Your Name Anime Movie Explained

in 2016 there was one movie that was on every otaku's mind your name your name has replaced spirited away as the highest-grossing animated films director Makoto Shinkai will be the next Hayao Miyazaki despite the acclaim your names storyline is not straightforward events are told out of order which can add to the twisted plot that's where we come in in this video we will be recapping the events of your name in chronological order to help demystify some details audience members may find when watching this amazing film plus we'll look at the cultural impact this film has

had since its release since this is a recap there will be spoilers if it wasn't already apparent by now [Music] before your name went on to gain so much acclaim Makoto Shinkai had a few different names for the film before settling on your name production of this film went back to 2014 and in his initial proposal to Toho Animation the film was first called I knew it from a dream this was a reference to the Japanese poem your connection by Ono no Komachi the other possible title Shinkai had considered was you are half of this

world before settling on your name Shinkai was inspired by other anime like ranma 1/2 and inside mary as well as classic Japanese poem torii kebaya monogatari but perhaps one of the greatest influences came from Christopher Nolan's 2014 interstellar which makes sense given the story's themes of love transcending great distances like time and space the film was first released at Anime Expo in July of 2016 before was shown in Japan in August of that same year it would get a wider North American release and a dubbed by Funimation in 2017 your names release was massive to

say the least on release this film made up 10% of Japan's total box office your name was the second highest grossing animated spirited away and would soon surpass that by earning a gross box-office amount of 23 billion yen or a hundred and nine million dollars this has earned Shinkai V often unwanted title of the next two Miyazaki still the response to your name has been positive with its blend of amazing visuals and locations Makoto Shinkai stepped into his own with this film which would only bolster him further to release his next film weathering with you

which is currently out now despite this high praise and reviews there is no such thing as a perfect movie a note both viewers and critics have brought up is that the plot of your name is a little convoluted this is not to the film's detriment at all but it can take a second viewing to fully follow the timeline of events the film presents its events out of order and to make things even more complicated our two main characters spend a majority of the movie at different times meets aha exists in a small city of ito

mori three years in the past and taki lives in Tokyo three years ahead well actually they're the same age but they switch bodies three years of apart from one another and well you can see how that can be complicated so I think we should just start where it all began our film begins with our two main characters meet sohe and taki reciting a cryptic yet poignant message once in a while when I wake up I find myself crying the dream I must have had I can never recall but the sensation that I've lost something lingers

for a long time after I wake up I'm always searching for something for someone this feeling has possessed me I think from that day when the stars came falling it was almost as if a scene from a dream nothing more nothing less than a beautiful view this is said while the comet flies over Ito Maury but actually this event takes place near the middle of the film our film actually began 1,200 years ago when a comet first appeared and struck the earth creating the lake that Ito mori would be built upon this comet would come

again spelling disaster when it strikes fast-forward to our movies timeline and mitzvahs mother dies this would lead to her father abandoning his family and his duties to the Shinto shrine that they have been entrusted with instead he goes into politics and becomes the mayor of eat amore needless to say this strains his relationship with his family most importantly with Mitsuwa abandoned by their father and left without a mother meat so ha and her sister would then be raised by their grandma and be taught the traditions of the shrine including how to make coochie-coo Misaki or

mouth chewed sake which is made by chewing rice and then spitting it out to let it ferment into sake when miso huh grows up she and her sister performed the ceremony to create her cootchie-coo Misaki this would play an integral part in connecting taki and meets AHA later on and is perhaps the key that ends up saving the town of Ito Maureen some of the Townies watch Mesa has ritual and make little snide remarks about the weird old traditions flustered and sick of living in this backwater town meets a hunt éclairs she wants nothing more

than to move away from the big city she wants to live in Tokyo and in some cosmic sense she gets exactly what she wants this is where the first body switch between taki and Mitsuwa takes place in the film this is shown earlier but it actually happens later you see tacky and meets aha are not only two different people living in two different places with taki living in Tokyo and meets on living in a tamari but also different times when they switch bodies Mitsuwa is taking takis body three years into the future during this first

