I dunno. The structure of “follow her consciousness and see both lives through that lens, then switch to his consciousness” I thought balanced the movie in an interesting way: We saw her living her life and responding to the mystery of her ‘lost days’, and we saw the type of life Taki lived, but through the uncomfortable and unfamiliar way. The switch to following Taki’s consciousness for the majority of the later half was necessitated by the whole time travel aspect; the means to bridge the two lives, the motivation to save her, and the mystery of their disjointed timelines were all things established from her perspective or her life, but needed to be paid off from his. That he tries and somewhat fails to save the day, and has to hand the plan over to her to complete because isn’t her, completes the circle in a lot of ways. That we get to fill in a lot of the gaps (including one persistent mystery) only once the time travel happens feels more justified because they sparingly jump perspectives and leave gaps.
I really think that moment was better in that second act. Something during that montage would have solidified it for me. Consider the memory loss after the fact would make for a hard way to make a relationship with.
It’s been a long time since I’ve liked a movie enough to watch it four or five times. I’d recommend this movie to anyone.
I think one of my favorite things about it was that I felt like I could interpret Mitsuha and Taki’s relationship as platonic, or I could imagine their connection existing without romantic feelings. (Also, I saw this in the winter before it was out in the US so forgive me if I forgot any explicitly romantic scenes). I thought the fact that they’d lived in each other’s shoes had given them an empathetic understanding of their lives that they knew they’d never share with anyone else. And I think that type of bond would justify the time, effort and energy each of them spent trying to find each other. If nothing else, I felt like their circumstances let me look at this story without any romantic pretext and still feel like not much would be lost if I saw it that way.
Best movie of 2016. Immediate recommend to anyone. I first watched it on an airplane last year (because apparently United got the airplane rights 4 months before its US wide release???) and was devastated. All I could do for the rest of the 14 hour flight was sit there and stew over the film. I don’t know what I’d have done if it had ended like most other Shinkai films.
I watched the dub! It’s not bad and the actress who plays Mitsuha does a solid job of portraying both regular ol’ cute Mitsuha and Taki!Mitsuha. The actor who plays Taki, however, does a very weird breathy femme voice when he’s portraying Mitshua!Taki, which feels a bit disingenuous to me–Mitsuha herself isn’t really soft-spoken or anything, and I prefer the way her actress plays two different voices that are “hers,” while Taki’s actor is sometimes just … artificial.
All in all, though, it’s a strong dub! I think the best reason to watch a dub is to preserve comic timing and the localizers/actors really got there, preserving all of those good, good, comic bits. “Boobies” is thrown around a fair amount and it’s great every time.
The biggest issue? They got the original singer for the insert songs to sing translated versions. He has really good English! Buuut the lyrics themselves are really awkward and distinctly unpoetic. Almost every song sounds like it’s got twice as many words as it needs.
I’d never in a million years say Your Name is ABOUT transgenderism, but, for my money, that IS what I got out of it the most. Which I guess says more about my opinions on where the rest of the movie goes, but that lesser interest isn’t because it’s NOT a trans story anymore, it just wasn’t as interesting a conceit to me as the first act, in and of itself, for reasons even beyond my slapped-together representation I made up.
I don think that it’s definitely open enough that the reading of the movie as after-the-fact trans representation is … fine, but as you’ve already said, it’s not really complete. Some of the stuff that primed me for seeing the movie in that light was, admittedly, stuff that was more there to play with the basic genderswap surface story–like Mitsuha’s very out-of-nowhere, lampshading line about wanting to be a handsome boy in Tokyo!
At the very least, it’s a work that doesn’t outright deny the reading. Not exactly the greatest thing to be happy about, but hey. The fact that this nice YA romance is being watched so much so people all around the world and resonating with so many people does give me hope that maybe some younger folks get to make the same readings and find out some stuff about themselves?
It is DEFINITELY incomplete. Not to continue hijacking the thread for much longer on the subject, but what I left Your Name feeling the most was a want for more of what I saw in those scenes.
Your Name did it on accident; I want to see something, with the same level of polish, low-gaze humanization, that does it on purpose. And maybe that’s on me to try to make, and up to me to consume more stories, films, comics and games by real actual queer people and push those voices forward.
But IDK! Perhaps it was just the accident that Your Name showed me something I hadn’t seen before: a very matter of fact, objective portrayal of transness, complete with the not-meanspirited-yet-still-slight confusion from the world. With that same shaky confidence of what choices you’re making or how you’re responding to people, whether it is the “right” thing for you to be doing, to fit into the role your body requires. Despite that resistance to be herself, through that facade, you see so much more of who she is, a nuance that only a story like this can capture. Maybe it’s BECAUSE it wasn’t a story of transness on purpose that it caught me at such an unexpected angle.
Anyway, I don’t personally wanna keep taking up space about this subject in this thread, mostly because it’s a perspective born out of not liking a majority of the movie that much over a very specific scene of it! It’s a Good Movie, Radwimps did such a good job on the music!
I haven’t been able to find it playing in any local theatres, but i’m really looking forward to it.
if you want more I’d encourage you to watch some of the director’s (Makoto Shinkai) other movies, which are equally as gorgeous and emotional. My favorites are 5 Centimeters Per Second, Voices of A Distant Star, and The Garden of Words, though the others are also really worthwhile! A couple of those are available on Crunchyroll, even!
It’s Shinkai’s most realised work to date, as a filmmaker whose work I have greatly enjoyed but whose plots are often half-baked. This felt like a much deeper script than some of his more shallow yet gorgeous work.
I absolutely cannot wait to see what he does next.
To be honest, I was kind of dreading having to go see this one since I have despised Shinkai’s work up to this. I firmly believe that basically all of his other work can be summarized with, "truly superlative backgrounds ruined by characters talking over them. But Your Name does a lot by actually having a sense of humor and not just using lady characters to make the boys sadder (as much) boo hoo :’(
But, like, really, to go from stuff I consider unwatchable to something very nice and good is a big improvement and props to him!
that scene when she opened her hand and it wasn’t his name killed me!!! i came out of the theater literally shouting at everyone i went with
but here’s a video that kind of explains it : https://youtu.be/Dtmob_wBIBs
