I'm embarrassed to say how long it took me to realize the first five seconds of the video were you making fun of people making lame jokes off of the movie's title and not you saying you'd ban anyone in the comments named Emma lmao Your Name is peak though. I haven't watched it since well before my egg cracked, and after watching this vid I'd like to give it another watch now that I've grown so much since then.
A few years ago, my brother in law forced us all to watch Your Name. I thought it was a nice movie, but not like, blown away by it. Anyway, she is now my sister in law.
Haha, before my egg cracked I watched it with my grandparents. I think I wanted to share it with them because I had been drawn to gender swap stories for most of my life, and here's this well loved, critically acclaimed anime movie that isn't really trans, so having them watch it wouldn't reveal too much of myself to them.
As someone who's both autistic and has chronic pain, body swaps have always fascinated me What parts of me are in my brain, and which in the body? Would my aversion to certian sensations carry over? Would who ever got my body have to deal with them? If someone suddenly had all the pain I experience in my bones daily would they react, or would they act as normal as I do Fascinating stuff to ponder
For real! There was this one story I read where a character's soul or whatever moved to someone else, and they had to deal with their depression. But if your mind can exist separate from your brain, you could be completely different in a different one. Like autism as far as we can tell is a difference in the development of the brain. If your mind was running on someone else's brain,,, how would that work?
well, your brain is technically part of your body, although it is what makes you " you. " so i would assume a body swap swaps EVERYTHING except your brain. but yes it is very interesting to see how people would react.
It probably happens to a lot of people with "invisible" disabilities, since at first glance we appear "normal". That is something I often wondered about too, more so as some of my heath conditions were diagnosed late. Like, most people would consider I'm just lazy or just have to do more exercise, until they see me fall unconscious on a bad day. I always asked myself if they would fare better with the same body and brain and if I could live normally in a functioning vessel.
Why only parts of the brain? Its certainly a cool and fun idea to play with. Reminds me of how, in some book about reapers, a reaper gets trained to get their head replaced with a once-thought dead guy who lead some sort of terrorist group among the reapers(for the purpose of population control, which is why the reapers exist in the first place in this book I read called "Scythe"), but that is not what one would think of when thinking of the core concept of body swapping. That's just body-part/consciousness-swapping... aswell as executive control swapping too, maybe(i.e. your hand moving in a manner that resists your influence/without your ability to influence it at all)... Its just the soul that swaps, there's nothing physical about it, unless you consider the soul physical, which I guess if its electrons, then, well, its electrical and not physical? Wait, is electricity physical? Well, apparently everything is not physical at all if you really want to get into it... as its all just energy apparently... Also, muscle memory is a pretty important thing too(as is muscle density, which clearly is not being transferred over to the new host-body for the soul), which is why body-swapping, is sorta literal, as we're swapping over our souls in essence... And definitely not swapping our stomach & gut microbiomes lol... All we're swapping over, is essentially, our brain and MAYBE spine(plus connecting them to the other persons nervous system), if it ever were fully physical/physical enough in the most faithful(to my knowledge) definition of the term 'physical'... Otherwise, we're doing it energy-wise via somehow getting the imaginary, metaphysical thing we call "ourself", to be someone else... which, makes me imagine that there's like some invisible xyz dimension where our consciousness & minds & all our memories & instincts, that we're grafting and shifting over to someone else, in a manner that has negligable effects on the physical appearance of the other person as far as looks go(as for muscle twitches, the resting face, and so on, well, those will match the person now inhabiting the body)... Yes, a very verbose way of explaining this I do confess, kinda cringe that I went into this much depth.
*(Warning, super long comment ahead)* I've always figured it would be interesting to picture a body swap as literally just switching out the part of the brain that deals with memories. It's your memories in another body and that includes another brain. As someone with ADHD, I've often daydreamed what it would be like so suddenly be in a body that could focus properly. What would it feel like to just... sit still and _not_ feel like you're slowly being compressed by inertia? What would it feel like to _think_ using a different brain? How would your senses be different? Would you notice the small variations in colour sensitivity some people have, that isn't identified as being colour blind? Nobody has the same layout and quantity of cones in their eyes, so does that actually change anything? As someone with hypersensitivity that comes and goes depending on how stressed I am, I wonder how it would feel to be in the same situation in a brain that doesn't crack those senses up to painful levels. Because, when it all comes down to it, our entire experience is in our brains. There are literal, actual physical differences in the brains of people who are nonbinary, trans and cisgender that can be identified and are recognized by doctors (source: I've talked to two medical doctors on the subject over supper, one of which went on a long thirty minute explanation of how it all works and was very enthusiastic about the new breakthroughs). If I remember correctly, it's in the endocrine system, which develops independently somehow to your physical sex. Essentially, you can have a female brain in a male body, or half-female half-male brain in a male body, or any percentile in between your body's sex and the opposite sex. If you are trans and go into the body of someone who is cis, you would remember being trans (and as that's the identity of your own body, it's something you can still call yourself) but you would be able to experience what it feels like to be cis. And so on and so forth. Really cool stuff! As for the pain question, that's a really good one to explore! Because your body is "used" to the pain to some degree, or at least is aware it's been around for a long while, even when it still hurts so much that if you gave it to someone else without it they would probably scream, depending on how severe it is. Also, our pain tolerance changes from person to person, but our brains actually also change in response to pain. I heard a really interesting thing about that, from a person who was in excruciating chronic pain refusing to take pain meds so she could tell the difference if she hurt herself more and the doctor told her that she wouldn't be able to tell, because of something with the way your brain deals with constant high levels of pain. It's been a long time since I heard that, from a family member with severe chronic pain, so look it up if you're curious and don't take my word on it, but it is an interesting thought. If you just swap your memories though... Well, how much of dealing with pain is helped by your mind knowing it and being mentally prepared for it? More than we'd think, I'm willing to bet. So probably whoever swaps in would still be shocked and have no idea how to deal with it, despite the body being used to having this issue. I'm willing to bet that in all aspects, except _maybe_ memory issues (if we're pretending that the only thing being swapped is the memories... but does that include the memory organ?), you end up experiencing other people's problems. Including mental diseases (and god, I can't believe how many people are willing to believe that you can have other organ diseases but _brain_ diseases, our most fragile and important organ is 'all in your head' and not real? Come on). So we're talking depression, maybe also other aspects of Alzheimers, Dementia, (would having your memories implanted into the part of the brain that deals with memories make you experience what that's like first hand, with the _other_ symptoms or would it also influence recalling your personal memories?), etc. But also literal brain differences like other neurodivergent traits. Also, we'd be able to see how much of muscle memory is actual muscle memory! How much of PTSD is _also_ stored in the body itself and how much of it is memories being dredged up and interacting with the brain? How much of it is a memory of the brain, extending over the rest? Would having someone go through a trauma response they don't know anything about help? Make it worse, because they panic even more? Would someone informed be able to calm the body and help the original person deal with it when they return, since they helped reduce a small obstacle? Like, if they stayed long enough to ease the body out of reacting that way to some triggers. Would the person who was body swapped end up having that trauma of that trauma themselves, because they remember going through what the other person experiences and it scarred them? What about panic attacks that aren't caused by PTSD? What about dreams and nightmares? What about emotional attachments? How much of your love for a person is your memories of loving that person and how much of it is your body? Would you make the person's body your in fall in love with those you love? How about people you hate, how would you feel to suddenly not really care? So, so, so many interesting things to explore beyond just gender identity, I guess I can only hope to find and maybe someday write these kinds of questions into stories!
