Movie Review: Your Name

In a rural town, a teenage girl named Mitsuha Miyahizu wakes up in bewilderment as she looks down to her breasts and cups it in full curiosity. Her little sister witnesses the rather crazy act as she opens her room’s sliding door only to see her touching her breasts. She takes off her top and looks at herself in the mirror. The next day, as she eats breakfast with her grandma and little sister, her grandma mentions that she seems normal than the day before. In school, she finds out from her friend that she acted like a completely different person. She then finds “Who are you?” scribbled on the classroom desk of her seat assignment.

A high school boy named Taki Tachibana wakes up surprised at something that’s in between his legs. He realizes that he’s in a body of a boy but decides to go on with the day. He says goodbye to a father he has never seen before and goes out in great admiration of the view outside. Excited at the reality that he’s in Tokyo, he cherishes it despite the crazy fact that he’s not the real Taki --she’s a girl who somehow ended up in a boy’s body and is glad to experience life in the city. However, with Taki juggling school, work, and his secret admiration for a girl, she realizes she wants to go back to her own body as Mitsuha.

Your Name is a Japanese drama and fantasy anime film by Makoto Shinkai under CoMix Wave. It was released in 2016 and produced by Noritaka Kawaguchi and Genki Kawamura with music created by Radwimps. The film’s Japanese title is Kimi no Na wa.

I was searching for the best movies of all time and came across this movie. It bagged 15 recognitions from famous award-giving bodies so even before watching it, I was 100% sure there was something special about it.

The characters, plot, and twist gave such nostalgic feeling. This movie will last a lifetime for its unique ability to pull the audience into the world of two teenagers of different worlds. The characters are not only separated by distance; they’re separated by time. Mitsuha lives in the future, which is three years apart from Taki’s life. They learn about each other’s world through a magical occurrence that happens occasionally. They switch souls; for unknown reasons, Taki sometimes wakes up in Mitsuha’s body and vice versa.

I love how Taki and Mitsuha communicates with each other; they write journals on their mobile phone so that once they switch back to their own bodies, they’ll see what the other person has done. It’s very comical how they started trying to ruin each other’s life by doing embarrassing things but decided to create rules to follow so that things will be smooth every time they switch.

The storyline is very impressive, but I won’t go into very specific details for the sake of those who haven’t watched the movie. This was a big hit in Japan and Korea but I’m not sure if it’s a known movie on other parts of the world so if you haven’t seen this film, you’re missing half of your life! Go watch it and find out why this movie’s title is, “Your Name.”