gorgeous smile. He’d seen it reflected back at himself plenty of times and in photos on her phone but he hadn’t put it together until that day.

He tried to get her hair the way she usually had it. He flipped though reference pictures and tried braiding with clumsy fingers. Her hair looked pretty the way she always did it.

Back at home, in his own body, Taki scrolled through the notes she left: Went to the café today. Don’t be mad! May have gotten you another date ;) I’m so good at being you. He smiled, trying to imagine the way she’d sound saying everything she wrote. He opened another note: I wish we could meet the way normal people do. Sometimes I miss you even when I’m here. I miss you even though we’ve never met. But I guess we’ve more than met haven’t we? He felt warm and fuzzy like he had a fever. He wondered what Mitsuha was doing at that moment. Maybe she was already asleep. Maybe she was reading his notes like he was reading hers.

When they switched again he drew her. He sat down in front of the mirror with a pencil and a pad of paper and sketched her wide eyes and soft lips and long eyelashes. He looked back at her and tried to get every detail just right. He wanted to memorize her face. He left the drawing for her. She said she wanted a drawing of him too.

When they stopped swapping bodies he panicked. It didn’t seem right. It felt like a part of him had been severed from his whole. It felt like forgetting something important. When he drew her town he drew her too. He sketched the mountains and the curve of her hand on her hip. He drew the shrine and sketched her hair and her mischievous expressions and wrote her name in every spare corner: Mitsuha, Mitsuha, Mitsuha.

All the time he tried to find her he kept her words in his head. She missed him. She missed him and she wanted to meet the way normal people did. Everything would be much less complicated if they were just normal people.

She was gone. He woke up with tears again because it wasn’t three years ago and she wasn’t here. They were all gone. All the people who had mattered to her, all her friends and family and teasing classmates who had said snide things during art class were dead. The comet had taken it all and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. But there had to be. If fate could bend space and time to bring them together, even if it was just in dreams, he could save her: Mitsuha, her name is Mitsuha.

When he saw her, face to face for the first time he knew he loved her. Her hair was different. Her face was streaked with dirt from the mad dash he’d taken up the slope. She was crying.

“It’s you.”

“It’s me.”

“You’re here.”

“I came to see you Mitsuha.”

When she hugged him she was soft and warm and so alive despite their distance and impossibility. She could do it. He was certain. She could save herself. She could save all of them.

He took her hand praying that it wouldn’t be the last time. He wrote like it was: Mitsuha, Mitsuha, Mitsuha.

She was gone in an instant. And then she was gone for a long time. She was gone in an aching way. She was gone in a way where he didn’t understand what he’d lost, only the pain of not having it there. He looked for her even though he didn’t know what to look for. He could feel a name on the tip of his tongue in the late hours of the night, sounds half remembered right before he fell asleep.

When he saw her again his heart leapt right out of his chest and onto the subway platform. He ran to meet her. He passed her and hesitated, scared that he was wrong. It was worse to lose the something again. The aching feeling would only grow if he was wrong about the girl with the pretty eyes and familiar ribbon.

“Have we met?” He could feel his voice shake.

“I thought so too,” she said. She was crying. He brought a hand to his face and found that he was too.

She was beautiful. Even with tears streaming down her face she was more beautiful than anyone he’d ever met.

“And your name is?” He answered first.

“Mitsuha,” she replied.

Mitsuha, Mitsuha, Mitsuha.

“Taki?” When she said his name it felt like warmth and light and understanding.

“Yes?”

“Do you want to get coffee with me?”

She wished they could meet like normal people. She missed him even when she was there inside his head.

“Of course.”

She smiled. And it was so beautiful.