one cis guy entering a vc with 3 T girls is a recipe for an awakening. I always make sure to have at least one tboy or otherwise in it at all times if I’m there lest they come for me
Fun fact if anyone's seen "Weathering With You" that film is set in the same timeline as "Your Name" because Mitsuha can seen in it when she was as old as she was when Your Name ended.
i actually went to see Weathering With You with my girlfriend when it first came to theatres in the US. also a great movie. i still need to watch Suzume, since its made by the same people
I really liked how you tackled two very similar tropes (gender swap and body swap) in such vastly different ways. This is the type of content I’d like to make (not necessarily the topic at hand, just the way you went about it and the finesse behind it), you can really tell that you know what you’re talking about and passionate about the subject. Goated video.
I myself don’t really see body swapping stuff, or Your Name as a gender or trans thing. Which probably makes sense since I identify as between agender and genderfluid I just see them as what they are and what they show me, and what I see is a shit ton of man I envy that Ever since I was a little kid I’ve always had such an obsession with anything relating to transformation/shapeshifting, and I’ve always felt such ginormous envy for characters in those situations, but it has never and will never be gender related. All I want is to be able to transform, body swap, whatever, like in these things, but that’s impossible, and I’ll never live out my one wish for my identity and body Great video, made me cry, which made me wanna vent way too much. I guess the point is just that, it’s not just a trans thing, it can be anything, the envy and sadness you feel, it doesn’t have to have the explanation of ‘transness’. Yes I am trans, but my gender is also the part of me I care the least about. I only want to be able to express myself, but physics and life decided I should screw myself and I’ll never do that TLDR: body swap and transformation give big envy for me, but no gender envy, just literal envy
I feel the same way. I've had a fascination with shapeshifting for pretty much my entire life. I think it stems from an early interest in shapes. I'm agender, so I don't really care whether I'm male or female, and I'm not even sure if I would do a lot of shapeshifting if I had that ability, but it always REALLY interests me.
relatable. or at least for me, i don't really relate to most of the trans community, because it feels like a lot of the trans community (and cis people) are just obsessed with their genders. i just don't really care? i only really identify as agender because i don't want to be marked as male or female, and i find it confusing when other people do. that's it. i never had a strong desire as a kid to be another gender, because quite frankly i don't. i see no reason to put people in such arbitrary boxes. i am just a Cool Dude, i don't need to be gendererd because it's not really useful
Haha wow yeah, I can agree. I think there was a reason Ben 10 was my favorite show as a kid 😅 I always loved the transformation scenes and imagining what it would be like to be different aliens..
Body-swapping stories have always been a favorite trope of mine. I don't feel I've ever experienced "dysphoria", but calling it "envy" instead... yeah, that sounds more accurate. Although whatever the case might be, it's something I kept suppressed for most of my life, exploring it only as a trope in stories. That is until I met one very special person near and dear to my heart. She was absolutely trans, and I think she must have seen a kindred spirit in me. She invited me to roleplay all sorts of transformative scenarios with her, and eventually we ended up dating for about 18 months. Unfortunately, she's not around anymore, and not because we broke up... we did break up, but she's also just plain not around in that more permeant way we all eventually end up. Something of a consequence is that I don't really watch body-swap stories as much as I used to, or at least I don't seek them out the same way. I still read plenty of stories on the subject, but something about the trope in visual media just doesn't sit right anymore, and in fact, _Your Name_ in particular has been a movie I've been pretty intentionally avoiding. This is the first time I've even so much as watched a video fully summarizing it, and even that hurts. Maybe because swapping bodies is something we used to joke about with each other, not that it would have fixed everything for either of us, as we were both AMAB, but she was always worried that no amount of transitioning would ever make her "passable," whereas I'd probably pass pretty easy with minimal effort. Also, her dad was straight up transphobic, whereas I'm pretty sure my family would be entirely supportive. Maybe there's also a bit of survivor's guilt in that too. If we could have swapped, not only would she have had an easier transition, she'd also be the one who was still around. It's been nearly 6 years, but I still miss her.
@@Oysters176: Maybe god gave us our bodies, but god also gave us our souls... and if they happen not to match, maybe that's just a test of faith. Why should it be so wrong to alter our bodies, which are temporary, to better match our souls, which are eternal? If it were so wrong, why would god have even allowed us to develop the medical techniques that make it possible?
