I’ve always been a fan of Japanese animation (anime). Not that I would call myself an otaku by any means, but the sheer amount of detail they put into these animations is mind-blowing, and Your Name (Kimi no na wa) was no exception. I went to see the movie with Aoi and Hannele one evening. Hannele had previously said that she had never watched anime, which was a surprise. It was time to change that.
Before you even ask: yes, the movie was pretty darn good and beautiful. It did its best to punch you in the tear ducts. Although the movie was clearly made to appeal to people all over the world and not just Japan, some characteristics of Japanese cinema and anime were present, like a trailer-like musical intro (super weird for a movie) and a more relaxed way to handle sex-related humor. Without spoiling too much, I’ll just say that boobs were a recurring theme in this serious magical love story.
Walking back home from the theater, Aoi and I discussed one part of the movie where the rural female character, having switched bodies with a Tokyo male, struggles to find the right way to say “I/me” to other Tokyo guys. In the Finnish subtitles, all the variants he/she goes through were dialectical variants (mie, mää, mä, mie, meikä) of the Finnish personal pronoun, but according to Aoi, such geographical variation of “I/me” doesn’t exist in Japanese. The trick in the original dialogue was that the word “watashi” was weird coming from a (supposed) male who was in the company of very close friends. Therefore, “ore” and “boku” were more natural in that situation. It was nice to learn that linguistic tidbit in an otherwise not-that-learning-oriented meeting.
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