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10 responses to “How Makoto Shinkai’s Kimi no Nawa left me feeling broken”

1. 

   June 26, 2021

   Vidhi

   Wow. I am speechless. I actually felt my heart clench while reading this. Mostly because I have experienced the same feelings so many times. I think I still do. That feeling of emptiness and that you are going to end up alone. I can’t begin to describe it. Enjoyed reading your blog post. If you ever feel like talking you can always reach out 🙂

   Reply
   1. 

      June 26, 2021

      Binati

      Thank you so much for reading what I wrote. I hope you’re feeling better now. I am. Somehow writing this helped.
      That feeling changed from ‘I am alone’ to ‘Nope, we are all alone in lil regards.’ Cathartic as it sounds, when we feel supported in our experiences, somehow the pain dissipates, doesn’t it! I will definitely reach out 😀
      Thank you for reading (and subbing) 😍😍😍

      Reply
2. 

   October 27, 2021

   Binati

   I do make it sound easy, don’t I! I am such a turd in that sense (my initials are BS – I happen to think my parents were on to something 🤣). I am so bad when it comes to feeling and dealing, I write things off in a ‘to be felt later’ category. Then when I experience some profound cinema like Kimi no Nawa or Interstellar, I crash and burn.

   How dramatic!

   I apologise if I misled or confused you. I am so new to blogging. I am one of those facts-facts-‘oh she made me sleep with her blahs’ academic writer.

   Thank you for being so kind. I would love to have you critique my vagueness (sorry once again 😔) when I do the next two cinema pieces (coming soon):
   1. Koe no Katachi and how it helped me cast off my edge-lord armour.
   2. Interstellar-Arrival-Contact ~ The sci-fi holy trinity of Hollywood

   Reply
3. 

   October 27, 2021

   Binati

   Oh my gosh!
   ::the writer screams and does a lil shimmy… then she composes herself to look professional::
   I would love to have you quote some things with credit.

   I will also definitely check your website out!

   I appreciate this so much as well 🙂
   HOW SWEET ARE YOU!!!

   Reply
4. 

   July 26, 2023

   Janoyl Anitt

   Excellent blog piece. Came here for the quote but stayed for the entirety of it.

   Just to reiterate, the feeling of loneliness and puposelessness is something universal – which has beautifully been addressed in the movie – and more importantly, if you were Taki, you would probably not really know.

   That said, I hope you find what you seek soon!

   Reply
   1. 

      August 18, 2023

      Binati

      Thank you so much for reading.
      The universality of loneliness and purposelessness is such a human thing, isn’t it? In an entirely weird way, I think this helps us. That hopelessness, sad as it is in the moment, that hopelessness either closes in on us or it enables us to seek.

      Your kind wishes in the end made me smile. Thank you so much!
      I shall keep seeking.
      So far, life has rewarded me with kind people and things. Just like the quote that brought you to this blog.

      P.S.: I also re-watched Koe no Katachi 🙂

      Reply
5. 

   June 10, 2024

   Victor Le Dinahet

   oh my god. This is the text that I was searching so long on the internet after watching Kimi no Na Wa. I felt exactly what you are describing, like some sort of twisted emotion, one part happy about Mitsuha and Taki meeting back, but also another part that is totally devastated by this movie. It’s not some sort of jealousy or envy, but a pressure telling me that the relationship between Mitsuha and Taki is some unobtainable, incomprehensible goal in life. Like you said, there’s this emptiness which builds up a weight, not allowing me to breathe. It caused me more panic attacks than school notes. This film, with other medias, like Koe no Karachi and the last episodes of Evangelion, made me realise how far my hatred for myself shaped me, causing an unhealthy perfectionism, social distancing by an illusion of hate by everyone, etc… I’m now in a better position than before, with the help of friends and family, trying to steadily climbing back up. Being able to know that someone had the exact same feeling as me and being able to relate helped me enourmously. Thank you so much!

   Reply
   1. 

      June 10, 2024

      Binati

      Your reply warmed my heart because yes, this is why I blogged my feelings about Kimi no Nawa. We all deserve to let go of the impulse for unrealistic social standards and unhealthy focus on unattainable ideals like perfection.