@@Oysters176: Funny you should mention style restrictions in school, by which I assume you mean clothes, but fashion is just a trend that changes over time and across different cultures. Many types of clothes we currently associate with girls used to be worn by boys and vice versa. Style restrictions are entirely arbitrary and ever changing. Hence again my point that the body is temporary, the soul is eternal. One can be changed, the other is immutable. If god didn't want people to be trans, why make people who feel that way in the first place? Even if you are convinced that no one actually feels that way, that they are just confused and misguided, why should that make any difference at all? The body is temporary, the soul is eternal. When the body is injured, the soul remains intact. If we are all god's children, then at worst in god's eyes someone altering their body should be no different than a child foolishly thinking they know how cut their own hair. They might look weird for a while after doing so, but when the time comes to return to heaven it will all just be an embarrassing story.
@@Oysters176: See, now I don't really understand your position at all. You say you view "god" more like a constant than an entity. So, something like gravity I suppose, but gravity doesn't impose morality, mass simply attracts mass. If god is not an entity than the "rules" by which god operates should be fundamental, not arbitrary. Morality is not fundamental. It doesn't exist in nature where animals act purely on instinct without any concept of right or wrong. If the rules are not imposed by some all-powerful all-knowing entity, then morality is just a set of rules for maintaining an ordered civilization, and thus prone to changing standards across time and culture. Sure, there are some things that are seemingly universal, like don't kill and don't steel, but more fundamental than that the core of any morality should be as simple as do no harm. The thing is there has been extensive scientific study on the issue of transgender, and it turns out forcing people to live in bodies contrary to their own self-identity is very harmful. It's why people who are transgender have a high rate of suicide and that rate only increases further if they are not allowed to receive gender affirming treatment. Maybe you have trouble understanding why someone might feel that way, maybe you find it weird and unsettling, but none of that matters because, so long as they aren't hurting anyone else, what other people do with their own lives shouldn't be any of your business.
You started describing Your Name for a few minutes and it sounded cool, so I paused the video and watched the movie. It is probably the best animated film I have ever watched thank you very much.
Oh boy did i cry watching this video. I watched Your Name pre-egg cracking with my pre-egg cracked sister, and we both fell in love with it in an inexplicable way. I havent given it much thought since then, but now i realize i have to rewatch this movie. The moment the pen drops still destroyed me rewatching it im this video.
Most of the time the RUclips algorithm gives me the worst videos I've ever seen in my life, but sometimes it gives me video analyses made by trans people on media I've never heard of that makes me cry. Great video, 10/10 will cry again.
When I was a kid, I was very into manga/comics where a girl would need to dress as a boy for some reason or another. Everyone would think that they were a boy, and they would have to hide the fact when in dorms and stuff. I didn't like reading the endings because she would reveal that she was a girl and happily ever after. It was my "favourite" trope for a while and I was upset that there wasn't more of that specific plotline out there... I wonder why that was O_o
As a plural system we've always been drawn to stuff about body swaps or people pretending to be someone else, I guess it just kind of speaks our experiences in a way that not really much else can. i think that's interesting!
@@NotFinnishi’m not plural, but from my understanding memory stuff isnt universal among systems Like all brain stuff, everyone experiences it differently
I think for me the allure of body swaps was less the specific envy (I was too repressed to really have that yet) and more just . . . the film or show or book entertaining the idea that there was a way to change identity at all. Like I don't know I was just so starved of validation for the feelings I had that _any_ promise of "hey maybe you don't have to be who folks think you are" was almost intoxicating
4:19 While I’m obviously interested in seeing more stories with trans characters, I don’t think a story needs to explicitly be about trans people in order to meaningfully explore the concept of gender dysphoria. Cis people experience gender dysphoria (and euphoria) too. Just because a cis guy looking like a girl when he doesn’t want to is temporary doesn’t mean that the discomfort he feels is any less real. In that context I feel like body swap stories can be a great argument that everybody deserves to feel like the gender they want to feel like! Not that body swap stories always are, but it’s an avenue worth exploring.
Okay, this might be a bit of a long one. First off, I won't really delve too much into the second half of the video, but what you said hit hard and made me cry, so there's that. Beautifully said. What I do want to talk about is the topic of body swap though, 'cause it's arguably (definitely?) the biggest part of my trans experience, as it pertains to media. While (mainly MtF) genderbend stuff has always intrigued me too for obvious reasons, I've always seemed to connect significantly more to body swap media for some reason. And with that I mean a "read/seen everything on Wikipedia's list of 'body swap appearances in media' plus significantly more" level of connection. I'm not sure quite why that is. For some reason I just feel a stronger connection to characters that specifically swap bodies (again, mostly MtF) rather than genders. I think a part of it might be the change in perspective you mentioned; trying to see things from the perspective of others has always been a core trait I've embodied (perhaps because I didn't want to be myself?), but no matter how well you manage to put yourself into someone else's mindset, it's fully impossible to know for sure how they experience things, right? So there's a huge appeal for that through body swap, but I feel I might be getting off topic. Again, as someone who's spent thousands of hours in this topic, fact is that most body swap media is... Not great. There's really only four main categories; there's definitely exceptions, but virtually all body swap stories belong to one of these four. The largest and most mainstream one is comedy. These often use the same few jokes, a lot of it is just a character reacting unusually or being a fish out of water, and there's usually a lesson to learn about appreciating the other person more or whatever. Body swap is here used as a way to teach a moral lesson or simply entertain; rom- coms also belong to this category, like Your Name. Often very surface-level, it virtually always returns to the status quo at the end. The second one is horror. Body swap as horror can actually work really great, and it's not super uncommon to see either. There's an inherent horror in having your body stolen by someone else, and a lot of body swap horror can go pretty dark and don't always end well; this category can have really great stories in it. The third category is, well, body swap as a fetish. Not gonna delve too deep into this one, all I'll say is that as an asexual person