Your Name Shouldn't Be This Good

your name was an unprecedented runaway success by 2017 it was the second highest grossing anime film of all time the other films in the top 20 are either from studio ghibli or from a well-established media franchise your name is alone neither and yet is right at the top of the list clearly a lot of people love this movie i love it too but somehow i find it difficult to directly recommend difficult to articulate precisely why it is so powerful a simple description of its plot and theme sound like the makings of a good movie maybe but certainly not a great one your name's story and characters are charming and memorable to be sure but also flawed and inconsistent it leans heavily on the viewer to be okay with things not all adding up its imperfections are distinctly visible also it is astoundingly beautiful [Music] for most people that is enough for me it is enough almost because of the way that i am i must ask dangerously what it all means what is this film even about so that's what we're doing today looking closely at your name to identify what makes it so incredibly magnetic the flaws that persist despite its strengths and the messages we can find in the space carved out by that disparity maybe not adding up matters less when the result is this much greater than the sum of its parts welcome to reconstructed [Music] [Applause] [Music] full spoilers ahead your name is first of all the story of bitsaha miyamizu a 17 year old girl living in the small rural town of itamori mitsuha is distinctly dissatisfied with her country life she has an estranged relationship with her father who happens to be the town's mayor and is growing to resent her inherited position as a shinto priestess both of which are preventing her from really fitting in with her peers she feels stifled by ida mori's smallness and simplicity the main source of her discomfort is clearly shown to be the set of expectations placed upon her both by her direct family and the community at large [Music] after a particularly embarrassing incident where some classmates mock her while performing an important ceremony mitsuha yells out into the colorful night sky that she wishes to be a handsome tokyo boy in her next life [Music] your name is also the story of takitachibana a 17 year old boy living near downtown tokyo he shows up alongside mitsuha in the film's opening sequence so the audience knew there would also be a male lead but we don't meet him until immediately after the scene of mitsuha making that wish and it quickly becomes clear that this is actually still her mitsuha has woken up in someone else's body believing this to be a particularly realistic dream she spends the day reveling in the urban lifestyle she had been so envious of skipping school to explore the city and buying extravagant desserts at the sort of cafe that itamori specifically lacks she goes on to make a sweet connection with a waitress at the boy's job named okudera sewing up her skirt with a cute feminine pattern after it was slashed by a rude customer okudera clearly appreciates the gesture and comments on how different he seems than usual saying that she likes this side of him better so of course as you can probably guess this wasn't just a dream taki is a real separate person who now finds people asking why he was acting strangely the day before and jealous co-workers accusing him of things he has no memory of doing [Music] back in her own body has a similar experience with friends referencing her forgetting her own name or not doing her hair it doesn't take long for the two teenagers to figure out what's going on a few times a week mitsuha and taki are switching bodies and lives while they sleep your name now launches into a montage of all the various antics the situation would naturally produce mitsuha thrives in a new city life especially free from the consequences of spending taki's money finally able to have the sort of experiences she feels locked out of in her hometown taki too seems to be enjoying himself though because we don't know much about his character at this point it's less clear exactly why surely as the movie goes on we'll learn why this experience would be meaningful to him right both of them also take it upon themselves to fix the other's problems taki stands up to mitsuha's bullies in a way that would have been socially impossible for the girl herself and mitsuha continues to build a relationship with okudera which flusters taki in the flow of the film it's always pretty clear who is who at any given moment but as i'm showing these clips out of context it might be confusing i'll do my best to label the characters when it's needed so this interference with each other's social lives naturally produces some tension both become frustrated with what the other gets up to while in their body but it's also clear that before anything else this is just a lot of fun mitsuha and taki embrace the fresh freedom and lifestyle they discover in their swapped lives particularly they both seem to enjoy subverting the others gender roles which interestingly seems to be very successful both of them find much more luck with relationships in their new body than in their chronically single original life this sequence is just full to the brim of adorable little details like how mitsuha always falls out of taki's bed because she's used to sleeping on the floor or how taki puts mitsuha's hair in a simple ponytail because he can't figure out her braid i especially enjoy this linguistically interesting scene where mitsuha struggles to find the right first person pronoun to use i'm sure when the english dub writers got to the scene they let out the biggest sigh