Country girl Mitsuha is constantly having a dream about living the life of a boy in Tokyo. Taki lives a busy life in the city while also working a part-time job. One day, Mitsuha wakes up in a room that is not her own and discovers she is living her dream in Taki’s body. Alternatively, Taki finds himself in her body in the country. This is the story of how their actions impact each other’s life.
As the most wildly popular animated movie since Spirited Away, Your Name has gathered international attention, not to mention made new anime fans. So if you enjoyed the movie, here are some other anime recommendations you may enjoy.
*Note: I’m only putting anime series here, not other movies. Makoto Shinkai has a handful of other great movies, yes, but they aren’t included on this list.
Anime Like Your Name
For Fans of Body Swapping
Kokoro Connect
At Yamaboshi Academy, there is a club called the Student Cultural Society, a club of five students who don’t fit into any other clubs. Everything is normal and boring until one day the club members start switching bodies. Forced to be closer than ever before, emotional scars and hidden secrets prepare to come out.
The only thing that separates Kokoro Connect and Your Name in overall plot is distance. In Kokoro Connect, they are all club mates and in close proximity when they start body switching while they are distant strangers in Your Name. This, in essence, deeply effects the way that the plot unfolds, but rest assured, there is drama abound.
Erased
Recently, the detached, struggling manga artist Satoru Fujinuma finds himself going back in time to just minutes before tragedy strikes around him. He has saved many lives with this power of “Revival,” but when he is wrongly accused of murdering someone close to him, Fujinuma finds himself sent back to his childhood. As he discovers, the recent death in his life is somehow connected the kidnap-murder of three children in the area that is about to happen. This time, he may be able to use his power to save more than just one life, easing his past regrets in the process.
Although Erased isn’t specifically body switching, it is about the separation of mind and body, as in a man goes back to his body as a child but still has an adult mind. While Erased is much darker in plot, it is a very cathartic anime for the characters, much like Your Name.
ReLife
Arata Kaizaki is an unemployed 27-year-old that has thus far been living with the financial support of his parents and part-time jobs. After leaving his first job after only three months, he has not been able to find proper work. However, after a night of drinking with his friends, he meets a mysterious man that offers a drunk Arata a pill that will turn him 17 again so that he can redo a year of his youth, all expenses paid. Will Arata find what he needs to live a happy life after one year in high school again?
While not technically body switching, ReLife does feature a man turning into a younger version of himself where he gets to sort of re-do a period of his youth. Both ReLife and Your Name are all about sorting out your life and your future while also being very obviously introspective about it.
For Fans of Sorting Out Your Life
Hanasaku Iroha
Ohana Matsumae is an energetic teenager that lives with her mother in Tokyo. However, when her mother decides to run off with a man, she is sent to the country to live with a grandmother she has never met. As it turns out, her grandmother runs a traditional Japanese inn, but due to her frivolous mother, treats Ohana quite coldly. Eager to earn her keep and grandmother’s affection, Ohana begins the hard work that makes sure an inn runs smoothly.
Like in Your Name, Hanasaku Iroha is about a person moving from the city to the country. While it is not body swapping, the culture shock is still there. In Hanasaku Iroha, however, there isn’t much of an overall plot aside from finding out where you belong and what your want to do with your life. However, with Your Name there is the how and the why of the circumstances to unravel.
Golden Time
Banri Tada has finally been accepted into a private law academy in Tokyo, but due to an accident, he is without all his memories. During his freshmen orientation, he meets Mitsuo Yanagisawa who is consummately stalked by Kouko Kaga, a girl from his old school. Banri begins to hit it off with both of them. As they spend more time together, their fates seem intertwined, but for better or worse?
While Golden Time is more of a romantic comedy, there is no denying the similarities in the drama between the two. Not only do they have their endings in common, but they both provide a nice mature look at romance without being so sappy about it.
Anohana: The Flow We Saw That Day
Jinta Yadomi is living life as a recluse when one day the ghost of his dead childhood friend Menma appears to him and reminds him of a forgotten wish. Thinking she is a hallucination, he ignores it, but when he is later convinced that it is really her, he must gather together his friends that grew apart after her death to put Menma’s spirit to rest.
Part of the reason people liked Your Name was because it was so highly charged emotionally and filled with twists, and that is the same reason people like Anohana. Both are emotional anime series filled with drama and just absolutely beautifully animated.
For Fans of Bittersweet Love
Your Lie in April
Although once a child prodigy in the music world, pianist Kousei Arima is left in a downward spiral after his mother’s death, unable to even hear the sound of his own piano. Even after two years, Arima has all but left the music world behind, disappointing fans and rivals alike, and living in a colorless world. Then one day that that all changes when he is introduced to the beautiful violinist Kaori Miyazono who brings color into his world once more.
First, above anything else, both Your Name and Your Lie in April feature spectacular OSTs, which alone are worth watching them for. However, if that isn’t a selling point, the clean and fluid animation should be. If that still isn’t enough, the feels, man. Both are some of the finest feels evokers you can find out there.
Angel Beats
One evening Otonashi wakes up in a strange place and a strange girl with a gun tells him he is dead. Trying to recruit him to her organization that rebels against God, Otonashi decides to talk to her enemy, a mysterious girl named Angel. After she kills him for being too literal, he finds himself siding with the SSS Battlefront and the oddballs within.
Like Your Name, Angel Beats is another feels evoker with an occasionally good OST, but more so for the rock songs than the ambient music. With the unexpected twists and the fairly good character development, you become highly invested in both, though Your Name works a little quicker because, well, it has to.
Orange
One day Naho receives a letter from herself, one sent from ten years in the future. It details a series of events that transpire in her group of friends, starting with the appearance with the transfer student Kakeru Naruse and ending with his death. The letter instructs her to try and change the future in order to save him and ease the regrets of her future self.
Both Your Name and Orange have a way of making the audience wish that things end a certain way. Desperately engaging them because they just have to know. However, whether they do or not is completely up in the air. While Orange can tend to get a little bit lost in itself at times, like Your Name, it has a story worth hearing by the end.
Did we miss any more anime recommendations that are fitting for Your Name? Let us know in the comments section below.