I've spent a lot of time trying to avoid this category, which pops up wayyy more often than I wish it did. The fourth category is using body swap as drama. This is the most interesting category to me. These stories are ones that use body swap as a method to explore various topics. You mentioned Inside Mari in the video; it kind of belongs in this category, and partially to the third one, but for spoiler reasons it also doesn't. Good story though. My personal favourite manga about body swap is Shishunki Bitter Change, which uses body swap over a significant time period to go incredibly in-depth on its main characters. But yeah, not a ton of stories actually use body swap in this way, and I think that's a shame, as it offers very unique ways to analyse not just gender, but mainly differences in perspective. For example, how we're affected by how others perceive us is a really cool topic and I wish more stories would explore it rather than just use body swap as a "haha they're so weird in the other's body, okay now they know how the other struggles, okay they're back to normal now". As for body swap and how it relates to being trans, I will circle back to what I said earlier. I think for me, and probably many others too, it's about a sense of not really wanting to be yourself, so there's that inherent appeal in suddenly being someone else - especially if that other person is another gender. Genderbend moreso feels like a "okay, I'm a girl now, but... I'm not a real girl, so it doesn't matter", at least in my mind? It's that internal transphobia of you telling yourself you can never become a REAL woman (which obviously is false, but hey, dysphoria's gonna dysphoria), but if you suddenly become someone who's been a real woman their entire life, it's...Different? Somehow? Maybe part of it lies in the treatment by others too. Like, if you go from being a guy to a girl, there's two options. Either reality has not changed, only you have, and that basically means your old self is gone and now you have no identity and even if you convince people this is you, SOMEONE will probably report you as missing, and... It's complicated, though it is the most similar experience to that of trans people. The other option is the reality change, aka "everyone now thinks the character's always been a girl", which is actually pretty great (if this could only happen in reality...), but runs the risk of not being familiar enough with the character pre-transformation, so it essentially becomes the same as having had a female protagonist all along (of course, there's exceptions that do it well). And, well, while there's nothing wrong with a story like that, and the character's internal thoughts are what matters most anyway, the appeal of body swap stories is that you can often see both the "before and after", so to speak. You (often) get to follow the character in their new life (well, body), while also getting to see another character in their old life, so the comparison between the two becomes extremely pronounced. That juxtaposition, I think, is a huge aspect of what can make body swap media so appealing for trans people (especially uncracked eggs). Anyway, sorry for making this comment so long! It's just a topic I'm quite passionate about, and it's interesting to see your perspective on it! If you made it through all this, thank you for reading, and I hope I managed to provide another perspective on this topic!
i love reading long passionate comments about topics like this because at the end of the day, that's how all these videos start out lol. i think your perspective on how the trope relates to the trans experience is really interesting and a big part of why i didn't want to outright say "this is bad !" because obviously it's not. another thing i love is getting to see a bunch of people's different views on things like this because while it may be a shared experience to many, everyone has a different perspective on it. i was actually going to bring up shishunki bitter change, but i haven't read that yet so i didn't want to voice any non-fully informed opinions on that, but it does seem really intriguing. i think i have definitely felt the want to be someone else (sometimes even now) but i don't think i've ever really related that back to the body swapping trope. i think something like that is in full force in a work like inside mari, and that's partially why i loved that story and its ending so much.
Ahhh, you replied! That makes me so happy. And that's definitely very true. Like, I think you could discuss these topics for hours if you wanted to go more in-depth, but the base line is that everybody's different, right? We all experience things like gender dysphoria in different ways, and so the way we seek refuge from those feelings are also going to differ drastically, as will the ways we look at both our problems and ourselves. I don't want to spoil Inside Mari for anyone that might be reading this, but I very much agree with you on that; it investigates certain topics in really interesting and thorough ways, and the way it shows through the ending is so good. As for Shishunki, I'd very strongly recommend it! It explores the topic of being someone else in a very different way from something like Inside Mari, but does it with the same kind of thoroughness and deep exploration. And again, thanks for the video, it was really, really good!
hello it is me again, after seeing your first comment i decided that i'd go give shishunki bitter change a proper read. (spoilers for anyone else). honestly the first couple chapters didn't really hook me, i'm pretty sure i had actually read them before and dropped it before i gave it a fair chance. however, over the last couple weeks i've been reading through it, actually i just finished it today, and wow i was really really surprised how much i ended up liking it. the one thing that the story really made me think about was how both yuuta and yui had kinda made their own lives in each other's bodies, and so it makes total since that yuuta wouldn't want to go back. all of the friends they've made, all the relationships, they'd all kinda go back to square one because yui doesn't know yuuta's friends in the same way as he does, and vice versa. i think the way their love interests were dealt with could've been a little more creative, i think them ending up together is a little cliche but then again, it does make sense. you quite literally know the other person inside and out. i like how yuuta struggled with "being a girl, probably because i read that through a trans lens, but just the general life stuff was interesting to see. i think takaoka is an interesting wrench to throw into everything but i don't think his character did all that much until the story was wrapping up. but yeah, i'm glad i finally got to give that manga a read i really did enjoy it, but now i guessss i'll go back to working on school stuff.
@@goIdy Whoa, I did NOT expect this reply, but I'm really glad you went through it and liked it! I do echo some of your thoughts such as re: the ending, but I think everything else in the story more than makes up for that. Interestingly, the original version of the story (which was a shorter webcomic) had a completely different ending, where Yui ultimately ends up unable to deal with it all and, well, yeah. It's a very dark ending to a story, with one of them gone and the other completely alone, and it's interesting to see how the author's thoughts changed when expanding the story into a manga. But yeah, your comment made me very happy to read! You're an awesome RUclipsr, and I can't wait for your future videos! Also, best of luck with your school stuff!
