Ani-Me #2! On Love and Loving YOUR NAME (2016) (Patreon)

Welcome to Ani-Me! The Series Where You Make Me Watch Anime!

To be clear, you aren’t making me do anything. I’m excited for this! Especially because the first entry, SUMMER WARS was amazing and now this one was just… I… I’ve never more intimidating by trying to capture the beauty of a given movie… with that, let’s get into it…

Today’s entry: YOUR NAME (2016)

What makes a movie feel important?

I ask because a lot of people talk about art as being relatively meaningless. At worst, you may imagine some brash jerk yelling, “Has any movie ever changed anyones mind!? No!” and then slamming the door in your face. The troubling part is that, in one way, that theoretical jerk is right. Because “a movie” is just a small drop of water in a large ocean. And no matter how great it may be, it is something likely to have low impact on the greater scheme of the world at large. But as for “the movies?” Or that is to say “the collective media experience” at large? That is the proverbial ocean. And good granola does that have an impact on society. All of our media piles up into this ubiquitous, almost-suffocating view of reality that can work with propaganda-like effectiveness. And this collective entity shapes our understanding and expectations of what shall come in our lives. 

And there’s perhaps no arena of life more impacted than our idea of “love.”

If you think about it, there’s probably because some form of love is at the heart of almost every story. Hell, it’s often joked that every story is just comedy or tragedy depending if there’s a wedding or funeral at the end. But love is seemingly intrinsic to the language of characterization itself, for there are things we want and need in life and so often our relationships tie into it. But then there are straight up “love stories” that specifically deal with this subject matter. And if time has taught us nothing else, we gravitate toward them because they feed “the promise.” That would be notion that love is out there for us. Not just in amorphous, supportive forms. It often feeds the belief there is someone out there just for us; a mystical person who, in some form, completes us and thus allows for happily ever after.

Of course, this idea is littered with problematic results. I don’t really want to get into a discussion about “soul mates” or the like, especially because we all likely know the ways such expectations can feed negative outcomes. But it’s more than that, too. Our common depictions of love stories feed troubling love languages, or feature total jerks that where “just have to look for their sweet side,” or they teach you that “opposites attract,” or they feature bad communication. In the end, it’s all the stuff that makes for good, fanciful drama, but rather lousy human understanding. 

To be clear, I’m not here to do a take down of romantic tropes. Not only have people written about better elsewhere, but the more nuanced depictions of love in cinema that take that stuff apart / get to the ironies anyway. My goal is just to establish the baseline understanding of the dangers of common depictions. And at the same time, acknowledge the goal of love stories is still to make the audience “believe in love,” whatever that may mean. Because most often, successful love stories only seem to find these little nuggets of conventional wisdom that edge into the realm of meaningful insight. It’s always ending lines like “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy…” or “You had me at hello,” or “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." Maybe they just sound nice, but we can’t help but succumb because these lines feed the promise of love. It’s all part of the spell they cast.

Fittingly, the element of magic sometimes shows up as an odd wrinkle to some of these stories purely because love “feels magical.” For it’s the thing that can make you feel light on your feet, or put butterflies in your stomach, or do some other cliche we’re often too embarrassed to admit out loud. Admittedly, these stories often use magic crassly, whether it’s a film like Serendipity or Simply Irresistible (a film that has to be seen to be believed). But there’s seemingly outrageous convenience to the magic in these stories. Which is often why these magical love stories directly back up the notion of love being fated or “meant to be,’ along with the ways that magic bends reality itself to get you what you want. You don’t need me to tell you that such choices are both confections and simplifications. Love is not only more complicated, it’s bigger than that, too. 

Because it’s a part of every inch of life. It’s part of the quiet, the mundane, the heavy, and the hilarious. At the same time, it is also this wild, evasive, and often impossible to define thing. But when love is depicted in films in a way that feels true to this duality? And also captures our own experience? Well, then these stories resonate deeply. They worm their way into our brains, or curl up our spines, or calmly settle into our bones. It almost feels reductive to cite any specific films, but you know the ones that gave you that feeling. Heck, sometimes it’s a song or a moment in a story, but it can feel just so intensely personal. This completely unique thing that somehow also plugs you into the universal expereince. These are the stories that actually do feel like they change the world, or at least create a new one inside yourself. Which brings us back to the intent of these magical love stories, which should not about the literal element magic in or lives, nor fatalistic intervention… all that’s just metaphor. 

