Kimi no Nawa: What About It?

Kimi no Nawa, Your Name. It’s probably one of the most popular Japanese animated films in the last five years. Many fans waited eagerly for its release and initially, I heard rave reviews about it. Fast forward to today, the times I brought it up, people were telling me that it is an overrated film. They say the movie didn’t live up to the hype. But what should I think about that?

What is it with Kimi no Nawa?

So was it overrated as a lot of people say? No, I didn’t think so. For me, it was just right. I wasn’t really all that hyped about it in the first place. However I did grab a copy when it was first released because friends recommended it but I didn’t watch it until two years later.

Was it sad or deeply emotional? The idea of the story was, but the execution of it made me feel like it was like a feel-good movie. It did resonate with me though because I understood the feelings that the characters were going through as they had their weird experiences with each other. But it didn’t make me feel sad. There was no heaviness or a small twisting pain in my chest. It wasn’t that kind of movie that pierces through your heart, toying with your emotions. Rather it was more cerebral in its approach. For me, it engaged my mind more than my heart.

Kimi no Nawa is a nice feel-good love story with a few emotional moments sprinkled throughout the film. It is a cinematic tapestry. It has beautiful visuals with a solid soundtrack and good theme songs. Though I’m not sure that the characters were compelling enough. I don’t think the writers and director were able to show different dimensions to their personality and identity. I feel like they didn’t give the main characters enough depth and development except in a few scenes.

The story felt like a mash-up between Freaky Friday and Back to the Future. The concept doesn’t seem novel at all on the surface but with Shinkai at the helm, the story takes on different dimensions that bring it to a whole new level. And I think that’s why the film works on a metaphysical or a philosophical sense.

Synopsis

So it tells us the story of two high school students, Mitsuha and Taki. They’ve been having “dreams” where they switch bodies with each other. Then they realize these weren’t dreams and they’ve been living in each other’s reality the whole time. They both carry on with their lives and try to set up boundaries for things that they can and can’t do while in each other’s body.

Later, they begin to develop feelings for each other. One day, Taki and Mitsuha don’t switch bodies anymore. Taki can’t reach her through the phone either. So he decides to get on a train to see Mitsuha but he doesn’t know where she lives. His friends Tsukasa and Miss Okudera accompany him on the trip.

After a few failed attempts, they decide to take a break and eat at a ramen shop. While there, the owner recognizes Taki’s drawing of Itomori, the place where Mitsuha lived. However, they were confronted with the fact that Itomori was wiped out three years ago by a meteor.

Suddenly, all hope seems lost for Taki. He is also completely confused because he was able to communicate with Mitsuha the week before. But it started to make sense to him why they stopped switching bodies. Then Taki remembers the place where Mitsuha went with her grandmother and little sister. So he decides to go to Miyamizu shrine in the hopes of finding Mitsuha there.

After drinking the kuchikamisake that Mitsuha offered at the shrine, Taki is taken back three years into the past. He awakens in Mitsuha’s body once again, the day the meteor hit Itomori town. So he decides to warn everybody in the town about the impending danger. However, nobody believes Taki except for Mitsuha’s friends, Teshi and Sayaka. When all seems in vain, he decides to go back to the shrine.

Now, we see Mitsuha in Taki’s body but in a different timeline, three years after the incident. They try to look for each other but when they arrive at the same point, they couldn’t see each other but they can hear each other’s voices. They talk for a while until twilight came and they were able to see each other as they returned to their own bodies.

At that point, Mitsuha did not have enough time but she can still do something. Before they leave, Taki tells her that they should write each other’s name on their hands. Taki writes it on Mitsuha’s hand but as Mitsuha is about to write her name, she disappears and they each go back to their own timeline.

One of the emotional moments that this film had was the fact that every time they switch back to each other’s body, they forget each other’s name. So despite remembering Mitsuha’s name right after she disappeared, Taki would later forget who she was and why he was at that place. On the other hand, though Mitsuha forgot Taki’s name, he did write it on her hand. Or did he? Well, it’s revealed that what he wrote was “suki da” or I love you instead.

In the end, Mitsuha and her friends were successful in averting catastrophe. Everybody was evacuated and they continued on with their lives. The only tragedy is that Taki and Mitsuha would be constantly searching for something or someone but don’t know who or what. They will always be chasing after their memories of each other which they can’t remember.

At the end of the movie, Taki and Mitsuha see each other as their trains passed by. When they got off the train, they ran looking for the other. Once they meet, they simply pass by each other again, thinking they must be dreaming or that they were mistaken. But Taki musters enough strength to call back to Mitsuha, say that he remembers her from somewhere, and start their relationship all over again. Then they both ask each other’s name. The end.

My Thoughts

As I said, the film did resonate with me in that I am also fascinated and terrified about my own subconscious and unconscious mind. I don’t like the fact that someday I might just completely forget an integral part of my life.

Sometimes I wake up dazed and confused, thinking about whether I experienced a dream or not. I keep trying to remember the dream but I can’t and it’s frustrating. It feels like you’re losing a part of yourself or a part of your history, of your past. Or you just simply feel lost in reality. On the flip side, what if you dream about your future instead? The thought of our dreams being like memories or visions, not knowing whether they’re real or not is daunting.

Makoto Shinkai, the director and writer of the film, usually addresses abstract concepts and ideas like time, space, distance, memory, thoughts, feelings, and communication in his films. Even his approach toward directing films seems to be influenced by his fascination of the abstract.

I think this is where Shinkai excels in. He takes us into surreal landscapes and explores the possibilities and implications of otherwise dreamlike concepts as if they were illusions merging with reality. These are not things we always experience in reality. But his stories give us a form of escape where we embark on a journey to some unknown territory within a realm that seems familiar to us. However, in reality it’s uncharted, unexplored, and frankly, sometimes it can’t be explained.

I think he is more of a conceptual rather than an experiential filmmaker and storyteller. What I mean is that he probably starts off with an idea for a story and puts different experiences and scenarios together like pieces of a puzzle that would fit the message that the idea is trying to convey. This approach is in contrast to telling a narrative from experience which draws insight from what is happening in the story.

I was thinking about what makes Shinkai’s films different from, say, the works of Miyazaki or Takahata from Ghibli. And I believe it’s his surrealist approach and perspective. While Ghibli’s films tend to have realistic, mythical, and somewhat spiritual elements to them, Shinkai’s films often tread between the real and the unknown. It feels as though we have set foot inside his imagination and he is showing us how he looks at the world.

When I was watching Kimi no Nawa, I felt lost at times because I was trying to figure out what was going on. Only when the characters themselves confirm what I think was going on do I finally realize what exactly was going on. You can say that Shinkai’s direction was a bit eccentric but it delivered when you look at the movie as a whole.