Your Name

Your Name (君の名は。, Kimi no Na wa) is a 2016 fantasy and romantic drama anime film by Makoto Shinkai, his sixth major release. Its soundtrack is by RADWIMPS. It is animated by CoMix Wave Films and distributed by Toho.

Mitsuha Miyamizu (Mone Kamishiraishi, Stephanie Sheh) is a Japanese high school girl living in the fictional rural small town of Itomori in Gifu Prefecture. Bored and oppressed by the stresses of her miko duties at the family Shinto shrine and her estranged mayor father, she seeks escape by hoping to be reborn as a Tokyo boy in her next life. One day, she finds her wish granted when she awakens as Taki Tachibana (Ryuunosuke Kamiki, Michael Sinterniklaas), a Tokyo high school boy juggling his desire to go into architecture with a part-time job at a restaurant. Initially mistaking the experience for a strangely vivid dream, the two eventually gather enough evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt the truth of the situation and have to work together to get along. However, as the relationship grows, little do they know that there are more surprises up ahead connected to the coming of the comet Tiamat.

The film was well-received both critically and commercially, being the first non-Studio Ghibli anime film to break the US$100 million mark at the Japanese box office, and was number one at the Japanese box office for a number of weekends. It also had top openings in China and South Korea.

In September 2017, an American live action adaptation was announced to be in development. It was initially to be produced by JJ Abrams based on a script by Eric Heisserer and involving a Native American girl swapping with a Chicago boy in line with the Japanese rights holders' desire for it to be westernized. The director was originally to be Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer, The Amazing Spider-Man) . Directorial and writing duties were later given to Lee Isaac Chung of Minari fame, though in July 2021 he left because of scheduling problems. As of October/November 2022, Carlos López Estrada (Blindspotting, Raya and the Last Dragon) has become the director. Little else is currently known.

Tropes used in Your Name include:

