Your Name: Subversive Romance

"Can I ask... your name?" 

In my opinion, any truly great work produced by a filmmaker must be one that focuses on his or her obsessions, the uncountable and unexplainable people, objects, desires, or what-have-you that fuel their creative drive. For director Makoto Shinkai, this obsession primarily takes the form of sad, almost to the point of depressing, love stories. Many of his films, most famously Garden of Words and 5 Centimeters Per Second, focus on star-crossed lovers whose prolonged, agonizing tales of romance are met with unrelenting discontent. It's a theme that is not only explored but is central to these works, especially his fixation on subverting romance. Rarely do his films feature anything resembling a satisfying conclusion, mostly broken hearts and forlorn declarations of "what could have been." At the same time, the visuals in these movies are stunning works of art - which make their depressing natures all the more tragic. In his latest work, Your Name - a film that might very well catapult Shinkai from relative obscurity to mainstream fame - he elects to go down a slightly different path from his usual fare and creates a film that subverts not only the tropes typical of romance but also of his own films.

To begin with, Shinkai chooses to pull inspiration from Tenkōsei, a 1982 Japanese film that features characters who swap bodies which leads to hilarious results. This feeds into the basic premise of the movie, wherein country girl Mitsuha and city boy Taki begin switching bodies every time they fall asleep. What's interesting about Shinkai's usage of Tenkōsei is that film's primary nature as comedic fare, an aspect of which bleeds fairly consistently into Your Name. Rarely does the film's very heavy dramatic moments not also include moments of levity, times when the audience gets to take a break from the broader themes that sweep through this picture. It's a telling choice because it gets to the heart of what Shinkai was aiming to do with this film: creating a balance between the harshness of reality and - what he believes - its ultimate ability to provide joy and happiness.

These are laudable goals for a romantic comedy, especially one that focuses on such a bizarre premise. However, Shinkai's choice to go with the body-swap device for his narrative allows him to explore romance from a different angle. For most of the film, the alleged love interests never actually directly interact with each other, their presences only known through the effects their various body-swapping antics have on their individual lives. Taki, for example, begins standing up to the multitudes of bullies that plague Mitsuha's life, while Mitsuha in turn begins creating a relationship with a coworker in the restaurant Taki works in. These are both things that, due to their differing personalities, neither would have been able to do without the other. In essence, though they have their own frustrations with the mixed results of each body swap, there is an ultimate net positive effect on their lives. Indeed, they seem to "improve" as people because of their astral connection. This begins to dawn on both of them just at the same time as they realize that they are falling in love with each other's lives. The bond between these two individuals who have never met is forged through this shared experience that allows them to give new perspective on their individual realities. They understand each other far better than any two people in a normal relationship.

What Shinkai does with this is interesting to unpack because it creates a totally different dynamic between these two characters than in a regular romance. For one, because the two understand each other so well, the narrative thrust of the film is never dependent on conflict between them. They may have differing personalities, but their connection means that they would almost certainly make a great couple. So, the dramatic issues come in whether or not the two will actually figure out who the other is in real life, as the dreamlike quality of their swaps mean that they have trouble remembering them after they awake in their proper bodies. The audience then isn't forced to pick sides between the couples as they might in a regular romance, but begin hoping that the two of them figure out who the other is so they can finally meet. This being Shinkai, of course, that isn't ever a guarantee. The whole time, it's clear to the audience that Taki and Mitsuha are slowly falling for each other. While on a date with his coworker set up by Mitsuha, it's noted that Taki feels generally disinterested... mostly because his coworker senses that he's actually far more interested in Mitsuha. Mitsuha, meanwhile, cuts her hair after she concludes that she has pushed Taki away, especially after apparently discovering that he didn't even recognize her when she came to visit him, symbolic of her supposed "lost love." The whole affair has a decidedly melancholic atmosphere to it, which contrasts wildly with the enthusiastic, hilarious, and upbeat tone of their previous swaps. Naturally, this means that this is where the regular swapping ends.

After this, the whole tone of the movie slowly starts to get darker, and the territory which Shinkai normally treads begins to take over. Taki discovers that Mitsuha has actually been dead for three years along with all of the inhabitants of her small town, and the body swaps also happened to swap between their respective time periods. Taki's quest is grim and depressing, which causes Taki to question if anything that he had been experiencing had been real at all. Here, I elect to believe that Shinkai is using this not only to create a conflict for the third act (and one that had been implied and been built up to since the opening shot of the film) but to also create a metaphor. He shows us this sad, sorrowful timeline because this is what he knows. A tragic tale capped by a fruitless quest, territory that he's well known for having mastered. Then, he wipes it all away.

What follows is a triumphantly uplifting third act. Taki manages to swap once more with Mitsuha, save her town from destruction, give her the self-confidence to repair her relationship with her father, and ultimately meet at last - even for just a brief moment. After Taki and Mitsuha save their town, the film transitions into its epilogue, set years after the events of most of the film. Taki and Mitsuha have both been feeling like they're looking for something that is missing in their lives, even if they don't know what it is. On a chance encounter, the pair finally see each other on two parallel trains. They leave, find each other, and we are led to believe that they will simply walk past each other, not realizing that the other is who they've been so voraciously searching for this whole time. We are led to believe that the melancholy will win, that the two will continue searching for that which has made them feel empty for years, the connection they shared to be forever lost. We are led to believe that Makoto Shinkai's own drudgery will envelop the film's ending as it has for his other work. Instead, Taki turns around and asks if they know each other, Mitsuha tearfully replying that she thinks that as well. And then, they ask each other for their names.

Your Name is a beautiful work of art, one that isn't afraid of creating a romance where it seems like there shouldn't be one that exists. It's a tale about truly understanding someone, about stepping into another human being's shoes and experiencing the highs and lows of their individual reality. It's about learning to love things that you aren't sure about at first and that might frustrate you, and it's about being thrust into experiences that you might hate but ultimately make you into a better person. It's about the melancholy and heartbreak of lost loves, but also about discovery and self-discovery and cheers on those who would seek out that lost love in earnest. It's about forgetting and remembering, but also about forging new memories. Your Name might be strange and comedic, sad and uplifting - but it's also story that speaks to very core concepts of humanity, the differences between us, and ultimately the things that bring us together.