Title: Your Name Vol. 2
Author: Makoto Shinkai (Story), Ranmaru Kotone (Art)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
Genre: Sci-Fi, Romance
Publication Date: November 27, 2017
The Story
In Volume two of Your Name, Taki has lost contact with Mitsuha and ever since he did, the body swapping between the two of them have stopped. The fact that he hasn’t swapped begins to gnaw away at him to the point where he decides to draw every place he remembers from the times he had swapped with Mitsuha. He then takes these drawings with him as he goes on a journey to find Mitsuha. Okudera and Tsukasa tag along to “help,” but they do everything but help Taki in his search.
Taki is about to give up until they stop at a ramen shop. There, the waitress recognizes the drawing as Itomori, a town that was destroyed by a comet three years ago. It suddenly dawns on Taki that the person he was switching with was from three years ago and was a victim of the comet’s collision with the town. Wanting to see it for himself, Taki heads there and all of a sudden, all of the messages from Mitsuha in his phone begin to erase themselves until there is nothing left. While this discourages Taki at first, he remembers about the shrine that he visited with Mitsuha’s grandmother and Yotsuha so he decides to head there.
When Taki reaches the shrine, he drinks Mitsuha’s sake and falls to the ground. There, he experiences Mitsuha’s memories and wakes up in her body once again. He uses this rare opportunity to formulate a plan with Teshi and Sayaka in order to save the town from the comet’s collision, but convincing everyone that they’re all going to die is a lot tougher than it seems!
I remember seeing the big reveal in the movie and I, honestly, wasn’t expecting that. Reading it again in the volume brought back those emotions and it was just as sad now as it was then. Everything from the movie continues to be adapted perfectly, but I wonder how the story is going to wrap up. I remember there being reports that Makoto Shinkai was unhappy with the way that the movie ended so I’m wondering if there will be a different ending to the manga’s story versus the film or if they will just go for the one to one adaptation.
Characters
The biggest spotlight here was actually on Mitsuha. The revelation that she died when the comet struck three years ago… along with her grandmother, Teshi, Sayaka and Yotsuha was rather disturbing. Here are these characters that you spent the first volume getting to know and now you come to the realization that they had all passed on due to an event beyond their control. You really got to feel sympathy for Taki through their deaths because Taki played the same role as the reader in the fact that he was just getting to know all of these people, just like we were getting to know them as characters. While Taki was the main centerpiece here as far as characters go, the volume shifted the importance over to Mitsuha with just one revelation.
Taki, himself, has begun to feel the effects of Mitsuha’s death on so many different levels. Finding out that she passed on was jarring enough for him, but when he realized that she doesn’t exist anymore, he begins to forget just who she actually is. The fact that he desperately wants to try and remember who it is tells a hidden message that loved ones should never be forgotten, even in death. As far as personality goes, Taki really hasn’t changed all that much. He is a bit more determined, but that’s because he has this driving force behind him that pushes him forward, even if he forgot just what exactly it is he’s looking for.
Tsukasa and Okudera don’t really do much in the way of helping Taki out, but it was still nice to see them mixed into everything. The fact that they would rather spend time looking at mascots, playing games and eating food rather than helping Taki’s search is supposed to be comedic relief, but just image if something like that happened to you in real life. A couple of your friends offer to help you search for something important and then they do whatever they want and not even lift a finger. You would begin to ask what the point was of them tagging along and maybe you’d even start to question their friendship. Taki was a bit annoyed by all of this, as would be anyone, and it made me smile when he just told them to go home as he left for the shrine. I know that wasn’t the intention when he wrote the note, but deep down, I smiled because it seemed like a convenient excuse to drop some dead weight and I won’t lie; it’s something that I would totally do in that situation!
Aren’t I just a wonderful person?
Final Thoughts
So far, the manga adaptation of Your Name has been flawless. The same kind of emotion you got from seeing the film is being conveyed here in black and white. Maybe it’s because I did see the film that I can enjoy this manga that much more. I can still envision the scenes as I flip through the pages, hear the wonderful score from RADWIMPS at certain scenes and all of that just enhances the experience for me, but at the same time, it’s very easy to think about if I were someone who hadn’t seen the movie. Everything is portrayed in such a way where it still makes that connection to a first-time reader. Nothing is confusing and everything is written in a way where it’s easy to understand what is happening to the characters and the world around them.
Your Name continues to be a major success and with FUNimation releasing the English version on November 7, this volume of Your Name makes a perfect companion to the movie. My only regret is that the volumes’ releases are spaced so far apart that we won’t get volume three until March. It would have been awesome to get all three volumes by now so we could listen to the movie and flip through the pages to see how well it would match up, thus turning a physical manga into a pseudo audio book. It’s still possible to try and do, but we’ll just have to wait a little bit longer for something like that!
If you haven’t seen the movie or read the manga adaptation yet… you owe yourself a great debt to do so. There is a reason why Your Name has received such critical acclaim worldwide… this series is just that good!
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press
