What Is Your Name?

An international cinematic phenomenon, Your Name transcends cultural boundaries with its ability to pull at the inner consciousness of people across the world. In 2016, Your Name opened in theaters across Asia to widespread acclaim, drawing audiences that propelled the film to the top of the box office in Japan, China, Thailand, and South Korea. Buoyed by its success in Asia, the film’s wave of popularity reached a crescendo the following year when it opened to American and European audiences and became the highest-grossing Japanese animated film of all time. Its transnational appeal can be attributed to the themes explored in Your Name, which touch upon the very fabric of human experience. Those crosscultural elements of identity — hopes, dreams, and memories — manifest within moments of its flickering to life on-screen. A meteor cascading through the clouds, a twinkling teardrop on a fingertip, and a fluttering kimono-clad girl gazing up at the sky culminate in the opening lines of the film: “It was almost as if a scene from a dream — nothing more than a beautiful view.” The flashes of landscape and main characters intertwine to still the air, unraveling the silent might of poignancy and human emotion that enthralls the viewer without regard to superficial boundaries. The power behind Your Name’s opening scene is one that eclipses those national differences, speaking instead to the beauty of dreams and the worlds we may encounter within. To paint pictures with our imagination and aspiration, to envision a different tomorrow, are fundamental qualities characteristic of mankind. Just all people strive to make a good impression when introducing themselves for the first time, Your Name approaches audiences with the familiarity of dreams in its opening scene, seeking to connect through human emotion rather than foreign trope. It may be the solemn, gentle ability to touch viewers’ hearts in the beginning that forges a connection to the film even after its end that makes Your Name so widely popular. Perhaps people, regardless of culture, long for works that speak to their desires, wanting to see, too, “nothing more than a beautiful view.”