*haven't watched this video yet but: I LOVE YOUR NAME!!! IM A TRANSGIRL AND I THINK ITS AWESOME BECAUSE LIKE ALL HE DOES IS TOUCH HER BOOBS AND LIKE THAT'S LITERALLY ME WHEN I STARTED HRT- 😭 i cant help itttttt boobs are so funnnnnn. i mean there's also things i dont remember about your name but i remember i liked a lot of aspects about how it displayed swapping and gender i think edit: i think i should say that your video was a good enough retelling that i teared up a little and i don't usually cry soooo and i guess if u want to hear about my gender envy it's high pitched anime-girl-like voices. I do voice training and i definitely do have a passing voice, and i do get a lot of euphoria from just that, but i so desperately want to have that anime girl voice. im not sure if i can really explain it but that voice is cuter. it's more like me. maybe...
i totally agree with getting envy over voices. i actually recorded this video originally in a more voice trained voice, buttt didnt like how i sounded, so i redid it all and used my normal voice. i wasn't ready for hundreds of thousands of people to be hearing my voice but here we are lol
damn. 10/10 video essay, made me cry (which is pretty impressive even at 1:30am). i dont particularly know a lot about being trans or being myself - although ive been trans for 4 years and myself for a bit longer i think - but something in here struck a chord that hasnt been struck before and im very grateful to you for making this because of it. for me, i think what i found particularly strong about body swapping in relation to the transgender experience is that for a lot of people, it really does feel like becoming a different person as for those in the closet for extended periods of time, it can become a very difficult task to tell whats you and what is your mask to the point where your true self isnt even made happier by steps you take in your own journey because the mask isnt made happier by it. self identity is a struggle and i think one of the only ways your name and serious body swapping doesnt capture the true nature of it is because in these shows and tropes, the characters arent truly alone or at least theyre picking up a baton of a different character whereas for a trans person, it can feel as if you are building a new person from the ground up almost and even though this is you, the most familiar person in the world, you cant entirely see you for all of you ever because humans cant do that. its been a long journey for me to get where i am and im not happy and it would have been easier for my body to just get swapped but every day is progress and perhaps itll be more satisfying when im where i want to be because i made me into me. fellow trans people and anyone who read all this, have a good life
YES OMG THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO!!! Also a shout-out to ceicocat's video The Incel to Trans Pipeline and Inside Nari?! I love this channel. When I watched Your Name, I could only see the surface. But even in my shallow perception, I knew it was special. The depth of the characters and how the narrative interconnects them felt so profound, this is not the first time I have seen the phrase "we are all connected in life" but as we do live our day to day, the meaning fades, it feels like fancy talk. But we are connected, each of us. So when I saw someone online talk sh1t about Your Name saying it was just a bad story hiding in pretty animation, I got upset, but I couldn't coherently say why. Deep down, I think when critique gets so empty like that, it feels like it's pointless to discuss it with that person, they clearly don't like it. Probably have their own reasons, but still, sucks to see that. It's not just a movie, it's a work of art made by so many people, it's an experience! Its value only increases as our own life intertwines with our interpretation of it. I hope to find and experience more, so I can put together my puzzle pieces myself. If I can help others with theirs, and they help with mine, that would be nice. I like to think this video and channel is one of them! The gender envy and grieving a past that we couldn't have, it is lonely feeling that way but somehow knowing the name of it and feeling seen and heard. It helps. Thank you again and great video!
I would like more body swaps when characters are different species That's basically species swap Only body swap like episode i remember watching as a young kid is the mlp episode where their cutie marks are swapped
It’s really interesting to bring this one up because, yeah. Punk Hazard in One Piece is a real example of it getting used for gags in spite of there being a purpose for it in the arc. As a kid, the concept of body swaps were alluring solely off of an envy perspective, but yeah. I think it’s often not as capitalized upon as it could be. It’s also really interesting to see this from the lens of other people too. Often times it’s easy to forget trans people won’t all share the same experiences and it’s really nice that someone else is openly making content like this. Found your channel like 3 weeks ago and it’s honestly very resonant and great to have content like this out there.
I know bodyswaps aren't that good of a trope for the trans experience, but through day dreaming about them I've been able to deal with these many years of dysphoria So I ended up having an idea, a lot of young trans people cling to bodyswaps before they can properly express those feelings even though they weren't really written with that purpose in mind, so what if I just make a bodyswap story were over the course of the story but parties involved are revealed to be trans to call back to how a lot of those young trans people viewed those stories but actually making it about the trans experience, just making that escapist fantasy a reality, not every trans story has to be about the suffering and who knows maybe there are some people who will get something out of a wush fullfillment story like that
this was a really interesting video! its neat seeing other people's trans experiences reflect on different things (and vice versa)- as a bigender/nb person, i dont share the exact same experiences and reasons for finding these kinds of stories meaningful, but there are similarities. (edit: specifically! i love when bodyswaps show people finding parts of other people/experiences that they DO like. a guy liking having boobs, a girl who's more comfortable in her swapped environment compared to her own. your name touches that, but tbh the biggest example is the one piece bodyswap... for all its issues.) also, half of me is sad that i am unable to watch your name spoiler free, but half of me, actively crying bc of how you described the plot, is very excited to watch this movie youve introduced to me. it seems *really good.* thx!!
I'm not trans, I'm genderfluid but I always had gender envy of swapping bodies with the opposite gender. Eventually as I grew older I realized that feeling like a girl sometimes wasn't normal, and Your Name helped to realize that my true self was hiding all along.
“Your name” reminds me a bit of a live action film about this romance that takes place through time. Same idea minus the body swapping and they ultimately help eachother prevent disasters n try to find a way to meet. I wish I could remember what it’s called but playing with time like that is a great excercise for storytellers
I loved your name and is genuinely one of my favourite films ever, a couple years later I found out in trans and went back and noticed I wanted to swap into someone else so bad and I truly realised what it meant wanting this type of life, I never knew because I didn’t have those words… I can’t count how many times I’ve cried to this movie and more how many times I’ve watched it but every time and more recently I sympathise and feel that connection.
