Here is some early concept art for Kimi no Na wa.
The working title is given in the top-left corner of this image. What was the title?
(This question has been gleefully lifted from reddit.)
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Sign up to join this communityHere is some early concept art for Kimi no Na wa.
The working title is given in the top-left corner of this image. What was the title?
(This question has been gleefully lifted from reddit.)
The title is 「夢と知りせば」 Yume to shiriseba, which one might translate as "Had I known it was a dream".
To appreciate the significance of this title, one should know that this is part of a tanka by Ono no Komachi, a Heian-era poet. In Japanese, the text is:
思ひつつ
寝ればや人の
見えつらむ
夢と知りせば
覚めざらましを
There are many scholarly translations of this poem; here is Donald Keene's version:
Thinking about him
I slept, only to have him
Appear before me―
Had I known it was a dream
I should never have wakened.
Shinkai mentions this poem as an inspiration in this interview:
その未来の物語を小野小町の和歌『思ひつつ寝ればや人の見えつらむ 夢と知りせば覚めざらましを』(訳:あの人のことを思いながら眠りについたから夢に出てきたのであろうか。夢と知っていたなら目を覚まさなかったものを)を引っ掛かりとして、アニメーションのフィールドの中で描く事が出来ると思いました。
As a side note, the text beneath the working title reads ―男女とりかえばや物語 - roughly, "boy and girl Torikaebaya Monogatari". The Torikaebaya Monogatari ("The Changelings") is another Heian-era work, about a boy and girl who each behave as members of the opposite gender. That's basically what Kimi no Na wa is, after all, except with full-on body-swapping.