there is plenty of genuine charm on display here the audience is having fun right alongside the characters it also feels aspirational to a degree for anyone displeased with where they live or who they are or really any aspect of their life the idea of magically living in someone else's place can be strongly alluring the basically obligatory guy girl setup of the situation naturally centers gender differences but the film is about much more than that it's about the city versus the country tradition versus modernity there is much more for our characters to learn about themselves and each other beyond a simple gender swap but a question remains why is this even happening it would be easy to assume that mitsuha willed this into existence with her wish at the shrine gate but that can't be the whole reason because the swap started happening at least one day before that there is an implication that taki and mitsuha have been linked not by random chance but due to an intrinsic connection that exists between them represented by the recurring motif of thread thread is depicted prevalently in the introductory song and continues to pop up constantly throughout the first act mitsuha always ties her hair with a ribbon and taki always wears one on his wrist the film lingers on the special sake produced by mitsuha ceremony being wrapped in a red cord mitsuha initially makes her connection with okadera by mending her skirt with thread and finally there's a scene where mitzah's grandmother discusses the importance of the shrine and their traditions while teaching her granddaughters how to make braided cords now is probably the best time to point out that i am very much not japanese while the large majority of my videos feature japanese media [Music] this film in particular is steeped in japanese culture to a degree that i will necessarily not fully understand for example there's a video from pause and select which explores the interpretation of your name as processing the march 2011 earthquake that devastated parts of japan it's a compelling connection to make and one that i would be entirely incapable of making myself not knowing the full impact of that disaster not familiar with the cultural shorthand that would create that meaning furthermore shinto ideas and imagery are core aspects of the film's writing and visuals there's a lot of context implicitly understood by japanese viewers that will go well over the heads of everyone else so my interpretation will be limited in that sense but that's okay i wouldn't be capable of understanding the full depth of the shinto religion to write this video so i will be interacting with these ideas as best i can with my totally different cultural background and the conspicuous international success of your name proves that this story resonates with people far beyond its country of origin there are ideas here that transcend the cultural barriers i bring this up now because the thread motif is rather explicitly tied to the shinto concept of musubi within the film mitsuha's grandmother explains the term as meaning all at once the local guardian deity the flow of time itself the connections that exist between people and the consumption of food and drink the braided chords they make are an artistic expression of musubi they are meant to represent the flow of time and contain within them the entire history of their town and people while the original meaning of traditions such as the cords has been mostly lost her grandmother insists that continuing them regardless is of deep importance it's a struggle for me to fully wrap my head around these ideas what is clear though is that the film believes in a spiritual framework of connections that exist across time and between people their purpose is often invisible or illegible but they are powerful nonetheless mitsuha and taki are connected they may have always been connected the rest of the film is largely about finding out why so following the rapid fire body swapping montage there are two slower paced scenes mostly featuring taki the first with him and mitsuha's body begins with the musubi explanation as they hike to an ancient shrine there he and mitsuha's sister leave the ceremonial sake as an offering to the gods as they head back taki takes in the gorgeous natural scenery eyes lingering on the rolling hills and shimmering lake illuminated by the soft warm glow of early twilight mitsuha's grandmother turns to him and asks if he is streaming and he jumps away crying something about this scene deeply affected him but he doesn't get the chance to think about it because he is nearly late for a date he didn't know he had never stopping her meddling mitzah had the previous day set up a full-fledged meticulously planned date with ogudera she left a note in his phone with the details while openly saying she hopes to be the one who gets to go it seems to start off well as okadera seems to have developed a real affection for him or more accurately for someone else in his body we then see mitsuha in her home thinking about how the date must be starting suddenly finding herself crying [Music] she says he's so lucky it feels crucial to me that she says he's so lucky and not she's so lucky she didn't design a date she wanted a boy to take her on she designed a date she wanted to take someone else on that distinction carries a lot of weight everything we have seen from mitsuha at this point in the film about 40 minutes in shows her not as wanting taki himself but wanting to be him and given how moved he was by the hike to the shrine taki probably feels similarly though mitsuha's case is more clear because of how much more we know about her the only real interaction