There's this tiny old sci fi show called Farscape - it's got one of the best body swap episodes I've ever seen just because of the love each of the actors and voice actors and puppeteers put into depicting each other. It's a show that involves a lot of aliens brought to life by the Jim Henson company, and a lot of characters that break the mold of traditional gender roles way more than you'd expect from a little early aughts science fiction show. It's got its problems, but I'd recommend watching a few eps and then diving into that body swap. They truly put their heart and soul into that piece and it shows. Also a show that was more playful with the concept then leaning into a particular trope.
Great video! I thought the final conclusion about how it takes active work to avoid feeling kinship with the characters over their "missing piece" as a trans person was particularly incisive. It reminds me of how strongly I felt about Shut Up And Dance by Walk The Moon as a trans anthem, long before I was able to actually name those feelings as trans yearning and discovery, when really it was obviously always actually about dancing in a club. I agree that there's a really conspicuous aysmmetry between Mitsuha's yearning for Taki's life and Taki's lack of interest in Mitsuha's, but I think that's balanced by the way they engage with those lives. Mitsuha, as you say, is basically acting out the role of Taki when she's swapped, but that's not how Taki approaches it at all. When he's obliged to exist as a girl the teenage moodiness and sharp opinions and the strong physical presence that made him pretty alienated and unapproachable as a teenage boy crystalize into an extremely cogent and realized 'sukeban' persona. Taki-as-Mitsuha is still stubborn, and broody, and protective, and athletic, but in a vivacious, self actualized way that ties together nicely and draws people in instead of pushing people away. He seemed to be getting love letters from every lesbian at her school within a couple weeks! Now, none of that sticks in a permanent way, as you said gender roles are fake and the lesson is to move away from them, but I think that him having to push back against the new expectations of girlhood really helped him decide which parts of his identity were actually important to him and be a version of himself that he enjoyed being. Mitsuha's for-the-most-part refusal to do the same is at least as interesting as his divestment from the day to day pleasures of her life.
This was a really good video. You really caught me on a high-emotion crying sort of day, and this hit so hard. Just everything about Your Name sounds so beautiful and everything you said rings so true. I'm also really happy to see some clips from Star vs. the Forces of Evil, because that was a show that I originally watched when I was early in transitioning. It really does feel like Marco in it is very trans-coded in one way or another and I really overall love how it portrays all of that. It could have been a show that put a guy in a dress as a joke. And while it did have a few missteps, I do think overall it did it in a good way. It really feels like Marco, at some point, was more comfortable in a dress using she/her than as a guy. Or maybe I'm just projecting!
Can definitely relate to your point about drifting through life feeling incomplete, not knowing what it is. In hindsight, it was so obvious I was trans, but it took me literal years of questioning to figure it out. At least now I've figured out what was missing, and now i feel like im actually living. Thanks for making these video essays, I really love how you put them together.
I have not watched 'Your Name', nor am I plural, but I can see how plural people may also find their experiences reflected in such media. Technically speaking, I used to be plural when I was young, and so that scene regarding Taki being sad that he and Mitsuha never swapped again actually resonates with me quite a bit. That being said, I didn't even learn what plurality was until long after that experience ceased, so I really don't know what I'm talking about frankly.
i dont often comment, especially before watching a video lmao, but damn goldy i think every video you've put out has been laser focused on me specifically. hyperbole, obviously, but Your Name is by far my favorite of the Makoto Shinkai Disaster Trilogy, and as my friends were trying to get me into fighting games i get recommended the "why are fighting games so gay" video. as a trans girl myself, who is out to very few people, its really nice to get real, genuine appreciation for stuff i like by someone of my demographic. thanks, goldy
Hittin' a lot of media I love in a v. well written and produced video essay! Regardless of the intent, a lot of my non-binary friends (and myself, nonbinary transfemme) adore Your Name. About had me crying again covering a few of those scenes I won't elaborate on here for spoilers. Also love hearing a lil' Rav as the outro song. YOU FUCKERS WERE ASKING FOR THIS ONE was a favorite of mine for a long time. Deffo subscribing, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come out with next!
Feeling like you missed out on growing up in the gender of your choice really is SO painful, and I so rarely hear other trans people talking about it. It really is a gut punch every time it crosses my mind. Of course we still LIVED those years, but it's not the same and I hate that we have to feel that way. I transitioned after turning 30, and wow does the lost time feel unfair at times. Nothing to do but go forwards tho
For anyone who wants a novel similar to "your name" check out "yumi and the Nightmare painter" by Brandon Sanderson. Its a fantasy scifi bodyswap love story about an artist who loses his passion and a priestess who is living up to unrealistic expectations. Great story, and it's part of a wider universe called the Cosmere that has multiple other series in it.
I literally paused this video midway to watch Your Name without spoiling the big twist and come back to finish it, and OH MY FUCKING GOD Crunchyroll didn't translate the *I love you* message on her hand!!! I am SO MAD i missed out on that while watching. They so sparsely translated on screen text, and the fact they skipped out on one of THE MOST IMPORTANT ones RIGHT THERE drives me insane. I feel so robbed.
great video, just wanted to point out a small nitpick as a your name nerd at 10:19 - the reason she's crying here isn't because she's jealous of the date, it's because just before was the last time she would wake up after being in taki's body before the disaster. taki experienced the inexplicable tears as well the last time he woke up after being in her body, because they'd both just lost something that they didn't even know they'd lost yet. all that said she is still jealous about the date lmao i just wanted to point out that it wasn't why she was crying. please excuse my um ackshually-ing
This has inspired me to probably do the same and try to make some video essays. Basically my answer to the question of wanting to share anothers life is to be someone they, and you, want in their life and share their life from beside them. If I hadnt been exposed to stories where body swaps had a cost associated with them, maybe I would've agreed, and my life would've been significantly different as a result.
Your Name is one of my favorite movies ever, but i was never able to get much out of any lgbt reading of it. Maybe I'm blinded to aspects of it by fixating on different things I (cishet) loved about it, but it came off to me as the most normie the concept could be. So it's always interesting to hear other perspectives on the film, because it connected with a ton of people in a ton on ways.