The feeling is what is real.

Which finally brings us to the subject of this essay. Because YOUR NAME has to take on the aforementioned burdens of love stories and attempt to navigate them. After all, we’ve seen soooo many morality tales about star-crossed lovers, magical connections, and the obstacles of time and space. But I’m hard pressed to think of a film juggles so many of these grand magical elements in a way that not only eschews the problematic, but soars into the stratosphere. Somehow, this film depicts events that we could never, ever experience and yet it burrows its way so completely into our hearts in a way that feels true. How?! Why!? What is it that makes this film feel so resonant? How did they actually accomplish it? Well, there’s so many answers to that question.

But let’s start with the artfulness. 

Because this is easily one of the most aesthetically beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. So much of it is just the light itself. From the bits of dust floating in the sunbeams, to the flares of light bouncing off glass, to the cool purples that sink over the movie’s integral twilight scenes. But it’s not just a film in landscape mode, there’s countless insert shots that reveal a smaller, more intimate world to us. Every frame feels hyper specific, often racking focus in the way that brings us closer to their human context, not the artifice itself. Couple all this with some impossibly gorgeous sound effects and a magnificent score and soundtrack? AKA the one that literally hasn’t stopped playing since I shut off the film? Then it’s all part of the perfect ear/eye worm. 

But it also feels so true to the expansive nature of life because the film feels so effortlessly wide-ranging; a mixture of bright, cool, dense, organic, and sparse. It all glides through varying tones, crafting these subtle, yet unforgettable moments. Like when the realization sets in with the photography exhibit, or falling next to mural, or the simple opening of a palm. These aesthetics carry the film with a guile and honesty that feels unparalleled. My words truly do it no justice. You simply have to hear a song like “theme of Mitsuha” as the images play out to really understand it.

Which shows us how, of course, aesthetics are not enough on their own right. It’s really the way they combine with feelings created from the fully interiorized characters. There’s Mitsuha, whose entire life is drawn so clearly in mere minutes. She’s the eldest daughter, sick with grief, duty bound to ancient traditions, performing embarrassing rituals, and still haunted by her fathers’ strictness and abandonment. It’s suffocating, thus she longs to get out of the small town. She runs into the woods and screams, “Please make me a handsome Tokyo boy in my next life!” 

Then there is that boy she can be in her dreams: Taki, the one we come to see is at once social anxious as he is reactive, blocked as he is helplessly direct. What really lurks in his heart? Taki often keeps his dreams quite, but later reveals them in a series of architectural interviews: he’s the unmoored boy who is in search of a structured life. The one who draws to show the beauty of things as they both are and were. The one who wants to build, but still doesn’t want to lose what is lost. In normal love stories, these two characters would meet and interact. They would start to break down walls and form a relationship and we’d come to understand what they can learn from each other… 

But this isn’t a normal story.

Instead these two basically do a “Freaky Friday.” But it’s not just about the hijinks created. It’s is a way of doing that “meeting and breaking down walls” thing, but so much more inventively and effectively. After all, it’s said the greatest way to get to know someone is to literally walk mile in their shoes. And there’s such an outrageous sense of intimacy to what they experience in this body switching. But it is, of course, a metaphor. Because so much of love is getting to know someone intimately. It’s the way they bring you into their world, often illuminating the ways they are so different from you, from the trivial, to the irritating, to the profound. Here, we also see the small ways they improve the other, like playing basketball! Or being able to sew! Or being more open! Or being more brave! But it comes with the duality of frustration. They don’t like being pushed out of their comfort zones and they scream, “THAT GIRL! / THAT GUY!” But again, so much of all this is just about them breaking down barriers. It’s opening up and learning to be different from themselves in order to grow. In that spirit, the film so accurately captures the essence of the first stages of connection. Yes, the “freaky friday-ing” is just a metaphor.

But the feeling is real.

