Makoto Shinkai Retrospective: your name.
Finally. With Makoto Shinkai’s newest movie Suzume now on general release in the UK and North America (I saw it last night, review incoming as soon as I can gather my thoughts), I’ve chronologically worked through his whole backlog to get to the movie that really put his name on the map — 2016’s megahit your name. This was the film that rehabilitated Shinkai in my eyes, having sworn off his work several years earlier after my bad experience with 5 Centimeters per Second.
Although still featuring his usual obsessions and motifs, I feel that with your name. he finally succeeded in making the film he’d been attempting to make since 2002’s Voices of a Distant Star. Shinkai’s protagonists are usually young, in love, yearning or struggling for someone or something that they can’t have. The director himself admits that in the past he had been unlucky in love and suffered rejection on multiple occasions, pouring his angst and pain into his work. It shows.
Voices featured teenage lovers separated Interstellar-style by relativistic distances in time and space, while Place Promised separated its main couple by parallel universes. 5cm’s protagonist was separated from his teenage crush by distance, but also frustrating passivity. Lost Voices’ characters struggled with separation from their loved ones by death. Garden of Words’ characters were separated by age and role in society. Most of Shinkai’s previous works feature either ambiguous or downbeat endings that rely on supplementary material (such as novels or manga) to provide emotional closure, but that’s not the case with your name.
With your name., Shinkai has learned to focus his sensibilities on a coherent, satisfying story that remains at times emotional and painful, but with the essential added ingredient of humour. As much as I appreciate Shinkai the Visual Artist, and Shinkai the Master Emotional Manipulator, it’s with your name. that he finally can finally claim the title of Shinkai the Storyteller. Engaging stories feature variation in tone and content, there’s little point in making the same morose movie again and again and again. Even Lost Voices, his attempt at making a Miyazaki/Ghibli adventure movie lacked humour, that most essential human element. your name.’s tone is a world away from the detached ennui of 5cm or the subdued melancholy of Garden of Words. It’s also the first time Shinkai experiments with the subject of natural disasters, a theme that binds together his three most recent full-length films — your name., Weathering With You and Suzume.
One minor criticism I have of your name. is that it takes a while to get started, we’re thrown essentially in media res, with our two main characters confused about where and who they are. It’s clear something’s not quite right with the girl who wakes up panicked that she apparently now has breasts, and starts fondling them, much to the horror of her younger sister. There’s a similarly confused boy who awakes up to find he now (unexpectedly?) owns a penis. Following multiple scenes of normal Japanese school life (in both country and city settings), it takes a few minutes for the movie to confirm that yes, this is one of those body swap comedies, with the boy and girl protagonists swapping bodies for entire days, triggered by going to sleep at night, seemingly wakening from a “dream” the next day, with a 24-hour memory hole and only the vaguest of recollection of their time in their counterpart’s body.
Body swap comedies have been prominent in film and television for many decades. Look at the repeated movie remakes of 1972 novel Freaky Friday (1976, 1995, 2003 and 2018), the 1988 Tom Hanks vehicle Big, not to mention the iconic Red Dwarf episode, appropriately titled Bodyswap, which might be one of the funniest 30 minutes of entertainment I’ve ever experienced. your name. sticks to that tried-and-true comedy template for the first third or so, until the hilarity mostly stops and things get serious. It’s only because of the light-hearted opening section that we care what happens to our central couple-who-have-never-met. Yeah, it’s a weird achronological romance where boy and girl communicate only via diary entries as they periodically inhabit the other’s body. Hence the repeated boob-fondling (boy just can’t help himself, give him a break).
It’s no wonder that (male protagonist) Taki’s and (female protagonist) Mitsuha’s family/friends think that they’ve been possessed or have lost their minds two to three times weekly, when the swaps randomly occur. Taki’s a rough-and-tumble boy who speaks his mind and thinks nothing of getting into fights or roughhousing with other guys. He has no idea how to do a girl’s hair, or how to fasten a bra so breasts don’t bounce aggressively during basketball games. Similarly, Mitsuha is a girly-girl who tends to play down conflict, is less physical, and is more adept at verbal communication. Taki’s effect in Mitsuha’s body gains her (unwanted!) romantic attention from other girls, while Mitsuha wins Taki a date with his secret crush, much to his horror.
The logic behind the bodyswaps is dreamlike and vague. Neither Taki nor Mitsuha are initially able to remember that much about their actions during their dream-swaps, and the inherent faultiness of memory when it comes to dream recollection becomes integral (somewhat heartbreakingly so) to later plot developments. Just as Taki and Mitsuha are almost getting used to their strange body-sharing arrangement, the swapping suddenly stops and Taki feels bereft. Embarking on a search to find Mitsuha and meet her, he learns the real reason that his calls to her cellphone never get through, and the tone of the entire film suddenly becomes much more urgent, and fantastical. The scene where Mitsuha’s messages suddenly delete themselves from Taki’s phone is especially chilling, considering its implications.
