It’s no secret that works across Makoto Shinkai’s career bear heavy emphasis on themes of separation. Starting as early as his debut short movie, Voices of a Distant Star (ほしのこえ / Hoshi no Koe, 2002), telling a story of two star-crossed lovers separated by time and space, or 5 Centimeters Per Second (秒速５センチメートル / Byousoku 5 Centimeter, 2007) with its powerful message about how difficult is it to hold on to your first love. Be it Garden of Words (言の葉の庭 / Koto no Ha no Niwa, 2013), with its separation in a form of age gap between a high school student and literature teacher, or his most recent movie, Your Name (君の名は / Kimi no Na wa, 2016), which I’d like to talk about today.

When talking about Your Name, one has a lot of space to focus on, as Makoto Shinkai excels at giving his stories extra dimension. I didn’t feel like any in-depth analysis from me would do the movie justice, and to be frank, there’s already so much material available online about the movie, one would think there’s not even anything left to talk about anyway.

That being said, I do have something to talk about. Your Name, as many would agree, is a movie you can watch over and over and keep noticing new things every time. It took me about two viewings to grasp the story, but certain touches durig the twilight scene in particual caught my attention when watching the movie for the third time few days ago. Touches I don’t recall anyone really talking about, be it due to them being too subtle to be deemed worthy analysing, or too subtle to even be noticed. Either way, I thought it might be an interesting experiece to share this with you, as just a single example of Makoto Shinkai’s incredible attention to details, as well as an example of what helps to elevate the movie to where it rightfully stands as one of the top 10 most successful traditionally animated movies of all time.

My respect to YouTuber Nerdy Shenanigans for his excellent analysis (which you should definitely watch) about how Makoto Shinkai uses cinematography to amplify the themes of separation in Your Name by (among other techniques) placing straight vertical lines right in the middle of some of his shots, often trapping a character at one side. Something that can easily go unnoticed, yet works so beautifully to convey the message. And Makoto Shinkai uses this technique throughout a lot. Even in the opening sequence and promotional posters.

I consider understanding that crutial when talking about the twilight scene, or kataware-doki. When Mitsuha and Taki stand facing each other, yet not being able to interact, as their respective times are not in sync, aforementioned technique is used to amplify the separation, this time using glow of the sun to draw the line. Both main characters try to reach their hands, blocking the sun and temporarily erasing the line, only for it to re-appear as they grab onto an empty space.

And then the twilight begins, erasing the separation line in extremely clever way both literally, by hiding the sun beyond horizon, and metaphorically, as Taki and Mitsuha meet for the first time in the very next cut.

And that one sentence is basically this entire article. It was more of a simple observation rather than analysis, and to be honest, I was hesitant about sharing it, almost ending up discarting it, because of how little information value it bears. But hopefully, you found it interesting anyway. As mentioned above, Makoto Shinkai excels at non-verbal storytelling and I wanted to share with you just one incredibly clever example of it.