The Three Stages In Your Name

Kimi no Na wa or better known as Your Name is a 2016 animated film. The film follows two high school students, Mitsuha Miyamizu and Taki Tachibana, who try to figure out the mysterious phenomenon of their ability to switch bodies with one another. Certain aspects of Your Name follow the monomyth pattern, but modifications have been made to the three big stages: departure, initiation, and return. Your Name fits the monomyth pattern but to an extent. Due to the unusual plot line of the film, the initiation stage and departure stage do not follow the traditional hero’s adventure timeline.

In the departure stages, the film demonstrates three of the five substages; special birth in an ordinary world, supernatural aid, and crossing the first
This is when the character leaves their “known” world and crosses over into the “new” world. While in the “new” world is when the initiation stage begins. Unlike traditional hero adventures where the hero character crosses one major threshold, in Your Name the hero characters cross multiple thresholds whenever they switch bodies. Both characters are considered to be hero characters due to the fact that they cross into “new’ worlds multiple times. Because of the unusual timeline of the film, the characters switch from the departure stage and initiation stage more than once. In regards to the traditional hero’s adventure, Mitsuha and Taki do not encounter a threshold guardian; different from traditional hero
Unlike the traditional hero’s adventure, where the hero wins allies after solving their problems, the hero characters in Your Name become allies with each other. Mitsuha and Taki first solve the problem of switching bodies. Once Taki and Mitsuha realize that they are not dreaming, but are rather living a reality, in order to not disrupt their lives they leave diary entries in each other’s phone to keep each other up to date. Both heroes help each other with each other’s personal life; Taki helps Mitsuha become popular and Mitsuha advises Taki on how to improve his love life. From the diary entries, it is apparent that Mitsuha wins Taki a date and wishes him good luck and that by the time his date is over, the comet will be visible in the sky. Taki does not understand what she means by this, due to the fact that Mitsuha is three years in the past, or he is three years in the future. On the night that the comet arrives, it splits into pieces and a meteor hits Itomori, killing the town including Mitsuha. Their ability to switch bodies stops due to their connection being severed. To solve this problem, Taki tries to figure out why and goes on a quest to find Mitsuha later learning that she had died the night of the comet. During his quest, he begins to lose memory of her. Taki participates in “Musubi,” which is when someone drinks something it joins their soul. He drinks the