[draganchitsa]

hi this is smut but also fic dedicated to @jeynegrey and @staticcatfish because i, a smut monger, am offended at the lack of your name. smut on ao3 tbQh.

the first time they kiss is when the sun is setting.  it’s fitting--that’s when they first touched too on that mountaintop while the stars were falling.  magic hour, twilight, when the sky is pink and gold and purple and blue and you aren’t sure if anything is real because you are there, three years apart, talking, writing i love you on a palm.

it’s less magical than when they first touched.  there are no falling stars, and the electricity of the lights in tokyo make the blues seem blacker and the yellows brighter.  it’s not the same, and yet everything is the same.

these are lips she knows.  she’s used them to eat every sweet she could buy, draining his wallet because she’d never find pancakes and cupcakes quite like this in itomori.  she knows the shape of them from brushing the teeth behind them, knows the smell of the breath they hide for she has held that breath, but it’s like a dream come to life when she tastes it with her own tongue.  the rumbling of the city outside is nothing like the mountaintop wind so vivid in her mind now that she’s found him again found taki never has to worry about forgetting his name, who cares if this magic hour is less magical for being in the city it’s magical by his presence alone.

it’s strange how the touch of his hand is something so familiar when they’ve only really met a few days ago--not counting that moment on the subway eight years before, not counting that moment on the mountaintop.  it’s strange how the way he touches her feels as familiar to her body as her own touch, as though her body knows the touch of his mind as it knows the touch of hers.  

memories flood back into her, like pouring a glass of water.  

memories of confusion and people staring and whispering about things she did that she can’t remember, memories of yotsuha’s comments about how much she likes touching her own boobs, memories of the sky falling and of the world exploding around her, memories of him, his body, his life.  

in the span of days it’s like she’s known him lifetimes.  in a way, she has. 

sayaka and teshi tell her she’s in too deep too fast and it can only hurt her, because infatuation isn’t real love, but they don’t seem to remember that it was him as much as her that saved them all from the comet.  they don’t know that she’s known him in her heart for almost as long as she’s known herself.  

“oh, we like him fine,” teshi says to her over the phone.  “that’s not the issue.”

“we just don’t want you to hurt yourself,” sayaka says.  he clearly has her on speaker phone.  “remember that time in high school when--?”

“what time in high school?” mitsuha cuts her off.

“when you met that boy in tokyo and then you cut your hair?  right before the comet.  you said you met a boy in tokyo.”  she had told them a truth of it after the comet, after they’d all lived, when none of what had mattered the day before seemed to matter anymore, when everything that had mattered the day before seemed to matter, but she couldn’t remember why.  and now she can.

“that was one time,” mitsuha tells them.  “one time, and i was young and didn’t know what was happening.  i do know now.”

and she does.  she does know--she knows because when he holds her hand it’s like everything fits, when they stand under her umbrella together because he forgot his and it started to rain earlier than expected, when he kisses her at magic hour because magic hour means something magical to both of them.

what sayaka and teshi don’t understand, can’t understand, is that this is not infatuation.  infatuation is when you don’t know someone but you think you do.  taki is knowing someone and not realizing you do.

they laugh the first time he touches her breasts--laugh because of course he would.  he’s gentle with them, and his touch is perfect, because of course he remembers what had felt good and what had been too much.  they laugh, but the laughter dies on their lips when he kisses her.

taki’s touch is like the comet, a streak of brilliance that makes every other star in the sky seem dull.  his lips, his hands, the warmth of his heart beating against her chest as she presses herself against him, they make everything else that’s been good about the day--a productive one at work, and a good phone call with her grandmother, and helping yotsuha with a paper for her college class--fade away so brightly does the presence of him shine.  it’s addictive, feeling this alive, knowing that she could be dead, knowing that she could never have known him at all, and yet here she is, here they are together.

it’s funny the way they are shy with one another as they help each other out of their clothes.  how many times had taki held her breasts in his hands, but he blushes at the sight of her bra, and looks away when she unclasps it and lets it fall to the floor.  how many times had she had to avoid looking at his penis when he’d had to pee, had to deal with waking up with it stiff on her taki mornings, but when he strips out of his underpants, she finds she can’t look away.  he’s been inside her body with all of his consciousness, but this--this them--this is different because they’ll share it.

