Hear me out- this is an unintentional trans story... for the first half.

There is something inherently otherworldly and compelling about a film like Your Name. Its strengths lie mostly in its sheer visual splendor and master over visual storytelling over tell-don't-show approach to unraveling its core mystery- but I think it does still have a lot to say about this specific threshold in life. The end of youthful innocence, the different ways we find appreciation and meaning in life, the different things people get out of bed every day so they can experience. And of course the animation, the cinematography, the voice acting, you all already know it's top notch, it's 2025 and all of that was known 9 years ago.

This is where I may lose some of all, because I acknowledge that this reading is purely speculative and more of a fun intellectual exercise, because I'm not confident any of this was intentional- but I feel there is a very easily read version of this story as a trans allegory... at least until the body swapping stops. even then though, it lingers.

Of course, there's the nature of being explicitly shown someone swapping identified gender by switching bodies in the film, and the fact that Mitsuha wishes explicitly to wake up as a handsome boy living in Tokyo... and that's what she gets. She's exhausted by a life where she is expected to perform a quiet and subservient femninity. There is the typical, mildly exploitative self fondling of boob or shock at discovering one actually has a c*ck that was a staple in the body swap comedies you would see from Hollywood films some time ago, but it's a lot more tasteful here. It's not for shock value and it is honestly probably exactly how a teenager would react to waking up and discovering they suddenly have different parts than they used to. Naturally; it goes further- Mitsuha and Taki discover that they enjoy subverting gender roles for themselves by performing the opposite of their assigned genders-- to the point that they even forget which pronouns they'd be expected to refer to themselves as. They even flirt with members of the same sex in hopes of dating them through the other person's body. While it must be stressed that trans people do not suddenly develop different personalities, and so the fact it's clearly established they act different than normal in each other's bodies, it does also unintentionally reflect the performative nature of being a closeted trans person with desires to break free or just.. how ultimately pointless and performative the social construct of gender is, anyway.

I admit that my theory falls apart a bit when the body swapping stops, as they seem comfortable interacting with each other in their born bodies when they are able to reconnect later on, across time and space- but throughout eh film there is a theme conveyed that the two are searching for something they can't identify, and yet it continues to drive them the entire time. they gaze into windows and mirrors and just know something is deeply wrong with their perception of reality. It's limited, some hidden truith lies beneath, but what? (sound familiar?)

It's clearly not explicitly meant to read this way, but I think it's remarkable how much you can mind form looking at it through this lens.