Astounding visually and emotionally... but with plot problems

Rating: 9/10 (25 November 2016)

Unlike his previous movies Makoto Shinkai adds a supernatural aspect to the movie, which is experienced only by Taki and Mitsuha. Otherwise the action takes place in very realistic today's Tokyo and a mountainous village, where they live. Shinkai stitches these two aspects of the plot, but some serious plot holes remain which are the biggest minus for this otherwise beautiful and astounding movie.
* Spoilers ahead *
For the story to unwind Taki and Mitsuha cannot meet each other in real life. They both try and both fail for the reason of a 3-year gap between the events. Their experiences are not aligned in time. But it is hard to buy that they don't realise it earlier: they both use mobile phones on which the date is boldly displayed, they use calendars, they listen to radio and TV broadcasts. Yet they are somehow unaware that then they switch each other's places they are 3 years off. The same holds for space. Taki makes a great effort to locate Mitsuha's village, he remembers the exact landscape of the village and is able to draw it precisely, but seems not to remember the name of the village written on railway station name, announced during mayoral elections, or simply GPS coordinates on Mitsuha's smartphone.
Taki has selective memory loss about Mitsuha's name, hence the title. When he learns that the village has been destroyed 3 years ago he has no problems finding her name on the victim list. Sometime later he is unable to remember her name anymore, and he never comes back to the list. None of the two when switching places tries to tell their true name to others, e.g. grandma or friends.
Up to the half of the movie it is more or less clear for the spectators what is possible in the world of Kimi no na wa, and what is not. But then the two try to fight against the fate and the plot starts to look much like Back to the Future: they come back in time to undo the events and rescue the village. So suddenly there is a full-blown time travel and changing of the past events.
Problems with this arise in the scene of their meeting above the village: Mitsuha in the body of Taki awakes in the shrine and Taki in MItsuha's body arrives there on a bicycle. But both events are separated by 3 years. Taki arrives on the day of comet strike, and Mitsuha 3 years afterwards. All the vegetation, ground shouldn't look the same. But the scene is as if they were there together. If Shinkai wanted to show them together in front of the distant view of the village he would need to choose either a village before the catastrophe or a destroyed village and a crater. He chose not to show either by covering everything what lies below with clouds. These clouds are one of these plot stitches which don't hold.