switch they have no idea who the other person is and believe that it's all a dream as such the two teens kind of treat this as a dream unknowingly embarrassing the other in their respective lives when meets Ahuh switches back her family and friends all worried about her and wonder if she's alright meat so his friends fill her in about how odd she was acting and now she forgot all about her locker and how to do her hair it seems to her that what she experienced might not have been a dream after all this causes

meat Sahad to track down taki and meet him there's just one problem when meets AHA and taki switched bodies it was three years into the future in meat saunas present taki has no idea who Mitsuwa is she finally tracks him down on the subway but because they had not switched buddy's head in his timeline he doesn't recognize her her last effort to make a connection to taki is to give him her red ribbon she uses to tie up her hair when she does she tells him her name Mitsuwa this helps establish their bond to one

another [Music] meets AHA returns home just in time for the festival her hometown throws every year during the festival the comet from before appears remember the beginning of the movie when our two characters recited that little poem this is when that takes place and as the comet splits apart the unthinkable happens meets aha and all of ito Mori is lost when the comet strikes earth meet soo ha dies what happens next really tests the bounds of space-time three years pass and taki finds himself in meets Hua's body this is an alternate timeline before me -

ha dies but before taki and her meet these switches happened for several weeks and happen about twice a week at random the common trigger though is sleep when taki goes to bed sometimes he'll wake up as himself and sometimes he'll wake up as Mitsuwa during this point in the film taki and meet so i get to know each other more by experiencing each other's lives they developed their own little system of communicating meets aha leaves notes and takis diary at for him to read when he returns to his body after a while taki wants nothing

more than to meet this girl he's been body swapping with if only he knew where she lived he gathers her surroundings and makes sketches of the town but it never really occurred to him to ask what the name of her town is the switches soon stopped as Mitsuwa died in her timeline and taki wants to find out more about the girl he's been switching with he takes his friends and they journey into the Japanese countryside taki soon discovers the fate of ito Maureen the town that was destroyed three years ago when the comet fell the

journal entries meet so a left also delete themselves off talkies for any trace of this girl's existence is gone except for the red ribbon taki kept wrapped around his wrist from there taki learns about the tragedy of ito mori how many people died and just how much destruction the comet left after it struck the town that day how taki forgot such a monumental event is kind of astounding but even so talkies journey ends here the girl he's had in his mind and has been developing a relationship with is dead and there's nothing else he could

do or could he on the last date Aki was in me to his body he remembers a shrine he visited that housed something belonging to me to his family he didn't know exactly where it was but he knew it would have a as to what he could do after some searching he finds the shrine nestled at the center of a crater left behind from when a comet hit Japan thousands of years ago but it's a separate comet from the one that made the lake at Ito Mari and the one that killed Mitsuwa inside the shrine

taki finds the Kuchiki Misaki meets her I had made as well as a mural depicting the Comets splitting off across the sky now at this point in the movie things get a little trippy taki drinks the Kuchiki Misaki the sake meet so I made and sees her family's history the animation also takes an artistic twist as we are treated to a procession of meet Soyuz family treat taki also witnesses me to his mother dying and her father leaving all at once he manages to see everything that led up to this point and miraculously taki wakes

up in me to his body once again on the day the comet is going to strike the town all this time when taki and meets us switch bodies everyone else thinks that you were having off days but grandma finds out what's happened she tells taki in Mitzvahs body that heightened spiritual abilities have been passed down in the family for generations while her dad had long abandoned the family traditions even meet so as dad realizes the person he's speaking to is not his daughter taki knows what he has to do he has to save Ito Maury

from being destroyed by the comet well actually he just has to save the people in the town but in any case taki gathers up me to his friends and tries to stage a bomb scare at the town festival so that the citizens will evacuate to the school building which is outside the comments danger zone the plan begins but while people are confused and scared of the bomb scare taki had planned it's not enough to convince people to evacuate no-one is heating there warnings about the comment while the plan is underway there is one thing taki

