Kimi No Na Wa. (Your Name.) Analysis | The Ties That Bind

As we're introduced to Mitsuha's life, her grandmother Hitoha solemnly explains one evening why they make braided cords at the shrine. It's tradition, one long forgotten since a great fire 200 years ago, yet they do it anyway in remembrance to uphold these ancient traditions. It's a clean, thematic introduction to the story's use of cords and ties that bind people, places, and even times together, but it also introduces the viewer to the broader motif So when you recognize that one of the first, most important shots of the movie depicts an enormous celestial line that cuts across the sky, the movie begins to become a game of I-Spy for its central motif. Symbolically, the comet trail resembles a thread that connects the two characters together, connecting time and space. But narratively, the comet serves to connect and capture the attention of Japan, and it's what we later learn makes Mitsuha and Taki's relationship all that more pressing. So clearly, the lines in the story exist, in part, to remind us of connections. The cords are arguably the most alluded to example of this, like in Hitoha's explanation. And while the cords are the last connection to a century's old tradition, they're also the present day, symbolic tie between Taki and Mitsuha. The cords connect a country girl and city boy, and tie together the age-old story of star-crossed lovers. It's very easy to notice that Mitsuha's red braided cord is depicted quite prominently as the red string of fate, a well-known Asian motif symbolizing love and destiny. The lines are not simply straight cuts across, they can twist and tangle and change shape. We see this firsthand through Taki, in a metaphysical scene depicting flashes of Mitsuha's life. The braided cord twists in and out, indistinguishable from the red string of fate, and at times transforming into a dragon, a comet, a single sperm cell, and later an umbilical cord. The biological metaphors in particular are interesting to note, as they evoke very primal physical ideas of connection, either between a man and a woman, or between mother and child. As a motif, the lines are quite versatile in a number of subtler ways as well. Conceptually, we see them in the subway lines that interweave the municipalities of Tokyo, and the train lines physically connecting the rest of the country. They can be literal lines, like the kanji they scribble on each other to communicate, or the lines Taki draws as he recreates the town of Itamori. Even figuratively, lines that cut the frame are often used to draw our attention to the thresholds between places, or to doors that connect the inside and out. And yet, what's peculiar about the presentation of all the lines, cords, and ties is that they're all, in some crucial way, flawed, fleeting, or incomplete. As much as we're told initially through Itoa about the power of these ties and connections, the movie systematically demonstrates how these lines all fail in their own ways. The braided cords connect to a tradition whose meaning has been lost to history and fire, and while we're shown teases at how the red string of fate ties Taki and Mitsuha together, in their disastrous first meeting, the red string is drawn out and unloosened. It's a fleeting effort at a non-existent connection between two strangers. Speaking of Taki and Mitsuha's disastrous meeting, the trains are a repeated visual reminder of their inability to find each other. Not only are the trains used to convey the monotony of Taki and Mitsuha's unfulfilled lives, they're the cornerstone in which the two independently fail to find each other. Mitsuha, only to discover an indifferent and uninterested Taki, and three years later, Taki, only to discover that the entire town of Itomori no longer exists. The comet itself is a trick, a threat, and a lie that separates Taki and Mitsuha by three years. Sure, as Taki dreams, he gets insight into Mitsuha's story, but we quickly see it's a story of loss, how Mitsuha was separated from both mother and father earlier than most children can understand death and isolation. The cutting of the umbilical cord is just another reminder of Mitsuha's physical and emotional separation. Mitsuha later mirrors this after being rejected by Taki, symbolically cutting her own hair. The kanji, originally used to whimsically show Mitsuha and Taki's way of communicating, later reminds us of the limitations of these written lines, and even foreshadows the drawing end to their reunion during Katawara Doki. All that's left is a partial line break across Taki's palm, like a dash in a sentence, the rest of the thought left unfinished. The lines, in every sense, are the story's symbolic dashes, line breaks, punctuating half-finished connections. And when you notice that the doors are never seen both opening and closing, it's easy to conclude that the lines rather represent the unfulfilled connection. So the lines are imperfect, and arguably the movie presents a far more compelling case for a flawed lines motif, rather than the lines as these great connectors. And yet clearly the movie's tone is positive, that despite disaster and ruin and years of failed connections, happiness can still be found, and a town can still be saved. That Taki and Mitsuha do finally meet, after all those years, are enough to indicate that a motif simply about failed connections is itself incomplete. So how do we resolve this? The movie's answer comes from our exposition hero, Hitoa. According to Hitoa, musubi is the connection between people, symbolized by the tying of threads. Musubi is the tie that binds, the knot that keeps people together. It's the god's power and the god's art, which itself is not linear. They converge and take shape. They twist, tangle, sometimes unravel, break, then connect again. It's spiritual and circular and never-ending. And to punctuate Hitoa's thoughts, we're shown the home of the holy shrine, surrounded by two great circles. A great crater, cradling a river that separates the gods from the people. So the antithesis to our failing lines is the infinite line, the circle. If the door frames are only human thresholds, then the sacred shrine atop the mountain has two more perfect thresholds that connect the realm of the Shinto gods to the human realm. And in each of the ways that lines were metaphors for limited connections, the circles seen in Kimi no Na wa instead remind us of connections that are whole and fulfilled. Circles are the perfect connection, the symbolic manifestation of musubi, because the movie argues that things must come full circle