That comet on approach to the Earth, the one that Shinkai takes pains to present in shimmering, colourful beauty, is a harbinger of death that will destroy Mitsuha’s town, killing five hundred people — including Mitsuha — if Taki can’t bend the laws of space and time by utilising the concept of Musubi — the union, or link between people. For such an internationally successful film, your name. is very Japanese, especially on its reliance on Shintoism to provide exposition.
Shinto is a religion very specific to Japan, combining ancestor veneration, animism and the worship of local deities. In Shintoism, deities are not all-powerful creator gods like those found in Christianity, Islam, Judaism etc, but beings or concepts tied to the land and the environment. For example a mountain may be venerated as a god, even trees or rocks. In your name.’s cosmology, even the connection or communication between people — musubi — can be considered a type of deity, and it’s clear that a connection has been forged across time and space between Mitsuha and Taki that may allow for the prevention of a disaster. By entering the local god’s inner shrine and partaking of Mitsuha’s years-old ritually-produced sake (chewed rice fermented with saliva, an ancient form of alcohol production performed by young miko — shrine maidens), Taki is able to switch places with her again — travelling back three years to the time of the comet’s destruction of her town, in the hope of changing the timeline and saving the beloved girl he’s never met.
This use of obscure eastern religious concepts and practices may seem offputting to western viewers, and not a little fanciful, but the movie is fanciful from the outset. It’s best to just accept the dream-logic and go with it. Certainly it provides an exotic and unusual flavour to proceedings. Taki and Mitsuha’s first face-to-face encounter with one another is atop the circular caldera surrounding the shrine, in a place outside of the normal flow of time, in the kataware-doki. (An archaic Japanese term translated as “half-light”, or “twilight”, analagous to the “magic hour” for photography at dusk. Interestingly the literal meaning is “who goes there?”, called out by people at this time of day, when the light is too poor to easily identify others passing by — a direct reference to the movie’s name and central theme.)
At this point the movie switches from supernatural romance to full-on disaster movie, with Taki and then Mitsuha’s desperate attempts to convince family and friends alike of upcoming cataclysm. In terms of intensity and urgency, it’s nothing at all like any of Shinkai’s preceding films, and is more in line with a typical crowd-pleasing blockbuster. That’s not a criticism — Shinkai really sells his characters’ desperation and frustrations, enhanced by Radwimp’s perfectly suited emotional and upbeat score (packaged with certain home media versions of the movie — you should by one of those) that helps bring the film to a crescendo, before we jump forwards several years, with some initial ambuiguity towards what Mitsuha was able to achieve.
Shinkai gives us an extended coda the like of which he reserved for the novels of his previous films, in that he thankfully leaves us with little ambiguity. Both Taki and Mitsuha have spent years struggling to remember the events of their dream-like days spent swapping with one another. They can’t even remember each others’ names, but the emotional bond — musubi — remains. They know they’re lacking something vital, and search continually for whatever will fill the gaping holes in their souls. Shinkai, if nothing else, is a master of delayed gratification and he teases the reunion of his star-crossed lovers multiple times before — finally — in a climactic, maeningful moment of catharsis — they tearfully reunite. Yes, the ending is left open-ended, but we don’t need to know what happens next. There’s nothing left to be said, it’s a perfect, bittersweet (but mostly sweet) culmination of the movie’s themes of connection and longing.
In addition to excellent character work, Shinkai employs his usual eye for exquisite detail to illustrate the stark differences between Taki and Mitsuha’s worlds. The small town of Itomori with its dramatic 1200-year-old meteoric crater-lake, surrounded by quaint homes and vibrant countryside is evocative of a quieter, more traditional form of life. We can understand why someone like Mitsuha feels strangled by her family responsibilities and strained relationship with her father, there’s no wonder she wishes nothing more than to shed everything holding her back and to experience life in Tokyo as a guy.
Likewise, Taki’s Tokyo is a bustling, intimidatingly intense city filled with sounds, movement and people, not to mention cafes and restaurants. Mitsuha’s delight at ordering expensive cakes (at Taki’s expense) is reminiscent of dead hologram Rimmer’s abuse of his exasperated living crewmate Lister’s body in the aforementioned Red Dwarf Bodyswap episode. Despite the discombobulation of finding themselves dumped into strange lives filled with unfamiliar families and friends, both Taki and Mitsuha find much to entice in their opposites’ lives. Perhaps it’s no wonder that they fall in love, proving the adage that to truly know a person you must first walk a mile in their shoes.
your name. is a practically perfect anime movie, written and directed by an artist at the dizzying heights of his powers, far surpassing his earlier work. With the subsequent release of Weathering With You and Suzume, it’s clear that it’s the first of a loose thematic trilogy made with the intention of processing the trauma of the March 2011 richter 9.0 Japanese earthquake, subsequent tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster. (I discussed it in my overview of 2011’s anime here.) I’ll discuss the effect of this catastrophe on Shinkai’s work in a later article, though fellow AniTAY writer Protonstorm does a great job in his recent Suzume review.