the sun is setting somewhere when he buries his face in her breasts, kissing whatever skin his lips come across.  she closes her eyes and lets herself see stars at the touch of his tongue on her nipples, and sighs when his hand creeps up her legs.  she finds his cock with her own fingers and acts on a curiosity that she’d never allowed herself to when she’d been younger, no matter how frustrating it had been to think of other ways to deal with the situation.  his skin is so soft, and warm, and he gasps at her touch and his lips find hers again while she rubs him, her hand moving at the same rhythm of her heart.

i love you, she thinks, but she doesn’t think it in her words.  she thinks it as his--written in black ink on the palm of her hand while stars are falling from the sky.  his hand between her legs is the same one that wrote those words, his lips--at her neck now--are the same ones that she’d used to call out her own name as she’d run circles around the shrine at the top of the mountain, desperately, breathlessly.  

how alive she feels.  how beautifully and wonderfully alive.  how had she born living without him for so long?  it was like living without herself.  but that is the past and here they are now, but they are their past--unions of body and soul and time.

“i love you,” he chokes out when he pushes into her--but no.  not pushing in.  she pulls him in, wanting him in her as deeply as his soul, so much more welcome than the first time he’d woken up inside her.  she wants to feel his soul in her skin, wants to feel his heat in her heart, and she kisses him as deeply as she can with a tongue that will never forget the contours of his name.  

taki.  taki.  taki. 

how easy it is to remember his name.  two sweet short syllables that match so well the rhythm of her heart, the rhythm of her pulling him inside her, the rhythm of her gasping, gasping, as though she’d just climbed a mountain.

[recentanimenews]

your name.

By Makoto Shinkai. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Taylor Engel.

I’m coming at this novel from a somewhat unique perspective, I think, as I am one of the few people reading it who hasn’t already seen the movie first. In fact, the author states he initially wasn’t going to write a novel at all (novelization might be more accurate), feeling that it was a story he felt best told through the medium of the animated movie (in particular, the music used for it). But the novel kept niggling at him, and he finally buckled down and wrote it. It’s from the perspective of its two leads, Mitsuha and Taki, which gives an opportunity to better get inside their heads, but also means we only see scenes they’re involved in. So if people are asking me whether your name. is worth reading if you’ve seen the movie, I can’t tell you that. I can say that by the end of the book I was enjoying it enormously, and I’m very happy I read it.

That said, the book comes with a warning from me to my readers: if you are bothered by second-hand embarrassment in your reading, them parts of this book are going to be like crawling through glass. The main premise involves a bodyswap between a boy and a girl, so we already get the normal ‘I’m acting weird and everyone is puzzled’ scenes, but the kids are also teenagers, meaning there’s lots of weird body issues and teen crushes, leading to the most awkward date ever. That said, both kids are nice, and the contrast between the way-out countryside and the middle of Tokyo was a nice contrast. Mitsuha’s perspective takes up a lot of the beginning and near the end of the book, while Taki’s has most of the middle for obvious plot reasons.

There is romance as well, of course, though it’s done so subtly that it almost crept up on me. At one point during the aforementioned awkward date, Taki’s crush says she can tell he’s in love with someone else, and he’s honestly as puzzled as the reader is by this point. But as things snowball, you can see the depth of feelings grow deeper and deeper, and by the end of the book we are quite content to actually not see the final familial confrontation because we’ve gotten what we wanted. More surprisingly, and without wanting to spoil too much, the ending is not quite as bittersweet as some of Shinkai’s other works, even though it still remains somewhat ambiguous. I have a sneaking suspicion that this may be one of the reasons that this movie has been a bigger hit than any of his other movies – bittersweet is lovely, but doesn’t sell as well.

There are a few niggles – The book may be a bit TOO fast and short, for one. I’d also like to have seen more of Mitsuha vs. her father, and the side characters are not as developed as our leads. There’s also a side story volume coming out in the fall (by a different author) that may expand on this, as it apparently shows the story from other perspectives. But your name. is an emotional journey, and as the book goes on you’ll find yourself turning the pages faster and faster. I can’t speak for those who’ve seen the movie, but if you like romance with a touch of sci-fi, this is definitely worth a buy.

By: Sean Gaffney