Deeply moving story of teenage love

Rating: 10/10 (28 May 2017)

"Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along" â€“ Rumi.
To the surprise of many, Your Name, a Japanese anime directed by Makato Shinkai (Children Who Chase Lost Voices) has become not only the top box-office hit of 2016 in Japan, but the highest-grossing animated feature of all time, surpassing Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Its popularity should not be a surprise to anyone who has seen it, however. It is a physically gorgeous and spiritually alive comedy/drama with stunning music by Radwimps and a deeply moving story of teenage love. Oh yes, it also has time travel and sci-fi elements that give the film an enchanting otherworldly feeling even if the plot does get a bit convoluted. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to follow it, but it might help.
In any event, the story is the least important part of this highly entertaining and, dare I say, inspiring film. Based on Shinkai's own novel of the same name, the film takes place in a fictional Japanese small town called Itomori where teenager Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi) lives with her grandmother (Estuko Ichihara) and younger sister (Kanon Tani). Her father (Masaki Terasoma), who left religion after the death of his wife, is now the mayor of the city. When Mitsuha complains about small town life and exclaims to whoever is listening, "Please make me a handsome Tokyo boy in my next life!" her wish is granted the next day, when she wakes up in the body of Taki (voice of RyÃ»nosuke Kamiki), a real-life handsome boy who is in high school in Tokyo. Mitsuha must now must adjust to a new life which involves completing Taki's studies and working at an Italian restaurant.
Yes, the body switching happens on both ends. Taki is now a teenage girl in Itomori and must struggle to fit into small town life and to accept that he has breasts which he takes pleasure in fondling. The swap lasts for a day, and afterwards, neither party can remember what happened. Body swapping begins to take place on a regular basis, however, and the two (who do not know each other) must learn to adjust to radically different lives than they are accustomed to, with Mitsuha making a somewhat better adjustment. The two learn the meaning of empathy and are now able to help each other by leaving memos on each other's smartphone. Each makes the other's life better in some way, and there's a lingering feeling that they should meet.
Back in his own body, Taki travels to Itomori but finds that she died three years ago when a comet hit Itomori and decimated the city, killing one-third of its inhabitants, a reminder of the devastating 2011 Tohoku earthquake. Now with the help of a magic drink, he travels back three years to help Mitsuha confront her intransigent father and warn the town of the impending disaster. Your Name is grounded in the Sufi concept of Musubi. As told to Mitsuha by her grandmother, "Musubi is the old way of calling the local guardian God. This world has profound meaning. Tying thread is Musubi. Connecting people is Musubi. The flow of time is Musubi. These are all the God's power.
So the braided cords that we make are the God's art and represent the flow of time itself. They converge and take shape. They twist, tangle, sometimes unravel, break, then connect again. Musubi â€“ knotting. That is time." It is also about impermanence. Like a dream, memories of Taki's and Mitsuha's life in the other's body fade and are quickly forgotten. As Buddhism declares, in this world nothing is fixed and permanent. Existence is a flux and always becoming. What persists, however, are the braided cords that tie one to another and the love that transcends the artificial boundaries of space and time. Shinkai has been compared to the great Miyazaki, but this wondrous film is his and his alone.