the two of them have is leaving increasingly passive aggressive notes they spend so much more time sabering the unique opportunities the situation presents than thinking about each other you still would not assume that this is a romance film it is so far building towards something broader a reflection on why people want to change their lives why people reject the expectations forced upon them so far taki's date with okadera goes horribly by the way he has no idea what to say or how to act and of course he doesn't he wasn't the one who was growing this relationship she notes naturally that he seems like a different person today and to be honest mitsuha didn't set him up for success maybe this is a cultural difference but a first date that starts at 10 30 in the morning and goes past dinner is a lot it would have been challenging to not fumble the bag here and fumble he definitely did okadera eventually cuts it short telling him no hard feelings but this isn't going anywhere taki then tries for the first time to call mitsuha directly but her number can't be reached meanwhile she attends a festival in ida mori as a brilliant comet paints the evening sky after this day the life swapping stops and the problems with your name begin [Music] when the switching ends we stay with taki he's obviously not ready to let the experience go spending his time looking off into the distance and feverishly drawing recreations of ida mori's landscape the fact that he can't contact mitsuha at all bothers him and eventually takes a train to visit her directly unable to recall the town's name however this turns into a wild goose chase where he slowly loses confidence that any of it happened at all he's ready to turn back when a shop owner finally recognizes his drawing and drives him up to where edemori used to be [Music] three years ago it was struck by a meteorite and destroyed killing hundreds of people taki rushes to find as much information about the disaster as he can which culminates in him finding mitsuha's name among the casualties his memories continue to blur like waking up from a dream the reveal of the second crater is a stunningly beautiful and poignant shot it takes taki's breath away and yours also it doesn't make any sense how could it be possible for it to take until this moment for taki to figure out what's going on somehow he doesn't remember a massive natural disaster from only three years ago that happened within a few hundred miles of him a meteor strike annihilating a town and killing this many people has happened probably never maybe once in all of recorded history it would be one of the stories of the year worldwide it would be unforgettable this whole extended search sequence is dependent not only on him forgetting about the disaster but forgetting ida mori's name which would have quickly led him to the answer while still recalling other details with plenty of clarity able to draw a picture-perfect image of the town and recognize not only mita has name but her friends as well in general the film sequence of events needs both the main characters to pay tragically little attention to their surroundings they weren't just switching bodies they were time traveling maybe this is overconfident but i'm pretty sure if i was sent three whole years into the past or future i would notice within like the first 30 minutes every single time i mean look 2013 2016. there you go and i'll admit it took until like the ninth viewing or something for me to notice these dates but they had like a month to recognize any similar detail the film kind of hand waves this by saying that their memories of what happens during the switch get really fuzzy but they still remember plenty and this would be such an important thing to notice especially with how much mitsuha talks about the comet like taki come on a once in a millennium comet that you saw recently destroyed a small town near you you should know this what was that sound anyway i could go on taki's phone is clearly an iphone 6 right wouldn't mitsuha realize that she's never seen this model of iphone so that's like sin number 20. hang on why did i say that wait no no no no no i'm not like them i better i swear don't click away from the video i am mostly of this school of thought that plot holes aren't a very big deal that analyzing the themes and emotional core of a piece of art is so much more valuable than spotting minor logical inconsistencies but there's a limit and your name has some crevasses however while they rise to the level of distracting to me they are far from unforgivable these crevasses can still be crossed a movie that heavily features dreams relies on some dream like logic that's fine it's all good if the characters were realistically clever it would only shave maybe 10 minutes off the run time so really the only sin here is that they could have used those 10 minutes doing something far more important turning taki into a real character [Music] there's a lot of symmetry in how your name frames its two leads from the poster to the intro song to various shots throughout the film however there is a deep asymmetry to how the two characters are written mitsuha feels complete by the end we know basically her entire life story we understand how she feels about her family her hometown and her responsibilities with nuance in comparison we learn virtually nothing about taki like okay so he's interested in architecture which we know because there's a poster in his room that says architecture what drove this interest is it something he feels pressured to do who knows on the first body swapped day taki has a bandage on his cheek okadera here implies that he got the injury from a physical