Warning: The idea for Your Name came from a single image, which director Makoto Shinkai envisaged as the film’s ending. We don’t think revealing that image will spoil your enjoyment of the film, but if you’d rather not know, we’d advise you to watch the trailer instead.

Hollywood has built a billion-dollar industry out of chance encounters with strangers on the street. Your typical rom-com Joe is barely able to leave the house without bumping into the manic-pixie indie girl of his dreams – or, if he’s unlucky, Cameron Diaz – but in Makoto Shinkai’s mind-meltingly beautiful body-swap drama Your Name, our lovers don’t meet until the very last frame.

Proving the time-worn adage that every end is a beginning, the 43-year-old anime director set out to make a film whose teenage leads, disenchanted country-girl Mitsuha and city-kid Taki, inexplicably find themselves waking up in each others’ bodies. What starts as a comedy of adolescent manners quickly escalates with the appearance of a comet in the night sky, which seems to offer a clue as to their mysteriously connected fates. But Shinkai isn’t afraid to make us wait as the pair embark on an epic journey through space and time to find each other.

“I wanted to make a film where two people meet at the end,” says Shinkai, a mercurial talent who has long been whispered of as the new Hayao Miyazaki in anime-buff circles. “What we’re dealing with here is possibilities, because you never know who you might meet tomorrow. You might meet someone who will change your life entirely, and I think that possibility is very important to young people.” The feeling has certainly proved infectious in Japan, where the film has shattered box-office records to become the fifth highest-grossing anime of all time, and the biggest not to feature Miyazaki’s name in the credits. According to the Japan Times, young fans have begun flocking to the flight of stairs in Tokyo where our star-crossed lovers meet, perhaps in the hope of finding their own special someone. But for Shinkai, the payoff is less important than the yearning for connection that drives his characters.

“Teenagers have that giant ideal (about love) which is totally unrealistic, but I just want to give people hope,” he says. “I’m not trying to say there’s this great destiny or your dreams will come true. I’m just trying to say that there is tomorrow, so even if you think something might not come true, it’s worth trying because you don’t know. And by trying for a better tomorrow, you can make today better.”