Once more, Shinkai himself writes the novelisation of his own movie, however unlike his greatly expanded Garden of Words novel written after the film’s completion, your name.’s novel version was written during the movie production process, and reads as much more of a straightforward adaptation without much in the way of extra scenes. It’s always nice to get more background and insight into the characters from such an authoritative source as the original creator, but in this case it’s not as essential a read. There’s no extra material — it ends exactly where the movie does. It’s fairly short though, and once again Yen Press has produced a beautiful hardback version that matches the other novelisations in their recent series of Shinkai releases. I hope a similar Suzume novel is forthcoming.
Similar to 5 Centimeters per Second and Voices of a Distant Star, your name. received a second novelisation (your name. Another Side:Earthbound) from long-term Shinkai collaborator Arata Kanoh, who also worked with Shinkai on scenario preparation for the film. There was no better choice to write this supplementary text than someone who clearly has a firm grasp of the characters, situations and ideology of the film. Split into four parts, the novel expands the setting, history and peripheral characters of Itomori. Mitsuha herself doesn’t get a chapter, but Taki within her body does, plus her sister, schoolfriend Tesshi and even her father get chapters of their own. It does not function at all as a standalone novel, however it is worth reading for the extra context — Mitsuha’s father particularly benefits from this focus, as his story (as that of Mitsuha’s deceased mother) is heartbreaking.
your name.’s three-volume manga version is fine, illustrated by Ranmaru Kotone who also provided art for the manga version of Blood C. Earthbound also gets its own two-volume manga courtesy of artist Junya Nakamura, for whom I can’t find any other manga credits. I’m not sure it’s really worth shelling out for another five volumes if you’ve read both novels in addition to watching the movie, but I have no complaints about their fairly basic content. Their art didn’t blow me away, but they’re perfectly functional as adequate adaptations that can’t possibly hope to compete with the artistry of their motion picture progenitor.
Next on the list is Weathering With You, though I already briefly reviewed it back in early 2020, just before the pandemic changed our world. I think I’ll take another look at it, now that I’m finally up to date with all of Shinkai’s other works, plus the manga and novelisation are now available. Before I do that though, I’ll review Suzume and you can expect that article very soon. Thanks for reading!
your name.
Writing, direction, cinematography and editing by: Makoto Shinkai
Produced by: Ryunosuke Kamiki and Mone Kamishiraishi
Music by: Radwimps
Studio: CoMix Wave Films
Japanese cinematic release: Aug 26th 2016
UK DVD/blu-ray release: 6th Nov 2017
Languages: Japanese audio with English subtitles, English audio
Runtime: 107 minutes
BBFC rating: 12
your name. (novel)
Written by: Makoto Shinkai
JP publisher: Kadokawa
JP publication date: 18th June 2016
US Publisher: Yen Press
US Publication date: 23rd May 2017
Page count: 184
Translator: Taylor Engel
ISBN: 978–0–316–47186–2
your name. Another Side:Earthbound
Written by: Arata Kanoh
JP publisher: Kadokawa
JP publication date: 1st Aug 2016
US Publisher: Yen Press
US Publication date: 21st Nov 2017
Page count: 184
Translator: Taylor Engel
ISBN: 978–0–3164–7311–8
your name. (manga — 3 volumes)
Written by: Makoto Shinkai
Art by: Ranmaru Kotone (Blood C, RDG Red Data Girl)
JP publisher: Kadokawa
JP publication date: 23rd Aug 2016–22nd April 2017
US Publisher: Yen Press
US Publication date: 20th Jun 2017–10th April 2018
Translator: Taylor Engel
ISBN: 978–0–3165–5855–6 (vol 1), 978–0–3164–1288–9 (vol 2), 978–0–3165–2117–8 (vol 3)
your name. Another Side:Earthbound (manga — 2 volumes)
Written by: Arata Kanoh
Art by: Junya Nakamura
JP publisher: Kadokawa
JP publication date: 23rd Feb 2018–16th Jul 2019
US Publisher: Yen Press
US Publication date: 11th Dec 2018–12th Nov 2019
Translator: Taylor Engel
ISBN: 978–1–9753–2932–7 (vol 1), 978–1–9753–5963–8 (vol 2)