has to do to make sure it all goes right he has to get Mitsuwa back to her own time to help save her town back at the shrine Twilight approaches the time where it's not quite day or night and where different worlds blend together taki and Mitsuwa meet they're still in each other's bodies but the two finally meet and recognize one another for the first time emotions run high as this is the emotional climax of the film taki returns me to his red ribbon the ribbon that she gave him when they first met before taki

even knew her name returning the ribbon taki inadvertently severed their connection they try and write each other's names on the other person's palm but Twilight soon ends and the bond is broken taki is back in his own body in time and meets aha is back in hers meets aheh is back in her body and time but the comet is about to hit and the plan to scare everyone into the school building has failed people are not aware of the danger she only has one chance to save her family and her town and that involves convincing

her dad to allow the emergency services to evacuate the town while she struggles to run down a mountain and back into town she struggles to remember the person she had bonded with up there what was his name for the life of her she cannot remember anyone taki didn't get to write his name but he did manage to write I love you on me too as palm before their connection was severed she doesn't remember who wrote this or how had gone on her head but she can feel something inside her something that gives her the strength

to push on against the impossible odds she reaches her father in time and manages to evacuate the city in time before the comet strikes now that the town is saved the time lines merge into one and because meat so had never died she and taki live in the present and because taki returned miso has ribbon neither of them remember the other's name it's like all the events that led up to this point suddenly vanished however that's not to say that they have completely forgotten one another 12 years have passed and the two live their lives

normally though both of them get the feeling that something or someone is missing from their lives we see taki has graduated college and is now looking for work in Tokyo but he's not having any luck then while he's on the train another passes by and someone catches his eye he can't remember where but he feels like he might have met that person in another life perhaps Mitsuwa is living in Tokyo now and on the train sees a man she thought she knew once at the next stop the to frantically look for one another and they

finally meet taki meets Mitzvah they ask for one another's name the camera pans up and the credits roll the movies over and our two literal star-crossed lovers are left to remake the relationship they had started 12 years ago when a strange phenomenon allowed them to experience each other's lives in more than most people develop a relationship your name is more than just a great film there's a lot we can take away from this film that American moviegoers would not normally be exposed to both culturally and socially let's look at me - his life for example

in her town she and her family are in charge of the Shinto shrine and regularly perform rituals adhering to the Shinto faith the ritual we see means well perform is her and her sister making coochie-coo Misaki both are dressed in red and white robes to resemble miko shrine maidens after a simple but rhythmic dance the to chew on some rice and spit it out into a box for it to fermented to sake this ancient form of making sake that literally translates to mouth chewed sake the Shinto faith is practiced to connect present-day Japan to its

ancestral roots this simple yet beautiful ceremony is meant to establish a theme set throughout the movie connections just like taki and Mitsuwa share a connection through time and space they also connect between the modern culture of urban Tokyo and the rural culture of Ito mori the two could not be more different at the beginning of the movie but by the end they're both brought together by their connections of experience and love above all else this idea of connection is universally applicable even to our own lives and our different cultures socially speaking this film emphasizes a

familiar kind of love and is not shown as sexual like what we're often subjected to when it comes to romance flicks going back to the Kuchiki Misaki it not only establishes a cultural connection between me to an taki but one could make the argument that when taki drank me to a sake they were sharing an indirect kiss in your name while the two developed feelings for one another our main characters never actually meet at least not until the very end of the film 12 years later when they do finally meet it's as if they had

found that piece that was missing inside for so long your name touches on an often overlooked point in romance the yearning for a connection beyond the physical your name takes the often used trope of body-switching not as a comedic tool for goofs and gaps but as a way for the two characters to develop a relationship and experience each other's lives in a way that only body-switching can do [Music] those are the events of your name explained in chronological order I still can't get over the part where taki drinks the coochie commie sake to see me

so as ancestral past and connect with her what was your favorite part let us know in the comments below and let us know if you'd like to see more of these videos in the future