What’s more is how YOUR NAME captures the other sensations that go along with this experience. Like those times in life that you don’t realize your are “in a love story” yet. Where you are getting to know someone and it’s not immediate, but you are building this foundation until you start unveiling to your deepest self and feel connected. When Mitsuha reveals to herself, “I wanted to go on this date” and the tears flow from her eyes, it so squarely captures this purposeful confusion of not understanding which part of the life she wanted to have. But the loving realization keeps seeping into the both of them, often in these shared moments where they start crying, all part of a longing they’re unable to completely understand. Yet, in another way, their switching reflects the power of what partnership really means. For it is the act of letting someone in, giving up control of half of your life, and even letting someone else pilot. As hard as it can feel to do, there is the need of trusting in this experience. Sure, it’s all just a metaphor.

But the feeling is real.

Especially when we feel like we almost have to question the reality of it. Love can be intoxicating, so we almost have to ask ourselves: Is this real? Is this really happening? But it is happening. You’re being pulled in and out of yourself by the forces of connection. You may ask the obvious logistical question of this film, “but they’re not actually dating! They’re just switching!” Yeah, but that’s far too literal a take. The point is this is a form of connection they share is just as effective. They even say it outright so much later, remembering “that you were the one who was inside me and I was the one inside you.” Which couldn’t be more clear an description, but it’s about more than the physical intimacy they’ve experienced. It’s the internal space they share. It’s the seeing of everything in their lives. It is act of knowing, and being known. Often such connection seems impossible, except when it’s not. Yes, the impossible nature of their love is a metaphor.

But the feeling is real.

And like all love stories, there are obstacles to that love. Some of it is the inherited wounds their past, which reminds me how good this film is at the other relationships that occupy their worlds. When we’re introduced to Mitsuha's father, he yells to that he wants a “safe and secure” town, but we later learn that he’s angry at having lost his wife and is now just trying to control the world. So of course, in his final turn, it’s all about giving over control over to Mitsuha in a moment we don’t even have to see to understand the impact of. So many of the supporting characters weave these sorts of impactful threads like this. But it comes with the understanding really it’s about the shaping of our two leads. And when when you look at the big picture conflict between them, you can see the shape of something else entirely. 

It’s said that the goal of all storytelling is catharsis, but what that really means is that you want to craft a moment near the film’s end that makes the audience’s heart sing. You’ll see so many movies try to pull some incredible dance in the last act, as if it trying to pull the emotion out of you with some last second saving grace. But the truth is you only achieve this transcendence by setting up the right conditions. It’s going: “how do we make the audience want this as much as possible?” Which often means you have to do all the hard work beforehand (especially at the start). But when you set it up right? Then the characters just have to do the simple thing you so badly want them to do. This set of conditions is why YOUR NAME succeeds beyond all compare. It lays the seeds of yearning for “the impossible” in a way that feels so organic, so heart-breaking, so full of yearning, and so effortless, all leading to the transcendent moment of a simple meeting on a stairway. They barely have to do a thing once they finally get there. All the set-up work has been done.

It’s funny, though. The success of this film reminds me how many other love stories are built on artificiality. Like how many late act “all is lost” moments in romantic comedies are just some silly misunderstanding where someone mishears the wrong thing. These are often infuriating to an audience because they are so clearly manufactured. And more importantly, it fails that question we’ve been repeating ad nauseam: “does it feel true?” And those moment don’t. They are forced, artificial conflicts. Which makes me realize that in the hands of another storyteller, it would be so easy for YOUR NAME to turn the metaphysics of this story into artificial fodder, too. 

But here it’s so much more resonant because they tap into the personal. For instance, it so captures the feeling of being in “long distance love,” where the other person is at once so present and yet so impossibly removed. It can also capture the feeling of being in love with someone who you cannot be with, for this, that, or a million other reasons. Remember, “distance” is an emotion that can mean a lot of things. And it all makes me think of the english translation of the opening theme, where the singer pines, “How I wish our words were travel.” We know this sensation so completely. So yes, the obstacle of time and space in this film is a metaphor.

But the feeling is real.

Even then, I know the meteor story element makes it feel like their love is a part of some kind of grand fatalism, like it was written in the stars and whatnot! But if it was, we would have seen a lot more of that language when they talk about their connection. Instead, we get the explanation of Musubi, the threads of time that irrevocably bind people, like the hair-tie at the center of the story. The grandma tells us that the threads of connection converge and takes shape with twists, tangles, and knots, rarely something done with grace and ease. And that analogy feels so much more true than simple ordained fate. It’s just the stark reality of limitations. Taki outright muses in frustration, “our timelines were out of step,” which evokes something that an old friend once said to me, “I’ve seen timing destroy the best relationships and make the worst.” This happens in reality because time is always cruel. It eats up life. It goes too fast or too slow. It works in ways that makes so much connection feel impossible. Again, the three years of difference between them is a metaphor.