in order to be complete and whole. It's embedded in the movie's entire narrative structure. We only understand the opening shot of the falling stars when we return to that exact same shot at the climax of the film. Only later do we even realize the movie opened in media res. Even outside of the movie's disguised timeline, time is still played fast and loose. It's part of Hitoa's central thesis on musubi and connections, and we're shown how cycles are a part of the natural and divine order of things. It's strange, and perhaps a little ironic, but only through the repeated cycles of time and nature can our characters find a conclusion, a happier one for the town and each other. Without the cycles, we're left with half-finished connections and incomplete stories. Mitsuha and Taki chasing after one another, and at one point their own bodies, is laughably circular, but the whole path to their true meeting is a tangled journey through time as well. Mitsuha's failure on the train is in reality the inciting incident in Taki's journey, that after safekeeping her bracelet for three years, time circles back and compels him to return it back to her. And in their fateful meeting, we see that the real power of the tied braided cord is in the unsaid promise it represents. Just as Taki wore it for Mitsuha for three years, so too does Mitsuha tie it for Taki, a promise to stay true to the bond they've made with each other. What makes the braided cord special isn't the cliched depiction of the legendary red string of fate, it's the time invested by our two characters. As Taki returns the braid, Mitsuha ties it again, a real connection fulfilled, and Mitsuha whole once more. Interestingly enough, the only times we see the braid actually tied are when Taki or Mitsuha are inhabiting their own native body. While it's a visual tool to help establish which character we're following, thematically it still reminds us that the tied braids are part of what makes the characters whole, and truly themselves. We'll come back to the summit in just a bit, but the other major geographical circle is reflected in the defining landmark of the region, Lake Itomori, and we're able to see a mutual connection between the lake and the people. That as much as the lake defines the natural geography of the town, so too does the town define the legend and history of this lake. This duality carries over into the iconic shape of the lake in the disastrous aftermath, two broken circles joined and pooling into each other. I'll just briefly touch on it, since the lake is a whole other topic rich with all kinds of symbolism, but I think the most interesting explanation for its shape is an extension of the importance of circles. That it's the symbol for infinity, reminding us that the lake has a sacred connection with the natural cycles, one that's never ending. At a character level, the lake is also important in showing a whole and genuinely connected Taki in particular. After leaving his friends to climb a mountain alone in the rain, Taki is finally able to prove that the time he spent in Mitsuha's body was real. After this cathartic moment, the camera lingers, and the lake in the background comes into focus. It's a reminder that Taki makes this real meaningful connection in the presence of these sacred circles. But I think the best example of the interplay of the lines and the circles is in the reunion atop the summit, when Taki and Mitsuha finally, finally meet each other after their cross-country, time-skipping chase. The setting is perfect, with the great circles aligned in the foreground and the background, and we're given, shot for shot, this tantalizing closeness between Taki and Mitsuha, divided only by an imaginary line. And for a moment, it might just be another failed connection. And yet, just as the sun sets, Taki and Mitsuha reach out to each other, and with this simple act, the glare of the sun blossoms into a full circle, and as twilight falls, the threshold between the two fades. In every narrative, visual, and temporal sense, we see the culmination of the circles that brought them together for this exact moment. Divine intervention, through the power of Musubi, allows them to finally answer twilight's one question. All this is interesting to note, and yet if the circles so clearly represent the possibility for happy conclusions, it's unclear why the two are still so aimless at the end. We see a glimpse of Miss Ogodera's life, and as she flashes her ring at Taki, we see that her own love story has had its own coda. And yet the magic of the circles has seemingly run dry for Taki and Mitsuha. It's easy to conclude, cynically, that the cycles and circles simply represent the non-existent fantasy in our lives. That the depiction of time as circular and rewritable is just a form of wish fulfillment. And its premise as wish fulfillment is, like most anime, true to an extent. As an allegory, the emotional tone of the film is clearly defined by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that claimed over 15,000 Japanese lives. Real life is probably more like the symbolic dashes in the film, where lives and stories are taken away, unfinished. The story is just a fantasy, a dream. But the movie rejects that cynicism. Its message is, with no uncertainty, hopeful and faithful in the face of loss and tragedy. It's a love story written in response to a nation's worst natural disaster in a century. And so with love and faith, despite countless setbacks, Taki and Mitsuha's reunion is inevitable. It's with this earnest lens that we're able to see one final positive note in Kimi no Na wa's grammar and syntax. Because if the em dash is used to connect disparate ideas or incomplete sentences, in contrast, the period exists to indicate the end of a complete, full idea. The full stop is used to punctuate the end of your name, both its title and its final scene, because it's the last coda the story needs. It's a reminder that even after countless failures and missed connections, Taki and Mitsuha's story can still have some resolution. They can have a happy ending. The circles exist because they underlie the hope for a better future. The comet itself is simply part of a much greater circle, a cycle lasting 1200 years. This underlying hope is something that's even foreshadowed in the spectacle and music of the climax, a triumphant, cyclical build-up towards what should be a tense moment. But we don't feel that dread. Like a scene from a dream, it's suggesting that this isn't something to grieve over. Instead, it's just a moment. Nothing more, nothing less than a beautiful view.