Trivia / Your Name

• Anime First: With side stories focusing on other characters (including more focus on Taki's adventures in Mitsuha's body) explored in manga and light novels.
• Breakthrough Hit: Shinkai and RADWIMPS weren't exactly small potatoes before, but this film has raised them to all-new heights of international mainstream notice.
• Creator Backlash: It grew over time. Makoto Shinkai was initially glad the film was successful, but added that the film is way too overrated. In an interview, he then began to worry whether Your Name would become a Tough Act to Follow, and the "New Miyazaki" comparisons reached new heights, and Shinkai had to personally make statements to disassociate the label with him. Still later, he said outright he doesn't want an Oscar win, going on to say that he wanted people to stop seeing it as their obsession was unhealthy.
• Creator's Oddball: The introductory scene deliberately makes it look like another one of Shinkai's trademark super-serious and melancholy movies about loneliness and isolation. In the next scene, Taki wakes up in Mitsuha's body and sleepily fiddles with her breasts until he realizes what's going on and freaks out. The movie as a whole still has Shinkai's usual themes, but also a large amount of comedy, and much more "liveliness" than usual for him. The music is also abnormally upbeat, and it has an energetic opening theme song/animation in the style of a TV anime. It also has a happy ending, though he has done that once before.
• Dawson Casting: Played straight in the dub, with Sinterniklass in his early fourties and Sheh in her late thirties when it was dubbed. Played less straight in the original as Kamiki is twenty-two and Kamishiraishi is eighteen at the film's initial release.
• Directed by Cast Member: Michael Sinterniklaas and Stephanie Sheh, who voiced the two lead characters, also co-directed the English dub of the film.
• The Other Darrin: In the English dub, Maggie Flecknoe, who voiced Yukari Yukino in The Garden of Words, is replaced by New York-based actress Katy Vaughn since Your Name was recorded at NYAV Post in New York City and Los Angeles.
• Promoted Fanboy: RADWIMPS bassist Yusuke Takeda was a fan of Shinkai's since Voices of a Distant Star.
• Reality Subtext:
  • One can feel the influence of the 2011 great earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan on certain parts of the film. It's no coincidence that the Time Skip at the last part is 5 years at least from Taki's perspective, just like 5 years passed between the great earthquake in 2011 and the film's release in 2016. In fact, many shots of post-Tiamat Itomori are very similar to photographs of the 2011 great earthquake's aftermath.
  • Mitsuha's Small Town Boredom and desire to move to Tokyo reflect the gradual dying-off of rural Japan as their young move away to urban areas.
  • The novelization has an exclusive scene where, after the Shinto ritual, Mitsuha and Yotsuha have to entertain some guests and they note afterwards that the party was full of elderly people, most likely a jab at the silver tsunami Japan's facing.
• The Red Stapler: Itomori's Real Life inspiration, Hida City, Gifu Prefecture, has seen millions in tourist revenue from visiting fans.
• Similarly Named Works: Back in 1954, there was another film also called Kimi no Na Wa about Star-Crossed Lovers that also beat a Godzilla film (the very first one at that) at the box office.
• Sleeper Hit: Compared in scale to other Makoto Shinkai works, this one ended up completely smashing Japanese box office chart in the first few weeks. It eventually surpassed Spirited Away as the highest-grossing film in Japan's history. The Film didn't do too bad in the states either, making $5 million. Considering it only showed up in 311 theaters and only showed for a week, that's impressive. ^note  wide release in America is over 600 theaters.
• Tourist Bump: Itomori's inspiration, Hida City, Gifu Prefecture, has seen millions in tourist revenue from visiting fans.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Things had to be cut due to budget shortage, but details are scarce.
  • If the official music video for Sparkle is any indication, the ending could have instead been present day 17/18 year old Taki reuniting with a 20/21 year old Mitsuha. ^{Age explanation} Based off the ending of the MV, there might have been a minor Time Skip of a few months between Taki's trip to ruined Itomori and their reunion, similar to the minor Time Skip at the end of the movie..
  • RADWIMPS has indicated in various interviews that there were various tweaks to the soundtrack and songs that were cut from it.
  • According to this article, Mitsuha rather than Taki was originally supposed to be the one with an unrequited crush.
  • Initial concept sketches tweeted by Shinkai, also included in the special edition Blu-Rays, indicate that the original title was going to be Yume to Shiriseba or If I’d Known It Was a Dream. While some elements like the braided cord, city-country divide, comet, "Freaky Friday" Flip and lake were always there, Taki and Mitsuha's prototypes looked quite different, and the muted palette and presence of what might be a gun in proto-Taki's hands suggests it was going to have a darker tone than what we eventually got.
  • Shinkai stated in this tweet that Greg Egan's The Safe-Deposit Box was an inspiration and the earliest plot would have had the heroine in different bodies every time she woke.
• Word of God:
  • In a Chinese interview with director Makoto Shinkai, the director had explained that the color on Mitsuha's traditionally-braided ribbon has several meanings; the white at the center represents the meteorite, the blue beside it represents the lake, while the orange and the red at the ends represents twilight. The fact that it is created by traditional means also supposed to represent the idea that the same situation (meteorite impact) had happened before in the past, only forgotten but recorded through the traditional braiding techniques, which he explains is inspired by how Tokyo also had experienced earthquakes a thousand years ago (linking it with the film's influences from the 2011 Earthquake).
  • After much speculation and hints, Shinkai confirmed in an interview that Miki and Tsukasa are indeed engaged to each other.
    Question: During the final moments when the three friends were hunting for jobs, Tsukasa has a wedding band on his ring finger. Did he get married when he was a student? Is it possible that Okudera is his partner?
    Answer: You're a sharp one! It's a little backstory, but Tsukasa and Okudera were engaged.
• Write What You Know: Shinkai is himself the son of a construction company man and someone who didn't want to go into the family work, elements that went into Tessie.

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