But the feeling is real.

Given all that, it’s hard to imagine someone having a logical hang-up with this film, but I can picture the frustration building in someone and them asking “Dammit, why can’t they just remember each other’s names?!?!” or also getting upset with the disappearing bits of diary from each other from their life. But this is the nature of love, too. We can feel those promises of connection and those moments of hope so intensely in the moment, but they all become fleeting. Soon the dream like feelings dissipate and we are left back in our bodies, crashing to a sobering reality. These feelings become memories and even those get increasingly get lost. Heck, even texts get auto-deleted with time itself. Other people can become ghosts. Even love, that most important, powerful thing we can feel, can fade. Which is all why your heart breaks a little with the grandma muses, “now I forget whose life I was dreaming about.” We know she once had this all, too. So yes, the forgetting and the acts of deletion in this film are metaphors.

But the feeling is real.

As are the feelings that come when we try and deal with the the fallout of loss. When we lose people so much of the struggle is trying to hold on. To name it. To keep it alive in our memory. And the same time, part of this is the struggle not to live in the ruins of that which is lost. We, like Taki, struggle so hard with the inherent contradiction of this. But in reality, what we have to do is accept and mourn our loss. Which is exactly why Taki’s journey takes him back to “the underworld.” Again, the grandma tells us so much of what it takes to do this kind of journey, to “leave behind what is most important to you” and understanding “it’s the half of you.” When Taki follows through on this, it’s no accident that he sees the larger threads of time itself, thus coming to understand the context of the whole of Mitsuha’s life and trauma. Likewise, the ensuing connection shows Mitsuha that Taki held onto the thread, which captures the way we hold onto things (often literally) that people never knew we did. It all captures the feeling of impossible longing for what is lost and behind; all the things we have so desperately wanted to fix that which we have caused.

I don’t know about you, but for me, the notion of wanting to go back? To fix things? That feels so integral to the endless mistakes I’ve made in life. To feeling deeply at fault. To losing family. I’m always haunted by things I wish i did differently, right down to the very essence of my personhood. And it feels especially true for all the moments that can all get CUT SHORT IN AN INSTANT (my god, the moment with the pen drop in this film). But in life, I understand that fixing such things is often impossible. They’ve happened. All we can do as humans is learn and grow from them. Which is why I understand that the re-do of time in this film and avoiding the comet’s trajectory is about the varied meanings of “getting a second chance.” Maybe it’s the healing after an obstacle or fight (similarly, notice that Mitsuha has not one but two stand-offs with her father), maybe it’s the knowing not to make the same errors, and maybe the entire thing is just about moving on and finding new love again. I’m actually not too concerned with which interpretation is meant, because it’s all sort of the same function of growth. They’re all reflections of that which seems impossible to fix, but what only can be with the utmost of growth and understanding. The second chance of time is just a metaphor. 

Because the feeling is real.

And more importantly, the film reminds you that you get to internalize that feeling, even as a vague memory. You get to know that you were loved. Even when you are left scarred by the slings and arrows of what has transpired, even when it’s earth shattering, even when you are still seeing the ghosts of what has past… As hard as it is, you can remember that you loved and were loved. And then you can remember that in the here and now, you may just be out of sync with whatever is to come. And as lost as all things may seem now, you can find you way back to it. Taki and Mitsuha each describe the core of this feeling:

“I feel like I’m alway searching for someone, somewhere.”

It comes with the acknowledgment that “searching” is an exhausting and often fruitless feeling. And so many of us not only carry burdens into it, but also thoughtful wariness. I mean, it’s not quite a stretch to there’s been enough of these kinds of “missed connection” stories that veer into the creepy, because we’re talking about a literal misunderstanding of a one-sided connections. Or perhaps the lack of connection can be the failure to realize how broken we are, how much therapy and change we need to really be available to the world in a way that is healthy. From those spaces, it’s easy to see why cynicism can seep into anything. Everything about the idea of “searching” can seem hopeless. Which is just we can be out of sync with love stories at large, too. Because anything that tells you to “believe in love” with no understanding of these difficulties will therefore feel like a hollow projection.

