SUMMARY

Twisted in a string of fate, two strangers, in different times, with similar dreams meet
against a course of a great loss. Taki and Mitsuha, high school students, have perfectly no idea of
each other. Yet suddenly, their separate lives begin to be interconnected. They switch places as
their souls do shift. This cycle continues almost every day, and the two learn to adapt with the
situation. While inside the bodies of each other, they exchange messages and notes in their
phones, but not their names. When a comet sweeps off the town of Mitsuha, Taki loses
connection with her and thus the switching stops. The two cannot remember anything after the
tragedy, except for the feeling that something is lost. So, they have decided to look for each other
and come across the time they await. And for the first time, in a staircase, they become parallel
and think that perhaps they have met before.

CRITIQUE

Kimi No Nawa (Your Name), although fictional, is a film that depicts the likelihood of
the soul to switch into different bodies while maintaining the knowledge of its true form. The
fate of which the two characters met shows the struggle of the soul in relation to the body.

The film further reaffirms the incorporeity of the soul. If the soul is something that is
composite, then the two characters cannot experience each other’s lives. This rhymes well with
the argument about the subsistence of the soul. It can be seen that the characters have the idea of
what is happening between the two of them. They can recognize that their souls shift alongside
their knowledge of other bodies around them.

Further, it is mentioned that the two act unnatural when taking the bodies of each other.
For example, Taki becomes more affectionate and feminine, which is not him, when Mitsuha is
in his body. Their personalities never change in spite of the bodies they are taking. Therefore, the
soul remains to carry its own identity as it is viewed as the self.

The main problem, however, is that the film did not conform to the argument that the soul
only attains its free state after death. The souls of the characters shift even if they are still alive.
Another weakness is on the issue of recollection. In a staircase, where they meet in flesh, they
tend not to remember their memories fully. Yet again, the soul only forgets after death.