fight really this guy punches people that seems out of character with what we see of him in the rest of the film but really how would we know we only get the smallest glimpses of who he was beforehand [Music] motivations and behavior make full sense takis do not your name gives the impression that it has two primary protagonists in reality it has one the further along we get in the plot the more that becomes a problem this is partly an inevitability of the film structure for two reasons the second i'll go over later but the first is that the audience meets taki at the same time that mitsuha does this flows well and adeptly develops her character further but also necessarily puts him on the back foot because he's already dealing with this supernatural event dominating his time it's much harder to learn how he normally feels about his life so he's at a disadvantage in a sense but there are still some clear missed opportunities to give him more depth he lives in a small apartment with just his dad and works a pretty high stress part-time job for a high school student is money tight is there a risk of financial ruin if he doesn't keep up this demanding schedule and where's his mom she must either have passed away or is not a big part of his life but the viewer is never told mitsuha has one deceased parent and one estranged parent so whichever it is could have been a powerful way to build common ground between the leads to make the supposedly deep connectedness between them more believable instead we get nothing what's frustrating is that the writers have already shown their ability to efficiently develop a character's backstory and motivations with tessie tessie is one of mitsuha's best friends anita mori he has some important moments but is firmly a minor character yet we know substantially more about him than we do taki in just a couple short scenes the film establishes that like mitza he feels constrained by familial expectations but unlike her has chosen to resign himself to a simple life thus we know what their friendship is based on and what they might learn from each other their relationship clicks into place this development is done cleanly and quickly the minutes taki spent wandering the countryside due to his poor memory could have been spent so much better i'm aware that i sound pretty harsh here before starting work on this video i thought i liked this character i mean he's cute and his voice actor ryonosuke kamiki delivers an excellent charismatic performance especially when he's actually voicing mitsuha now i realize that a lot of my favorite moments from the character are really her and the parts that annoy me are all him the film's presentation masks how shallow taki's character really is it expects the audience to believe that he's a good guy worth rooting for without taking the time to prove it my next point is going to get me some angry comments but it's important every time taki wakes up and meets a husband he touches her breasts a lot this is assault we see that she specifically tells him not to do this and he does it anyway every time no consent given it's gross and it's just supposed to be a joke a joke where the punchline is wow teenage boys like boobs like yeah not breaking any new ground there to be fair i think this shot implies that mitsuha is doing something similar in his body but still we never see him tell her not to and the film doesn't linger on it for nearly as long overall your name does a better job than your average anime at not leering at its teenage female protagonist which is not a high bar to clear so it could have been worse but it should have been better regardless and if you must include the boob touching first of all just do it the one time when he still reasonably believes it to be a dream second you need to offset it with another scene where he treats girls with respect so that the audience doesn't see him as a creep like we do get for tessie a character with so much less screen time the manga adaptation actually does do this in one of its few deviations from the film including a scene of taki refusing to change in the girl's locker room after gym class this would have taken hardly any time to add in and been so valuable for his development rarely do i fixate this heavily on criticizing a single character but taki's weaknesses present a crack in the keystone of your name's second half [Music] on the brink of giving up taki is reminded of something by the braided cord he always wears on his wrist and for the first time in his goddamn life has a good idea fighting a rainstorm he tracks to the ancient shrine where he placed mitsuha sake remembering its spiritual significance he takes a shot then slips and falls backward witnessing a mural of a massive comet on the cave ceiling which melts into a string of visions illustrating mitsuha's entire life from conception to her death when the comet falls then he jolts awake again her it is the morning of the day of the disaster overjoyed with the chance to save her taki works with mitah's friends to assemble a plan to evacuate everyone to a safe zone by committing a minor act of terrorism it goes well at first but hits a wall when he is utterly incapable of convincing the mayor to go along with it instead he rushes back to the shrine where he suspects correctly that mitsuha is there in his body twilight was earlier foreshadowed to have a spiritual quality to it and as the sun sets the two swap back to their original bodies and are able to interact face to face for the first time defying the gulf of time that separates them taki has the idea to write his name on her hand so that they can't forget but the connection between them ends