Your Name (novel)
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is a Japanese
light novel A light novel (, Hepburn: ''raito noberu'') is a style of young adult novel primarily targeting high school and middle school students. The term "light novel" is a ''wasei-eigo'', or a Japanese term formed from words in the English languag ...
written by
Makoto Shinkai , known as , is a Japanese animator, filmmaker, author, and manga artist. Shinkai began his career as a video game animator with Nihon Falcom in 1996, and gained recognition as a filmmaker with the release of the original video animation (OVA) ' ...
. It is a novelization of the animated film of the same name, which was directed by Shinkai. It was published in Japan by
Kadokawa Kadokawa may refer to: *Kadokawa Corporation, the holding company of the Kadokawa Group **Kadokawa Content Gate and Kadokawa Mobile, both former names for BookWalker **Kadokawa Future Publishing, a subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation and the publis ...
on June 18, 2016, a month prior to the film premiere.


Plot

Mitsuha Miyamizu, a high school girl living in the fictional town of Itomori in
Gifu Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Gifu Prefecture has a population of 1,991,390 () and has a geographic area of . Gifu Prefecture borders Toyama Prefecture to the north; Ishikawa Prefecture to the northwest, F ...
's mountainous
Hida region is the northern portion of Gifu Prefecture in the Chūbu region of Japan.Hida Promotional Office ...
is fed up with her life in the countryside and wishes to be a handsome
Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
boy in her
next life The afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's identity or their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body. The surviving ess ...
. Later, Taki Tachibana, a high school boy living in Tokyo, wakes up and realizes that he is Mitsuha, who herself has somehow ended up in Taki's body. Taki and Mitsuha realize they have switched bodies. They start communicating with each other by leaving notes on paper or leaving memos in each other's phones. As time passes, they become used to the body swap and start intervening in each other's lives. Mitsuha helps Taki develop a relationship with his female coworker, Miki Okudera, and eventually to go on a date with her, while Taki helps Mitsuha in becoming more popular in her school. Mitsuha tells Taki about a comet that is expected to pass close to Earth in a few days time, and how she is excited to see it, as it will arrive on the same day as her town's festival. One day, Taki suddenly wakes up back in his body. After an unsuccessful first date with Okudera, he tries contacting Mitsuha but fails. He later finds that they have stopped switching bodies and eventually decides to visit Mitsuha in her hometown. Without knowing the name of her village, he travels around the Hida region, relying solely on the sketches of the village's scenery he has drawn from memory. Finally, a restaurant server recognizes the town in Taki's sketch as Itomori. He is then told that a fragment of the comet Tiamat fell to earth three years ago and obliterated Itomori and its surroundings, killing a third of the town's population. As Taki looks through the records of fatalities from the incident, he finds Mitsuha's name. Attempting to reconnect with Mitsuha, Taki goes to Mitsuha's family shrine. Realizing that his and Mitsuha's timelines were actually separated by a few years the whole time, Taki drinks ''
kuchikamizake or ''Kuchikami no sake'' is a kind of rice-based alcohol produced by a process involving human saliva as a fermentation starter. Kuchikamizake was one of the earliest types of Japanese alcoholic drinks. ''Kuchi'' means "mouth", ''kami'' means " ...
'' that Mitsuha made and left behind as an offering, hoping to reconnect to her body before the comet strikes. Succeeding, he wakes up in her body on the morning of the festival, and realizes that he still has time to save the town. Convincing her friends about the comet, he gets their help in trying to evacuate the village. While they continue with their plans, Taki realizes that Mitsuha might be in his body at the shrine and heads back to the mountain to meet with her. Mitsuha wakes up in Taki's body at the shrine and wanders to the summit of the mountain. Taki arrives at the summit as well; although they feel each other's presence, they are unable to see each other, due to the separation in their timelines. As the sun sets, and both Taki and Mitsuha realize it is
twilight Twilight is light produced by sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere, when the Sun is below the horizon, which illuminates the lower atmosphere and the Earth's surface. The word twilight can also refer to the periods of time when this il ...
, they are transported back into their own bodies and are finally able to see each other. Taki tells Mitsuha to convince her estranged father, the mayor of Itomori, to evacuate the town. They decide to write each other's names on their hands as they return to their respective timelines, but Mitsuha suddenly disappears before she can start writing her name. As time begins to pass, their memories of each other start to fade and disappear; both of them forget each other's names, as well as the events that happened between them. On the verge of giving up, Mitsuha realizes that Taki wrote "I love you" on her hand instead of his name. Mitsuha confronts her father again with a new spirit of determination, and soon after, the broken fragment of Comet Tiamat crashes to Earth, destroying Itomori. Eight years later, it is revealed that Mitsuha persuaded her father to conduct an emergency evacuation drill across the surrounding districts, allowing most of Itomori's residents to escape in time and survive. Taki has graduated from university and is trying to find a job, but still has lingering feelings that he is missing something important to him. He finds himself attracted to items relating to Itomori, such as magazines and people he thinks are familiar (whom he actually knew when he was in Mitsuha's body). While riding separate trains, Taki and Mitsuha are stunned to see each other when their trains suddenly run parallel to one another. They get out at their next stops and try to find each other; they finally meet at a staircase and, feeling as though they know each other somehow, ask for each other's name.