      It warms my heart to know that you’ve grown. I like to think I have as well. 🙂
      Koe no Katachi is another article I am planning to write soon, once I process my feelings around it.

      I am speaking into the Internet void but your comment made me want to restart blogging so thank you Victor. 🙂

      Reply
6. 

   August 10, 2026

   Olivier Mars – Kaseigunsou

   I came across your blog randomly, having just watched “Your Name”, and I was moved by how well articulated and beautiful your writing was about this movie. Thank you for this.

   I took the time to piece my own thoughts together and share them here, as the movie resonated with me in a very intimate way and is, in my opinion, a complete masterpiece.

   The movie isn’t just about a romance. It is a powerful work of art about ambiguous loss and what it takes to go on living when you know for a fact there is something behind the curtain, something connecting us through emotions and shared experiences. It is a metaphor for how we deal with memories and how things we loved end up blurring as we carry on, like a dream you wake up from, not remembering your loved one’s name, but remembering the weight and impact they had on you.

   As the years go on, you tend to forget everything, since the human condition makes us forget in order to survive and get through life. “Humans forget. They forget to carry on living.” (Kyoichi Katayama – “Sekai no Chuushin de, Ai wo Sakebu”). It is a mechanism in our brain to protect us and shield us from the fact that nothing is ever eternal. But as we forget, what is left in us is this impression, this feeling of something important, something bigger than us, something shaping us, driving us, and leading us toward a path unclear. Fate. We can’t draw the lines clearly, just as Taki becomes more and more imprecise with his memories of Mitsuha as the years go on. What lingers is the true love they felt for each other, and the influence they both had on each other: Taki would become an artist and architect, and Mitsuha would move to Tokyo. That is the token of love, the proof, the legacy of their past love shaping their future and influencing them, leading them toward their fate.

   The movie is a perfect mirror of what I’ve been dealing with for the past 20 years. Twenty years ago, in 2006, I had the chance to be a foreign student from France coming to study Japanese for two years at Tenri University, near Nara. I remember everything. All my Japanese friends, and how we would always meet until late at night after classes. The University Festival, and being introduced as a staff member (a first-time honor for a foreign student, as it had never happened before). The countless nights spent rehearsing, preparing, sharing, and discovering together, blending our paths into one giant red thread tying us all for a moment.

   I remember her, too. I remember how we met. How I walked into the classroom where the a cappella band of the university was singing that day, and how I wrote an artist’s name on the blackboard. “Onitsuka Chihiro”. How everyone in the room chuckled a little, witnessing the oddity of a foreigner requesting such an artist. How everybody went silent for a moment, and how, all of a sudden, a voice—her voice—came filling the room like beautiful thunder in a pale summer sky, striking my heart in a flash of emotions that shattered my bones. I remember how we started dating after that, and how we would eventually become engaged and move in together. I remember our life plans, our long conversations about our dreams, our future together, our surnames, and how one day we would start our own family.

   I remember how it ended. I remember having to go back to France for a while to graduate before being able to return to Japan. I remember how we said she would wait for me to come back so we could get married. I remember the family pressure on my side not to return to Japan. I remember the toll of a long-distance relationship, of struggling to find a moment to talk to each other, of the unfair battle we had to fight against Time itself to preserve our bond as it kept stretching more and more, until it grew so thin it eventually snapped. I remember how I buried my head in the sand, leaving all my belongings at her place in Japan as a way to hold Fate hostage, thinking that having my possessions there would bend destiny enough to lead me back to my dream life. I remember fading into depression and losing all my strength in a world and society that wouldn’t understand the weight of my ambiguous loss, the meaning of the life I had been dreaming about, which was slipping through my fingers despite having been within my grasp for so long. I remember how eventually just thinking about Japan became such a pain and burden that I literally cut all ties with my friends and everyone else there. I remember how I then decided to move on and try to live another life, making up reasons and justifications for what I viewed as my biggest failure, burying all those emotions within me as my path took another turn and led me to a new destination.