moments before she can do the same immediately his memories start draining away forgetting who she was and why he's there all while desperately viscerally aware of how badly he wants to remember mitsuha back in her time has to rush to finish taki's plan but is also struggling against her fading memories she looks at her hand and we see that taki did not write his name he wrote the words i love you this revives her courage and she manages to convince her father to support the evacuation the comet still falls but not a single person is killed the film's climax is enthralling it hits its beats with precise timing and full-hearted passion the reveal of what taki wrote stands out as a wonderfully paced earnest touching moment it is representative of the honest sentimentality that pervades your name also on the other hand it places a lid directly on top of it sealing it away into a glass star with a plainly written label this moment states clearly that what we have been watching the whole time is before anything else a love story itaha and taki have apparently fallen in love and that is what enables them to save the town and each other the hidden threads that pulled them together exist because they are soul mates or something along those lines simple as that the film now skips ahead five years mitsuha and taki have forgotten all the details but remain haunted by a feeling that they have lost something important a longing that they cannot define but that weighs on them heavily all the same mitsuha has moved to tokyo and taki has just graduated university they pass by each other on several occasions feeling uncertain sparks of recognition that fizzle out quickly but grow brighter each time eventually they meet on a staircase and nearly walk past the opportunity before turning around and asking the other's name and the credits roll [Music] this final moment makes me tear up a little every time weird actually like why does it make me tear up why does it affect me that strongly i don't even think their romance is any good i am pretty unconvinced that mitsuha and taki would even make a good couple which is a sharp problem considering how the film centers their relationship they're not not cute together but it just doesn't all add up taki's interest in mitsuha is at least understandable while his opinions on her at first seem limited to being attracted to her body and annoyed by her personality which is a bad start his visible emotional attachment to the countryside and crush on okidera fading lay the groundwork it is not difficult to believe that his experiences would conclude with developing feelings for her but this is less a compliment to the writing and more a result of his general shallowness creating flexibility the less defined a character is the more malleable because of the overarching problem of not understanding taki's perspective it is easier to accept that this is to him a romance we don't know what else it could have been it is much harder to accept from mitzah the film's first act teaching us so much about her creates the space for a wide range of interpretations on why the life swapping is so meaningful to her we know her to feel out of place in her community disillusioned with the plan given to her frustrated with her gender alienated from her father and overall longing from many different angles for a different life even if the viewer has nothing in common with mitsuha on a surface level that feeling is piercingly relatable it is practically an essential part of the human experience taki feels that longing too but we are simply told so for mitsuha we are shown that is what makes her a compelling character that is what makes us care about her cheer for her want her to succeed and find a life where she can thrive in whatever shape that may take your name takes those emotions nebulous and undefined yet raw and real and funnels them into a straightforward boy meets girl romance this might have still worked for me at least if i saw what would even make them a good match but i don't i mean are they going to live in the city or the countryside what do they have in common what would they even talk about the original hook is that they wanted very different things in life than the other there is a scene i haven't mentioned yet where we learned that mitsuha the day before the comet struck tried to visit taki in tokyo still unaware of the three years between them taki of course doesn't recognize her when she finds him and while disappointed mitsuha still gives him the ribbon she always has in her hair [Music] this is the ribbon that taki wears on his wrist they are the very same object and have been this whole time and it was this ribbon that sparked taki's memory when he was on the verge of forgetting everything eventually allowing him to save hundreds of lives what this communicates is that while the threads that connect people are real it is human action that strengthens them elevates them to the ability of altering the course of lives itamori is saved because of taki's hard work but also first because mitsuha had the courage to travel to tokyo by herself three years prior in a movie that risks being determined by fate this choice gives its characters real agency they are in control of their own destinies so why does mitsuha have to be blushing and shuffling her feet while it happens clearly we are intended to see that she made this trip primarily because she has developed a crush on a guy this feels out of character with the mitsuha of the first 40 minutes of the film like come on you didn't want taki you wanted to be him when she gets back from the trip mitsuha cuts her hair short which from the reactions of her