Adult Fear:
- Mitsuha's mother died from illness with her father helpless to do anything about it. To make things worse, he Never Got to Say Goodbye because his last desperate attempt to seek outside assistance left him away until it was too late.
- The greatest threat to Taki's physical wellbeing comes not from some fantastic beast, but rather a fall. Considering how the mountain crater shrine is so desolate that the bottles there had moss growth from being untouched in 3 years, one can only imagine that no one would have found the body for a long time, if ever. Also imagine how terrible Miki and Tsukasa would have felt if the last they ever heard from him was a vague note that shed absolutely no light on what he was going to do.
- Come the Distant Finale, Taki is struggling to find a job, and judging by how Japanese universities have their graduation in the spring, it's been months. The whole thing is kinda Played for Laughs, but makes for uncomfortable watching for anyone who's been in a similar situation.
Aliens in Cardiff: While Itomori itself is fictional, it is modelled after the real Hida City in Gifu Prefecture, a part of Japan largely unknown to foreigners before this film put it in the spotlight. It is in Itomori's vicinity that the crater with the plot-vital god's body is situated, and later on a fragment of the comet Tiamat impacts the town, causing the death of 500.
All Just a Dream: Taki and Mitsuha initially dismiss the bodyswapping as dreams. Later, Taki wonders if the interactions really were a figment of his imagination after learning that Mitsuha is already dead in his time.
All There in the Manual: There is a novelization by Shinkai that adds some information, but is focused closely on Taki and Mitsuha's perspectives. A side novel by Arata Kanoh, Another Side: Earthbound, provides the perspectives of Tessie and Yotsuha, as well as further information on Taki's misadventures in Mitsuha's body and backstory for Toshiki, including how the latter first met the Miyamizu family. Additional manga adaptations for both the film and Another Side: Earthbound also exist.
Alternate Universe: Given that The Garden of Words ends with Yukari going back to her hometown on Shikoku, it obviously cannot be aligned with her presence in Itomori here.
Attack of the Town Festival: A fragment of the comet Tiamat breaks off and hits, causing the death of 500, while Itomori is holding an autumn festival.
Bittersweet Ending: While mostly an Earn Your Happy Ending as Taki and Mitsuha manage to save everyone who would have otherwise died and are eventually reunited, the fact still remains that the Miyamizu Shrine and most of Itomori were destroyed by the fragment of Tiamat, forcing the townspeople to uproot, and that the reunion took years to happen.
Cassandra Truth: Mitsuha's grandmother tells Taki-in-Mitsuha that no one in authority will believe that the fragment of Tiamat is going to impact Itomori, and is soon proven correct.
Casting Gag: Aoi Yuuki plays the eponymous lead of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, in which there is a side character named Sayaka and one of the key plot elements is using time travel to save a life. Here, she plays a side character named Sayaka, and one of the key plot elements is also using time travel to save a life.
Chekhov's Classroom: Early on, a literature lesson introduces the concept of kataware doki, a kind of witching hour at twilight where reality blurs and one might encounter something inhuman. Later, Hitoha teaches Taki-in-Mitsuha about musubi, how connections can be forged across time and things taken into the body join to the soul. Both these things play vital roles in the climax.
Chekhov's Skill: Early on, Tessie's father tells him to learn how to use explosives. He ends up having to do so again later on.
Comet of Doom: The coming of the comet Tiamat is a prominent part of the film, and becomes even more so when a fragment breaks off and hits Itomori, causing the death of 500.
Contrived Coincidence:
- Taki, Miki and Tsukasa have lunch at a ramen shop that just happens to be owned by a former resident of Itomori and who thus can tell them about it. The manga makes this a double whammy in that he was absent for the Tiamat strike only because traffic just happened to be bad that night.
- Mitsuha spends a day in fruitless search for Taki in Tokyo. As she's waiting to take a train home, a train with Taki on board just happens to arrive at the station she's at.
- In the Distant Finale, Taki and Mitsuha see each other as their trains pass. At no point in the leadup to this was it shown that they were doing anything other than their daily commute. For them to just happen to be in the right time and place to see each other at this point who knows how long after establishing this routine has to be some kind of miracle.
A Day in the Limelight: Another Side: Earthbound mostly serves as this, giving the perspectives of Tessie, Yotsuha and Toshiki.
Dead All Along: Taki is unpleasantly surprised to learn that Mitsuha died in the comet fragment strike three years in his past.
Distracted From Death: According to Another Side: Earthbound, Toshiki Never Got to Say Goodbye to Futaba because he was out looking for another doctor who could save her.
Four Is Death: It is on October 4 that a fragment of the comet Tiamat breaks off and hits Itomori, causing the death of 500.
Foreshadowing: When Taki finally sees Itomori in person, or rather the crater left by the impact from the fragment of Tiamat, it is from the high school grounds, which although abandoned are still intact. From this, he gets the idea to have the people evacuated to the high school.
Freaky Friday Flip: The main conceit of the film is Taki and Mitsuha's bodyswapping.
Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- Toshiki's first name is only shown briefly on a background banner in hiragana.
- A very small calendar in the scene where Tessie's father and Toshiki are having dinner shows that the year then is 2013.
- A poster is seen in the classroom when Mitsuha first attends Taki's school in his body that shows the year is 2016.
- There is one point when Taki and Mitsuha are both looking through their phones and the date shows it's September 12, but the years are different.
- When Mitsuha is wandering around Tokyo trying to find Taki, one of the places shown is the set of stairs where they would eventually reunite.
- Shinkai revealed that Takao Akizuki from The Garden of Words can briefly be seen in the crowd when now-adult Taki thinks he sees Mitsuha in a train station.
- The final act briefly shows the kanji for Miyamizu on the nameplate of now-adult Mitsuha's apartment front door, confirming it's really her rather than a doppelganger.
Ghibli Plains: There's a vast green plain in a crater deep in the mountains, at the centre of which is the god's body sacred to the Miyamizu.
Gilligan Cut: About halfway through, Taki wakes up in Mitsuha's body again and says that he shouldn't touch her breasts for her sake. Cut to Yotsuha opening the bedroom door to wake her up and seeing just that happening.
The Lost Lenore: Toshiki's inability to get over the death of Futaba was a major contributor to the dereliction of his priestly duties and the ongoing estrangement from their children.
Maybe Ever After: The film ends with Taki and Mitsuha reuniting and asking for each other's names, but whether they eventually become a couple is left a mystery. According to the novel for Weathering with You, there is a photo in Taki's grandmother's home of her grandson's wedding, and in that film proper the grandmother is shown wearing on her wrist what looks like a Miyamizu braided cord, which implies that they did, but given the continuity conflicts between this film and that one, whether this is canon is left to the audience to decide.
Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: While there is no doubt as to the body swap being supernatural in nature, the comet Tiamat is more ambiguous. Specifically, was it really just lottery-winning levels of bad luck that a fragment ejected from it landed exactly on the Miyamizu home like a cosmic precision-guided munition? Or is it really - following from speculation In-Universe in Another Side: Earthbound that the comet is an avatar of a God of Evil - a deliberate attack made by said god to avenge itself on the lineage of priestesses in service to the rival deity that defeated it previously?
Missing Mom: Mitsuha and Yotsuha's mother Futaba died of illness six years prior to the start of the film, but still casts a shadow on the family, especially as The Lost Lenore to widowed Toshiki. Taki's mother, meanwhile, is nowhere to be seen, with only a vague allusion late in the novel as to him having to get used to living with the father. Nothing is done with this commonality.
Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: In Another Side: Earthbound, Toshiki speculates in-universe that this is the reason why despite currently enshrining the celestial kami Shitori no Kami, the Miyamizu Shrine also has affinity with terrestrial kami like those enshrined by Izumo Taisha: the Miyamizu might have once worshipped a rebel against the celestials until a disaster befell Itomori sometime in the past, which was interpreted as their old kami failing them and led to their changing allegiance.
Never Got to Say Goodbye: According to Another Side: Earthbound, Toshiki was out looking for another doctor who could save Futaba and missed out on her last words, having to hear them secondhand from a nurse instead.
Never Live It Down: In-universe, whoever Mayugoro the sandalmaker was as a person and whatever else he did, now he is only known as the guy who somehow started a fire in his bathroom 200 years ago that led to the destruction of large parts of Itomori and the loss of the Miyamizu Shrine's records. Both Toshiki (in spinoff novel Another Side: Earthbound) and Yotsuha are appalled that the Great Fire to which his name was appended is his sole legacy.
Next Sunday A.D.: The film was released and set in 2016. Or was it?
No Antagonist: There is no clear hostile entity or group opposing the protagonists throughout the course of the story, apart from a briefly-appearing thug and a questionably sentient Comet of Doom.
No Hero to His Valet: As related in Another Side: Earthbound, Toshiki seemed to be the only person who could see Futaba as a person rather than some kind of living saint.
No Name Given: The customer who slashes Miki's skirt, Taki's father and Tessie's parents are not named, even in the credits.
Opposite Gender Protagonists: Taki Tachibana and Mitsuha Miyamizu. Although the two don't physically meet for much of the film due to their very different circumstances, they interact through the Freaky Friday Flip, doing things that are initially begrudged but eventually accepted, and end up changing each other's lives.
Real Place Allusion: Itomori is fictional but is based on the actual Hida City in Gifu Prefecture.
Real Place Background: The restaurant Taki works part-time at is based on Cafe La Boheme near Shinjuku Gyoen, albeit the fictional one is shown to have frontage on a busy main road unlike in reality. Taki and Mitsuha reunite on the stairs leading to the Yotsuya Suga Shrine. Various other actual locales both in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan are featured in the film.
Reality Ensues:
- Despite how much Taki's built it up in his mind, Lake Itomori is not in fact the household name of an iconic landmark he'd been expecting, and random passersby in its vicinity aren't much good where actually finding it is concerned.
- Mitsuha learns the hard way that finding someone in a big city is not, despite her hopes, a quick and easy thing to do.
- Even extraordinary events will be forgotten after enough time. Three years after they happened, Taki has forgotten both Mitsuha being the one to give the braided cord to him on the train and the news of the fragment of the comet Tiamat destroying Itomori.
- Taki's plan to save Itomori is entirely focused on evacuating the townspeople and doesn't even broach the topic of trying to stop or divert the incoming comet fragment. What, did you think this was some heroic fantasy tale? Even then, the townspeople initially don't go along obediently with the spoofed evacuation orders, but instead mill around in confusion.
The Red Stapler: Hida City in Gifu Prefecture was fairly unknown previously. Within months of the film's release, tourism revenue from pilgrims exceeded the US$100 million mark.
Retraux: The flashbacks seen after Taki drinks Mitsuha's kuchikamizake have deliberate fuzziness, scan lines and other faux VHS effects.
Riddle for the Ages:
- What really caused the Great Fire of Mayugoro 200 years ago?
- What was Mitsuha writing on Taki's palm before she was brought back to her time?
Running Gag: Tachibana touching Miyamizu's breasts. He gets more and more comfortable with it.
Slow Electricity: After Tessie sets off explosives that destroy a local transformer, Itomori's lights are shown going out in sequence rather than all at once.
Small Role, Big Impact: The thug that slashes Miki's skirt gets no name and little screentime, but his action, and Mitsuha-in-Taki's rectifying it, have major ramifications down the line. This includes Mitsuha thinking about the date she arranges between Taki and Miki, leading to her going to Tokyo to find Taki and ending up passing her braided cord to him, as well as Miki following Taki to find Itomori and jogging his memory.
Small Town Boredom: Early on, Mitsuha laments how there's nothing to do and no prospects in Itomori and that she wants to go to Tokyo to live it up. She gets her wish granted, but probably not in the way she had been expecting.
Sorry That I'm Dying: Mitsuha's mother apologised to the family before her passing.
Strong Family Resemblance: Played for drama as according to supplementary novel Another Side: Earthbound, one of the drivers of Toshiki's issues is how Mitsuha's resemblance to Futaba reminds him of losing the latter.
Those Two Guys: Bespectacled Tsukasa and jockish Shinta, while not completely divorced from the events of the plot, otherwise fit the idea by commenting on the strangeness that starts to follow Taki after the swaps begin.
True Companions: Despite their initial doubts, Tessie and Sayaka go along with Mitsuha's harebrained schemes knowing full well the risks to themselves.
Urban Fantasy: The bodyswapping and other supernatural elements are key parts of the narrative with big effects on Mitsuha and Taki's lives.
What Happened to the Mouse?: Toshiki and Hitoha are not heard from again after the Time Skip to the Distant Finale. A Fictional Document states that people were curious about how the former coincidentally had an evacuation drill at the right time to thwart the comet disaster, but nothing more is said about the consequences of this interest and he is never shown onscreen again. The latter's status is not brought up at all in the film proper. The manga adaptation has Yotsuha pass a message from her to Mitsuha, but no real explanation of her status is provided and the person herself isn't seen in the flesh either.