Two people in love will always meet
This film is Makoto Shinkai’s breakout work. In nearly two hours, it paints a story of pure love and two people striving to save each other. Built on body-swapping across time as the premise, and aimed at saving each other and the town of Itomori, the two young people gradually come to understand each other through their repeated exchanges, and finally meet at twilight. Mitsuha waited eight years, and on the day the cherry blossoms fell, she finally found him. And he, on that same day, finally discovered his own heart and found her.
What love can accomplish
Mitsuha, far away in the countryside, crosses half the country to Tokyo
The day before the meteorite fell, Mitsuha, worried about Taki’s date with Okudera, skipped class and went to Tokyo to find the Taki of three years ago. When they met on the subway, she seemed like a strange, odd girl to Taki, but Mitsuha thought she wasn’t being recognized and gave Taki the red braided cord of time, planting a seed.
Taki travels through time to save Mitsuha
Even though he forgot after waking from the dream, and could only remember Mitsuha’s name or the name of Itomori, he still chose to cross the vast distance, found the Mitsuha of that time and space, and saved her. Their mutual pursuit, despite a three-year time gap, still formed a beautiful picture.
Mitsuha falls while running and sees “I love you”
After Taki watched the entries in the My diary app on his phone turn into a jumble of garbled text, and realized that it seemed impossible for both the name and the events to remain, he chose to write “I love you” on Mitsuha’s hand. And Mitsuha, falling while running, saw those words. Those words are Taki’s love for Mitsuha. After seeing them, Mitsuha knew she wasn’t alone — that Taki was working with her to save the town, and that Taki was also striving to save her. Mitsuha ran even harder, negotiated with her mayor father to relocate the residents, to finish what Taki had started, and to save the entire town.
[Hidden line] Futaba and the mayor
In the conversation between Taki-in-Mitsuha and Hitoha, it’s mentioned that members of the Miyamizu family always have such “dreams” during adolescence. In the side story, it’s revealed that the mayor came from a prominent family elsewhere and married into Itomori. And because they too had experienced the same kind of swapping as Taki and Mitsuha during their adolescence — though the dreams were forgotten upon waking — subconsciously it made Futaba take a liking to him at first sight, and they eventually married. He eventually became mayor, and when the comet fell, he smoothly evacuated the entire town under the pretext of a disaster drill, completing the final rescue. Without the efforts of Futaba and the mayor, Taki and Mitsuha’s efforts probably wouldn’t have yielded such results, and Itomori might not have survived. And so, the god’s 1,200-year guardianship and the mission of the Miyamizu family finally came to an end.
The meaning of the comet
Itomori was born from a comet’s fall 1,200 years ago, and was destroyed by the comet’s fall once more.
Are we forgetting too? What should we do?
Forgetting runs throughout the entire film. It’s not just the film — in life, we are constantly forgetting: forgetting our original aspirations, forgetting our dreams, forgetting our love. And after forgetting, what should we do? Taki and Mitsuha fought against forgetting, pursuing each other. Don’t we all go through encounters, then forgetting, then encountering again? Taki and Mitsuha brushed past each other twice. On the second time, Taki finally chose to face Mitsuha directly, and Mitsuha finally found the person she had been searching for.
This is a story about love
Everyone experiences different stories as they grow up, and whether each person believes in the love that is the theme of Shinkai’s films also differs. Shinkai depicted love as he imagines it — and I think it is also extremely pure love: two people saving and understanding each other through constant exchange. And are you willing to believe in such love? There is no denying that much of the love we encounter today is based on interests, on material things, or merely on producing the next generation. Is that kind of love really what we’re pursuing? If you can accept this story in your heart and are willing to believe in such love, then this film is one worth watching for you.