I've always loved and been fascinated by bodyswaps. The one that stuck with me most in my childhood was Jimmy and Cindy swapping bodies in Jimmy Neutron (or maybe that was just the first time I'd seen the trope done.) I need to go back and rewatch that episode.
Oh i was _so_ obsessed with this movie for _so_ long. Knew the entire dialogue by heart despite not even knowing Japanese. It managed to portray gender norms with an unspoken attention to detail that no other media had managed to until then. I didn't relate at all to the way Taki reacted on the first swap. I imagined that if something like that happened to me, i'd call the girl on my phone and immediately apologize and promise i would respect her privacy as much as possible. But then, that also makes sense given how obvious of an egg i was.
i had heard of Your Name but this video actually got me to watch it and i gotta say... thank you. YN is so good. and you made some really good points that i never thought of while watching!
i loved this movie years ago and i never really knew why. something about it connected with me. years later and with a change in my name i now know im trans. thank you for reminding me of this beautiful movie, im going to go watch it again.
I was always into body swapping and transformation stuff then i got on vrchat in 2023 and it became clear quickly i had gender dysphoria my egg break in less then a month this feeling of something not right about my body had been there i just was not able to see it. I am so happy with way my body feels due to HRT i am a alive again.
I remember I watched this film a few years ago and I was kind of...disappointed? I did like the film for what it is, it's super good. I think I was looking for something in it through the genderswap that I wasn't going to find. I wanted something that could affirm my own feelings as someone who was still figuring out they were transmasc. This film is great but doesn't really lend itself to that, at least not to my own experience. Also since I had and still have the very distinct feeling of wanting not just to be viewer as a guy, but specifically a queer guy, which this film also doesnt really do. Your Name is a really good movie though. Thank you for making this video! It reminded me of that experience I had with it, and seeing how mine is different from other people's (maybe due to my different angle of transness) is very neat :D
This was very well done. Your name is one of my favourite films but even as someone questioning gender identity I never really considered it to have anything to say about the trans expererience, not that it says anything negative about it either, but I thought it was moreso just a way to set up the connection between the characters. I guess I'll just have to rewatch it again...
I watched your name. a few days ago (I'm trans) and I couldn't explain it until watching this video but it just felt so surreal and like the movie was me and it felt as if it changed me. Thank you for making this video
Hey if you haven't already heard of it I'd recommend Shishunki Bitter Change for something kinda like Your Name, although it doesn't delve into gender issues all too much it's still pretty good
I'm not trans (well, probably not anyways) but I've always never really liked myself or felt like I was myself in my own body, and have always wanted to be someone else. As a child, this manifested as a desire to transform into an animal or have another identity that is separate from my own. For me, part of the appeal of body swaps is having the character try and pretend to be someone else to the friends and family of the body they're in, as this is an experience I relate to alot.
I just want people to know there's a Your Name parody in Yokai Watch 3, which I found out by playing the game a few hours after watching this video. I felt like I was going insane at that coincidence
I stopped the video before you talked about your name, watched it and than came back here and yeah... it was an experience. But I also saw the points you made, like mitsuha was a lot like a trans man and it felt weird to see that she didn't transition... but alas maybe the creator didn't have that in mind. I felt like both character felt a bit trans at one point as well. When they both said "I don't want to date" yet both of them wanted to date when they were in each other's bodies. It felt like they didn't want to date anyone when they weren't themselves as if they were putting on a mask and don't want people to fall in love with that mask
i havent thought about this movie in years but it was my favorite when i was 11 or 12 and now i can see why lol. its really amazing for a lot of reasons but looking back on it Of course the story about a girl in a small town longing for the life of a guy living in the city would resonate with me. i still have this movie on dvd and i will definitely be rewatching it soon because of this video. i also wanna say i saw your gender bending episodes video and liked it a lot. and in this one you mentioned "i saw the tv glow" and i absolutely loved that movie so id really like to hear your thoughts on it!!!
Oh my name? I mean it’s weird that you’re asking me that since I don’t know you, kinda parasocial tbh, like I’m not your friend I’m just some tgirl on the internet.
@@Thedawg2604 yes. Do you need to know my name? Is that crucial information? Like I’m allowed to tell people I’m trans and not disclose my name at the same time. Kinda weird and parasocial that you want to know my name like that. anyway this has been AroAceTfem#9, logging out
@@Thedawg2604 your on a trans video by a trans creator. What did you expect? What am I not allowed to tell people I’m trans now? That’s really silly and frankly I don’t know why you’ve got a problem with it
@@banbanthebandit4002 idk why youtube recommended me this video when i usualy specificaly tell the agorith i dont want videos like this but no, im not saying what you can or cant do i just asked a question you guys are realy good at being victims
Likely because they came out so close to each other, I, as many others, have often directly compared Your Name and A Silent Voice. I really love A Silent Voice, it's my favourite movie, and it's probably because I can see a part of myself in it, just as you do in Your Name. Perhaps partually out of annoyance that YN sort of overshadowed SV, I have not given it another chance, at least until now. It seemed just "good", but nothing special. At times even a little odd and almost leering in some scenes. But a lot has changed between 2016 and now and while I'm pretty comfortably cis, I have gotten a lot of exposure to the trans experience through a friend and am happy to play with some more diverse gender expression myself. With this video serving as a new lense to view it through, I hope this time around I will be able to better understand and apprechate what makes this movie so special to some people.
Alright so I did watch it again and it was definitely better than I remembered. The awkward boob squeezing scenes were... at least less leering that I thought? Especially in the first third Mizuhas character was really good though. She specifically wishes to be reborn as "a handsome boy (in Tokyo)" and at some point just cuts her hair short without wanting (or being able) to give a real explanation why she did it? The most striking thing to me is how she cries when she wakes up back as a girl, like she's just very sad, but without knowing why. Near the end this is sort of hinted at to be her just missing Taki, but that doesn't really make sense as a backwards explanation. It's still just a 7/10 to me since it's not super relatable (at most it's when "Taki" acts feminine since I also like doing "feminine" things here and there) and it is quite annoying just how hard they shut down any queer reading in the entire second half. But still overall a lot better than the 4.5/10 I remembered it as. Now excuse me while I watch A Silent Voice once more, making me try to learn sign language for a while as it always does.