   As the days, weeks, months, and years passed, my memories from Japan slowly began to fade away, the edges of the pictures becoming blurrier and blurrier. A burden I’ve been carrying for decades now. The aching pain of waking up in the morning with a mixture of emotions ranging from desperation and hopelessness to anger and bitterness has become less prominent, turning into more of a background noise that hits back from time to time. In those moments, my memories and the linked emotions come to me just as strongly as before. Just like what Taki and Mitsuha experience in the movie, some days I wake up with a feeling of panic and anxiety, as if I have forgotten something important, even if I can’t really say what it is or why it is. It is just there—a sudden, swift, and unexpected realization that I am missing something, that my current life is nothing but a placeholder for a dream life that never truly had a chance to blossom, and that I left on the side of the road as the years passed. In those heart-aching moments, the first feeling I experience is guilt. Guilt for letting myself forget. Guilt for having let go. Guilt that one day, I might wake up and not remember her name. And with the realization comes a feeling of panic and desperation, just like what Taki and Mitsuha experience. A feeling of suddenly having to act to prevent the ever-growing fires of oblivion from consuming all the precious memories of my past life.

   And so, I try to remember everything. I try so hard to remember, from the major events to the detailed faces, from how the sky looked that day to how I felt in that exact moment—just as a curator would walk down the halls of their museum to check on every artifact one by one, ensuring everything is still perfectly safe and preserved. I brush the same painting over and over, hoping to keep it as pristine and alive as when it happened.

   The days go on, until the next dream. Just like in the movie, where Makoto Shinkai uses the twilight and the weather to separate the world of the living from the world of the dead—the world of past memories—something, a tiny thing, in how the sun is setting over the city, in how the light is suddenly reflecting in a particular way on a small pond, in how the wind is gently blowing and carrying smells from a distant past, in how the stars are lighting up the night sky and shining a little brighter than usual, something will suddenly bring me back twenty years. And for a fleeting moment, I remember everything. Flashes of time spent together come bursting into my heart as vividly as ever, just like when Taki or Mitsuha suddenly remember each other for a short moment. Something pulls me back into the world of the dead, and closes the gap between the years within seconds, just as Taki and Mitsuha are able to communicate despite being three years apart.

   When waking up from that fleeting dream, from that 20-year journey, the burden is so heavy that, just like in the movie when Taki and Mitsuha wake up, I can’t help feeling my heart fill and shedding tears. Then, as the day goes on, the wave slowly recedes, becoming a distant echo only waiting for the next tide to happen.

   In the movie, Makoto Shinkai decided the characters went through so much that they had earned a happy ending. We all know that real life, unfortunately, doesn’t work this way. What I can only hope for and learn from Kimi no Na wa is that all of my emotions, all of my feelings, all these tiny pieces of eternity we shared during our lifetime, are a part of me and will forever shape my choices and perception of the world. That those crushing waves of ambiguous loss, those lingering scars on my heart, are a token, a proof showing that it happened, and it was real. I really experienced that life in Japan, I really had the best time surrounded by my friends, and I really loved that girl with all my heart.

   Those scars may hurt, but they will keep on carrying my legacy from Japan and remind my heart that it was, in fact, not a dream. And that the love we shared is forever engraved. Fate may have torn us apart, but what lingers is an undying bond of love, a red thread leading us to our next destination, knowing our dream life was unreachable but was in fact, even for a little while, our reality.

   Reply
   1. 

      August 11, 2026

      Binati

      Such a thoughtful response.

      The characters are designed as mirrors, aren’t they. They reflect, showing you the picture all the time, whether you want to see yourself and the other person, or not.

      Thank you so much for sharing something personal right back. When I watched the film, I could not fathom how everyone was obsessed with the romance only when that wasn’t all the film had to say… What you say about “as a way of holding fate hostage,” gosh, that made me so sad for some reason. The realism of that, clashed so harshly with the escapism of the film.

      You are right: emotions and experiences endure.

      Sometimes, the comment is so much better than the original article. This is one such instance. Thank you so much for writing about your life, love and loss.

      Reply

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