But YOUR NAME is no such a projection. 

It is a 100% functional metaphor that speaks to our larger human experience. By coming at this story through the grandiose barriers of space and time, it’s actually one of the most vivid expressions of love and intimacy possible. Even at the end, Mitsuha and Taki look to the stars not because it is fated, but because they want to share a view. They do this because they’ve walked miles in each others shoes. Because they are two people who have given up half of themselves. Because they have made space. Because they’ve helped the other hold that space. Because they go through their cycles with devotion and loss to one another. They came together not because it was destined, but because “being brought together” simply made them open up in turn. That’s not an investigation of fate, that’s finding meaning in connection itself. 

The nature of their otherworldly union actually reminds me of two prescient quotes from Michael Pollen’s The Botany of Desire which, yes, is technically a book about plants, but also shockingly prescient one about human behavior. The first quote concerns the human ability to open up, “For it is only by forgetting that we ever really drop the thread of time and approach the experience of living in the present moment, so elusive in ordinary hours,” which seems to perfectly evoke the film’s feelings about dreams, the twilight hour, and the way these two surrender control of themselves in key moments. And the second quote is one that Phil Lord used to explain the creative process, but here it sums up the end result of Mitsuha and Taki’s connection, “Design in nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose.” Both quotes explain the heart of what makes YOUR NAME feels so impossible. For it uses all the tropes that are normal drenched in fatalism to instead build something that feels organic and natural. Something so deep, so primal, and so damn true that we are deeply moved.

It feels downright tectonic. Honestly, YOUR NAME spoke to me on level I didn’t know needed speaking to. Which is probably why I watched it three times in 24 hours, which is something I never, ever do. Why did I do it now? Because of everything I’ve said above. Because it exhibits what might be the single greatest declaration of “I love you” that I’ve seen in cinema. Because it is instantly one of my favorite films of all time, which I only say in the mere hope it might offer some measure of mutual validation, to know that others really truly love what you also love. But this act sharing comes with the full knowledge that such superlatives are un-important. There is only what we take from it and how it soaks into the threads of our own lives. So what is important is that you remember, remember, remember your name. 

Which means I only have one question… What is your name?

I only ask this rhetorically because somewhere, out there, your name means something to someone. It’s true. Names matter. They the echo in our hearts. Every time I hear certain names I know so well, whole worlds of meanings and memories open up. Sometimes they’re the forgotten dreams of a either a deluded boy, or a world out of sync, or the stings of pain, or the pangs of guilt. They’re the lives once lived and the loves once lost while simultaneously trying to deal with life being lived and the love now found. Because new names enter your life with new contexts. They change and evolve, rarely with grace, instead often like twisting knots of tree roots. But it’s all part of the Musubi, which is probably the first grand universal metaphor for this kind of stuff that I feel like actually works. This is especially for the love stories that never seem like they can come close to capturing the right metaphor. So yeah, I know “a movie” is a mere drop in the bucket, but sometimes they open up a world inside you. 

 So what is your name?

I realize this is a question I also have to reflexively ask myself, but it leads to a funny realization. For as long as I’ve been doing this silly thing, I’ve had a sign off of “<3HULK” which probably considered some trite little cute-ism or an ironic gesture. But it just always felt right to me. Don’t get me wrong, I know full well that taken literally, telling someone you love them is a fundamentally strange and loaded thing to do. After all, I don’t know most of you so it’s a parasocial statement at best. But we are none the less intertwined in a thread of sorts. So from my side, the “<3” is a metaphor that means a lot of things. It’s an extension of gratitude. It’s something that expresses the feeling of being too outrageously lucky, completely undeserving, and always genuinely promising to do better. It’s also an expression of how much emotion I really put into all this. It is the intent of connection and sharing that come with writing itself. And here and now, it is the complete extension of thankfulness for getting me to watch this film. I genuinely can’t imagine what it is received as, but I can assure you it is a thing that is meant. So what is my name? Well, it’s the thing I guess it’s the I’ve always written first and foremost, as if quickly scribbling onto a hand…. My name is I love you. 

Yes, it’s just a metaphor.

But the feeling is real.

<3HULK