friends was clearly a bold decision this marks some sort of significant shift in her identity or self-perception when taki sees it he just off-handedly says it looked better before and doesn't give it another thought are you kidding do you have any idea how hard that must have been for her what that meant to her do you think about her feelings at all this is your guy mitzah there is no way you did all this just for him your name's decision to sublimate all of the ideas present in its characters into a typical cisgendered heterosexual romance is breathtakingly unimaginative it feels incapable of resolving a story featuring a connection between a boy and a girl without them getting together five years later mitsuha and taki say they are possessed by the feeling that they are searching for someone or something when they see each other they both realize that they were specifically looking for someone i don't believe them especially you girl there was so much complexity to you you weren't just looking for a boyfriend that's not it that can't just be it you were looking for something more there's a certain sequence that i sort of glossed over in my summary which was hard for me to do because it is simply one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen the visions taki experiences after drinking the sake it would be beyond my ability to successfully explain the power of these images [Music] i would play it in full were it not for the limitations of this platform the beauty here is obvious what continues to strike me though is how unobvious it is in form and function it begins with the sound of crackling fire in the background while at the same time appearing underwater what is this chilling sound that plays as the string on taki's wrist becomes a dragon which becomes the comet that strikes itamori and is it a comet or is it a sperm cell as the impact seems to create the zygote that becomes mitsa it is opaque how taki is experiencing all of this as he floats through it is he seeing these images as the audience does or is he maybe seeing her entire life in a moment everything everywhere all at once we see the seconds before mitsuha's death and she definitely does die staring up at the enormous bulging cosmically horrifying comet hurtling downward the comet 2 is beautiful lit up blue and green and white you would expect warmer colors more fire and brimstone for such a destructive force yet it looks more like a cloud than a blaze why and this sound this sound is her dying this the film suggests is what death sounds like there were so many choices in this sequence that defy simple explanation that evoke a whirlwind of emotions that are too mixed and muddled to be fully grasped yet are felt and felt deeply nonetheless and none of it was necessary these visions do almost nothing to advance the plot they do a little to advance our understanding of mitsuha but not much that we couldn't guess from context your name's most beautiful scene has little utility but extraordinary artistry i hope that i have done a good enough job with the edit that i do not have to further spell out how gorgeous this movie is it should be self-evident to analyze only the plot holes and flawed character writing is in the end to ignore why i felt this film was even worth talking about it is consistently so much more visually arresting than would ever be rationally warranted the artwork the music the vocal performances are all executed with such strength that distracts from the problems yes but also layers new levels of meaning on top of the film that the writing alone didn't earn the raw beauty of your name gives the audience something more so [Music] taki is a character i have come to dislike yet still he owns my second favorite moment from the movie after twilight ends and his memories are drying up his distress is palpable [Music] again i don't fully understand why he would feel so strongly i don't know who he really is but in this moment it doesn't matter his words echo they ring clear and far yes i think this character is underdeveloped and unlikable and yes when he yells i feel it still i feel it deep in this moment i do know him [Music] yes i think the romance is difficult to believe and an unambitious choice and yes it still brings me so much joy to see them meet again because i do know that longing the feeling of waking up missing something that you cannot quite name to see anyone find that name is powerful the second structural problem i mentioned earlier that hinders taki's development is that he needs to be rewound the events of the film end up sort of mandela affecting everyone into a universe where the comet never killed 500 people for mitsuha this changes one day of her life for taki it changes three years the version of him in the epilogue cannot remember what really took place which also reverses any specific lessons he learned so maybe that's why the talkie of the epilogue of the final 10 minutes of the story finally begins to feel like a real person maybe at last your name is giving him a purpose before diving into why i feel this way though let's talk about what messages the film communicates your name could almost be mistaken for a conservative film it seems to suggest that the cure for dissatisfaction with your life is to settle down with a cute heterosexual partner mitsuha and taki's relationship is furthermore symbolic of a broader idea of fusing tradition and progress the ancient cultural practices of the town are clearly valued by the film and their continued existence even without knowledge of their true purpose was ultimately necessary to save it likewise mitsuha's infatuation with an urban lifestyle was also essential