Release

By September 2016, the light novel had sold around 1,029,000 copies. In the second week in September 2016, the novel had sold around 112,000 more copies. After the wide release of the film adaptation in August 2016, the novel reached the top place in
Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in Nov ...
's weekly
bunkobon In Japan, are small-format paperback books, designed to be affordable and space saving. The great majority of ''bunkobon'' are A6 (105×148mm or 4.1"×5.8") in size. They are sometimes illustrated and like other Japanese paperbacks usually ...
sales charts for three consecutive weeks. The novel has sold over 1.3million copies as of December 2016. In August 2018, the novel was released in an
audiobook An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements. Spoken audio has been available in sc ...
format, with
Romi Park Due to technical issues, Park's name is often written as due to the '' Hyōgaiji'' status of (which is the kan'on reading of the kanji). She has also been referred by 朴路美 and 朴王路美. is a Japanese actress and singer affiliated wi ...
reading. Shortly afterwards, a follow up light novel was released on August 1, 2016, under the title ''Your Name. Another Side:Earthbound''. The novel is set during the events of ''Your Name'' through the perspective of Mitsuha's friends and family. The light novel was written by Makoto Shinkai and Arata Kanoh, with illustrations by Masayoshi Tanaka and Hiyori Asakawa. In 2017, both light novels were published in English by
Yen Press Yen Press, LLC is an American manga and graphic novel publisher co-owned by Kadokawa Corporation and Hachette Book Group. It published ''Yen Plus'', a monthly comic anthology, between 2008 and 2013. In addition to translated material, Yen Press ...
.


Manga adaptation

A
manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...
version of the novel has also been written by Makoto Shinkai and illustrated by Ranmaru Kotone. The manga was licensed by
Yen Press Yen Press, LLC is an American manga and graphic novel publisher co-owned by Kadokawa Corporation and Hachette Book Group. It published ''Yen Plus'', a monthly comic anthology, between 2008 and 2013. In addition to translated material, Yen Press ...
for an English release, with the first volume released on June 20, 2017. ''Another Side:Earthbound'' also received a manga adaption, written by Arata Kanou and illustrated by Junya Nakamura, through the Cycomics app in July 2017. It was licensed by Yen Press, with the first volume releasing on December 11, 2018.


See also

* ''
Your Name is a 2016 Japanese animated romantic fantasy film produced by CoMix Wave Films. It depicts a high school boy in Tokyo and a high school girl in the Japanese countryside who suddenly and inexplicably begin to swap bodies. The film was commissi ...
'', the movie the book was based on * ''Your Name'' (album), soundtrack album for the film by
Radwimps is a Japanese rock band who debuted independently in 2003 and signed with Toshiba EMI in 2005. The band's name, Radwimps, was formed from two English slang terms, " rad" and "wimp". According to the band, the coined word had several meanings, i ...


References


External links

* {{Cycomi 2016 Japanese novels Fiction about body swapping Novels based on films Light novels Kadokawa Corporation Seinen manga Yen Press titles