Those Storytellers

Woohooo another update here, and all within the same month! I wasn't intending to write another post today but then 2 of my favorite persons in this world, my close friends Debs and Tin, were excited after seeing that I updated this blog. I'm touched (and bored, honestly) so I figured another post would be good. I still can't say for certain if my uncharacteristic consistency for the past week will last but until then, let's see just how many topics I can exhaust in my attempt to compensate for my almost 2yr long absence. Today, let's talk about how original the plots of Japanese Anime are. I am so impressed by the creativity in their concepts. I especially love how well they marry traditional beliefs and modern circumstances. They're a superb bunch of storytellers, something that I can only ever aspire to be. 

Blazer and shorts set: from a local store in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | Inner top: Topshop | Shoes: Adidas NMD | Bag: Goyard St Louis

Among my favorite animated movies is the Japanese film 'Your Name'. The protagonists, teenage boy Taki who's living in busy Tokyo and Mitsuha, the teenager who's tired of her slow rural life in fictional Itomori, were bound by an unexplainable yearning for someone whom they have no recollection of. They just feel an extreme loss for something that they feel they've lost although they have nothing to account for this feeling. At the beginning of the film, we see that they have been swapping bodies intermittently and without warning. Upon waking up, their memories of the day prior would seem distant, if not completely erased, just as how our dreams are usually forgotten once we've woken up. After regular occurrences of days when they couldn't recall what happened, they thought of a way to leave notes for each other to somehow have clues of what's happening to them. Soon, they have gotten to know snippets or two about each other which naturally raised their curiosity about the other. Mitsuha was the first to muster up courage to go see the other. She searched for Taki in Tokyo only to be disappointed because he didn't recognize her. They separated with Mitsuha's hair ribbon being left in the possession of Taki. The day came when Taki became aware that they've stopped swapping bodies and all the notes that Mitsuha has left in his phone have disappeared. This time, he mustered up the courage to travel to Itomori to look for her. 

But what Taki found in Itomori surprised both him and  me, of course. The town was completely wiped out, as a result of a comet that hit it 3yrs ago. The catastrophe killed all of the residents in the area, including Mitsuha. It turned out that time is non-linear, as many academics have hypothesized. The lives of Mitsuha and Taki were happening simultaneously, despite the 3yr difference in their timeline. Spoiler alert: they eventually had their happy ending. Taki drank the kuchikamizake, an alcoholic drink that includes human saliva among its ingredients, which was made by Mitsuha. This action connected the two once more and fortunately, through this, they have saved the town of Itomori from its supposed extinction. Yup, I know. I have downplayed much of the plots of the film but this is my abridged version based on how I understood it. To this day, I don't know how the swapping began. Was it because Mitsuha prayed to the gods? I just know that the red ribbon symbolized the invisible string that connected them to one another, irrespective of time and place. 

The film deals with various concepts that I am highly fascinated with including time, fate, and fleetingness of dreams and memories. The film was a brave attempt to explore all of these vague concepts that are individually, already difficult to comprehend, so as a whole, they're much more difficult to wrap one's mind around. I think that life has too many circumstances that cannot be explained by everyday pragmatism so when something offers us an alternative explanation, we are left wondering. Not that I don't believe that they are real. If anything, I think that when a concept offers a probable explanation, then it must be considered to be true until proven false. Anyway. I can't help but feel that somehow Taylor Swift has watched either this film or another Anime while writing her new song "Invisible String". The parallelism cannot be denied. And for that matter, my love for her new album cannot also be denied.

These photos were taken in the bustling and hustling Tokyo last May 2018. As can be seen in my several attempts to cross the busy Shibuya crossing, it is an almost impossible feat to leisurely have your photos taken of there. I am sorry to the people whom I inconvenienced with my sudden stops hahahaha This trip is among the best and most memorable travels I've been to. It's been filled with crazy antics, random dancing and singing in the public, and too much 'Oh no, why did we do that' troves of embarrassing materials that could last for years to come. It's also during this trip that I danced to the tune of Your Name's Nandemonaiya (the soundtrack of the film deserves accolades too) while in transit from Tokyo to Osaka. Crazy memories always make for the best stories.