as it brought taki into the picture neither the old world nor the new world alone could have averted the disaster it's the combination that's the key your name argues that japan should neither forget its past nor prevent progress toward its future that is the social and political message of the film as i best understand it mitsuha and taki have to be together because as a couple they can represent that cohesion as social commentary this is a perfectly fine stance but definitely not groundbreaking and at its core rather anodyne and centrist it certainly remains palatable to a conservative worldview yet i think your name is experientially less a conservative film than it is a queer one so much time is spent lingering on these feelings of longing not only for a romantic partner but widely about wanting a different life than the one laid out for you it openly plays with the characters genders allowing them to feel happiness and fulfillment in a body different than the one assigned to them at birth a sentiment that traditional gender roles would expect them to reject outright does that mean both our main characters are secretly trans maybe i think there is a reading that could be made in that direction but as a cis person i am unsure of whether the film is really reminiscent of what gender dysphoria actually feels like and doesn't the comet kind of look like the trans pride flag a little i digress while the film decidedly features a straight couple i perceive more of a wink toward the other side than you might expect from mainstream japanese media [Music] there's a playfulness here a willingness to spend time on ideas and moments that don't directly contribute to the eventual conclusion the emotional core of the film is to defy confinement and seek change not for others but for yourself the skeleton that surrounds that core threatens to restrict it threatens to define that change as existing only within societal norms it almost succeeds but this skeleton is weak broken in places asymmetrical and others ultimately unable to contain those core ideas that shine right through it and far beyond and it is the immense amount of love and effort poured into every second of the film that powers that shine only by committing this hard to making it as much of a sensory feast as possible was it able to resonate so broadly with so many people from so many places it gives the audience just enough to support a wide range of subtextual interpretations that surpass the straightforward and predictable textual conclusion i am still disappointed that mitsuha's enui is apparently solved by getting a boyfriend it is a disservice to her character there are a million ways her arc could have finished that would have been more compelling at least to my eye allowing her and taki to have a close platonic friendship would have felt more in line with her initial development allowing her to be gay perhaps would have made plenty of sense at least when you take the first act in isolation however even in the diffident ending we did get mitsuha moved to tokyo she did leave ida mori at some point she figured out how to live for herself first in the epilogue taki is struggling to find a job out of college he retains an obsession with the imagery of ida mori the source of which is now a complete mystery to him still he spends his free time drawing the town and we see him give confusing answers about recreating the beauty of landscapes in his interviews with construction companies his friends tease him for falling behind and multiple people wonder if the problem hey isn't this just what i wanted to see from this character the whole time now finally we see his struggles see how he feels about his life taki had always been depicted as a softer less overtly masculine guy than the script by itself would indicate here the writing finally catches up he is clearly uncomfortable with the traditional male life plan of dedicating yourself to a well-paying office job he can't even find a fitting suit as typical a symbol for masculinity as it gets there is just enough here to imagine an antidote for his sense of longing independent from just getting a girlfriend this is the epiphany i think he needs to have taki doesn't want to be an architect he wants to be an artist when you strip your name down to its emotional core there is a universal message it sends regardless of nationality or sexuality strong enough to shine through all the many flaws that nearly occlude it if you feel the pull of a thread an unexplainable unnamed yet irresistible spark towards something anything it exists for a reason your name looks into your eyes and begs you you better chase it this video was supported by my wonderful patrons with a special thanks to kassar my patreon benefits include early access semi-regular updates and your name enshrined in the credits forever if you enjoyed this episode of reconstructed please do like and subscribe supposedly it helps but honestly who knows at the very least i like seeing the number go up the next best thing you can do to help me out is share the video around on reddit twitter discord etc or just send it right to a friend who might be interested and of course i'm super curious what y'all think of my analysis here was i too harsh on it was i too soft on it maybe does any of this make sense to anyone but me i know this movie means a lot to a lot of people so i hope i at least did it justice as always i've been skyhoppers and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Skyehoppers

Views: 8,887

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Id: TTpXV5Zm_rs

Length: 43min 31sec (2611 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 12 2022