Time Skip

After nearly a decade, I've returned to blogging to nothing and to nobody. Perhaps for myself, but also for others who may stumble upon this relic of the mid-aughties.

However, if you're reading this then you're probably one of those to whom I've entrusted this journal of mine to. 

A lot has happened since 2007. In the 9 years, I have loved. Been loved. Have been hurt. Have hurt. All par for the course I suppose, so I wonder what is in store for me this time around.

I have uprooted and transplanted myself a year ago, and think I may have taken root here in my new home. Far more than I probably should have, but have nonetheless.

The past few months have been a tumult of some magnitude. Some might say I might have lost my way or others could say I have found myself again. As always, I'm inclined to say that I'm somewhere in between. Firmly undecided, yet resolute in my conviction. 

It is with this in mind, that I feel that I should begin this reset with a film that has shook me awake.

君の名は (Kimi no Na wa) Your Name

Kimi no Na wa is a 2016 animated film from Makoto Shinkai, who previously directed 5 Centimeters Per Second, a similar film released in 2007 about young love separated by distance. 

As with most of Makoto Shinkai's works, I was immediately enamored by the background art which straddles between the realistic and the ethereal (another director whose vision rivals this is Satoshi Kon, albeit his films have a definite grit to them). 

Kimi no Na wa is no different, not only visually, but also thematically. This too examines the theme of love separated by distance, in this case both physical and temporal. 

This time the two protagonists are Misuha, a girl from the small, fictional, rural town of Itomori and Taki, a boy from the very real, urban sprawl that is Tokyo. They find themselves inexplicably switching bodies at random times, interfering with each other's lives. Misuha, in Taki's body, is horrified to discover she has a "thing" down there, whereas Taki was more enthused to discover that he was, well, breasts. There is a light touch to the tone in the first act as they realize that their body switching is was very real and the film cleverly grounds it by referring to real-world objects and locations whenever possible. One such example is the two protagonists reliance on their cellphones to figure out whose lives they suddenly inhabited and the cleverness of their scheme to communicate with each other through apps like LINE and their phone's calendar and diary functions. It's the little details like these that make the film's magical premise almost feel real. 

The second act lulls a bit when the action slows down and the audience is left unsure as to where the film is headed. It was as if the premise had almost worn out its welcome, until the third act pulls back the curtain on their situation. 

If you haven't seen the movie, it's perhaps best to stop reading at this point as the it is inevitable for spoilers to be divulged. 

Central to the film is the motif of the red string of fate, a belief shared by Chinese and Japanese cultures that a red string ties two people together across space and time. Taki and Misuha are presented with an impossible situation that is tied together by this tenuous thread. And audience members would either buy into this completely or reject this outright.

As a romantic at heart, I was hopeless drawn into the narrative. I could not help but fall in love with both Taki and Misuha, even if I do not necessarily believe in finding the one. I have often asserted my belief that there is no one perfect person, but there is a person who could be perfect for you. I've revised this in the past few years that perhaps there is no person that is perfect for you, but rather you can work hard to make the relationship work, and this be that "perfect" match. 

Yet this is not the conceit of the movie. Taki and Misuha are almost quite literally tied to each other. And this is a notion that I suppose resonates with a lot of people. Particularly in this often isolating existence we find ourselves in. Misuha, as is in my current situation, is stuck in the middle of nowhere, a quaint rural town with nothing to do. Taki, without him realizing it, is never alone in the packed metropolis of Tokyo, yet is lonely. It is when they find each other in the most unlikely of circumstances that they find/lose what it is that their heart is searching for.

This is simultaneously exhilarating and distressing. To find someone and yet have that someone be out of one's reach. Does one pursue that? At what cost? In our lives, there are many people that we meet that almost seem like they could be the one. Yet most likely they're not. 

So how does one know? One can't really tell. We don't have magical realism-type plot devices to push our lives forward, but I find that Kimi no Na wa posits one potentially reliable measure. 

Near the end of the second act, after Taki goes on a date with his crush, he takes a leap of faith and seeks out Misuha. However his search is in vain as each possibility leads him to a dead end. Unbeknownst to him, Misuha went on a similar rash journey to Tokyo to find him. She too only met profound disappointment.

This grand gesture, this leap into the unknown is probably familiar to many of us. I know that it is to me. I've taken too many trains and buses, and have driven countless kilometers to nowhere. The two parallel scenes of them waiting for a phone call or a text from the other echoes an all-too-familiar sense of defeat for me. This can be enough suck out all the optimism from the most hopeful person and the sensible would know when to cut his losses and pack up to live another day.

And yet, I believe that the person worth your while would not come easy. Nothing in life worth having is ever that easy anyway. I waited for ten years for my dream to come true. Many of those years were spent having conceded to the reality that dreams do come true. However, the past two years have taught me that dreams are worth having, and they are worth working hard to reach them. Sometimes you just have to be patient.

In the case of Misuha and Taki, the effort they exerted to reach out to one another was mutual. In the mundane, to them at least but certainly not to the audience, day-to-day concessions they made to accommodate each other's wishes to the distance they traveled to find the other person to the incredible leap of faith that they took in the climax, and finally back to the everyday chance they took at the end, therein lay the foundation that earned them their relationship.  

Yes, in many ways, Kimi no Na wa is more fantastical than 5 Centimeters Per Second, but it is no less real. It has broken box office records in Japan, but hopefully people don't just enjoy it, wish it were real and call it a day. The real connection we made with it was not with its body switching plot device, but with the very real characters whose hopes and dreams reflected our own. Like Taki and Misuha, I hope find someone out there that we can feel tied to, even if not by fate, but by our own choosing.