As a femboy, I always was fascinated with genderswap episodes. As opposed to transfem, it's not that I want a different body, all I wanted is to freely show interest in feminine things, even just for a day to experience what's it like, and genderswap episodes definitely piqued my interest because of that. Note that I did not know I was a femboy as a kid, I always just thought it was curiousity that, once fulfilled, would go away and I'd be just a normal boy.
Have you ever watched Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero? I liked it back in the day, and it had a central gimmick of transformation and teleportation of the characters that I think you might find interesting. Cheers 👏🏻
People say once you start on HRT to transition to a woman, you start to feel more emotional and you cry more easily. I am already such a crybaby, I’m gonna be a total mess if I decide to go through with it LOL
I got to watch movies for school once(very cool I know, I don’t remember what for), where a bunch of students picked the movies. Your Name was one of them. My school was pretty open about supporting LGBTQ+ people, and I now realize they might’ve been trying to crack some eggs lmao
I'm embarrassed to say how long it took me to realize the first five seconds of the video were you making fun of people making lame jokes off of the movie's title and not you saying you'd ban anyone in the comments named Emma lmao
Your Name is peak though. I haven't watched it since well before my egg cracked, and after watching this vid I'd like to give it another watch now that I've grown so much since then.
Oh, thank god for this comment because I didn't understand the opening thing about Emma at all ;-;
Ohhhhhh
Yoooo, crossocde neko arc?
I still don't get it
Neco-Lea???
A few years ago, my brother in law forced us all to watch Your Name. I thought it was a nice movie, but not like, blown away by it. Anyway, she is now my sister in law.
girls, we got another one
Lol wtf
Oh so thats why i liked the movie so much compared to my cis family members- huh.
(Genderfluid)
what did you watch it on? I desperately want to watch it
Haha, before my egg cracked I watched it with my grandparents. I think I wanted to share it with them because I had been drawn to gender swap stories for most of my life, and here's this well loved, critically acclaimed anime movie that isn't really trans, so having them watch it wouldn't reveal too much of myself to them.
As someone who's both autistic and has chronic pain, body swaps have always fascinated me
What parts of me are in my brain, and which in the body?
Would my aversion to certian sensations carry over? Would who ever got my body have to deal with them? If someone suddenly had all the pain I experience in my bones daily would they react, or would they act as normal as I do
Fascinating stuff to ponder
For real! There was this one story I read where a character's soul or whatever moved to someone else, and they had to deal with their depression. But if your mind can exist separate from your brain, you could be completely different in a different one.
Like autism as far as we can tell is a difference in the development of the brain. If your mind was running on someone else's brain,,, how would that work?
well, your brain is technically part of your body, although it is what makes you " you. " so i would assume a body swap swaps EVERYTHING except your brain. but yes it is very interesting to see how people would react.
It probably happens to a lot of people with "invisible" disabilities, since at first glance we appear "normal". That is something I often wondered about too, more so as some of my heath conditions were diagnosed late. Like, most people would consider I'm just lazy or just have to do more exercise, until they see me fall unconscious on a bad day. I always asked myself if they would fare better with the same body and brain and if I could live normally in a functioning vessel.
Why only parts of the brain? Its certainly a cool and fun idea to play with. Reminds me of how, in some book about reapers, a reaper gets trained to get their head replaced with a once-thought dead guy who lead some sort of terrorist group among the reapers(for the purpose of population control, which is why the reapers exist in the first place in this book I read called "Scythe"), but that is not what one would think of when thinking of the core concept of body swapping. That's just body-part/consciousness-swapping... aswell as executive control swapping too, maybe(i.e. your hand moving in a manner that resists your influence/without your ability to influence it at all)...
Its just the soul that swaps, there's nothing physical about it, unless you consider the soul physical, which I guess if its electrons, then, well, its electrical and not physical? Wait, is electricity physical? Well, apparently everything is not physical at all if you really want to get into it... as its all just energy apparently...
Also, muscle memory is a pretty important thing too(as is muscle density, which clearly is not being transferred over to the new host-body for the soul), which is why body-swapping, is sorta literal, as we're swapping over our souls in essence... And definitely not swapping our stomach & gut microbiomes lol... All we're swapping over, is essentially, our brain and MAYBE spine(plus connecting them to the other persons nervous system), if it ever were fully physical/physical enough in the most faithful(to my knowledge) definition of the term 'physical'...
Otherwise, we're doing it energy-wise via somehow getting the imaginary, metaphysical thing we call "ourself", to be someone else... which, makes me imagine that there's like some invisible xyz dimension where our consciousness & minds & all our memories & instincts, that we're grafting and shifting over to someone else, in a manner that has negligable effects on the physical appearance of the other person as far as looks go(as for muscle twitches, the resting face, and so on, well, those will match the person now inhabiting the body)... Yes, a very verbose way of explaining this I do confess, kinda cringe that I went into this much depth.
*(Warning, super long comment ahead)* I've always figured it would be interesting to picture a body swap as literally just switching out the part of the brain that deals with memories. It's your memories in another body and that includes another brain. As someone with ADHD, I've often daydreamed what it would be like so suddenly be in a body that could focus properly. What would it feel like to just... sit still and _not_ feel like you're slowly being compressed by inertia?
What would it feel like to _think_ using a different brain? How would your senses be different? Would you notice the small variations in colour sensitivity some people have, that isn't identified as being colour blind? Nobody has the same layout and quantity of cones in their eyes, so does that actually change anything?
As someone with hypersensitivity that comes and goes depending on how stressed I am, I wonder how it would feel to be in the same situation in a brain that doesn't crack those senses up to painful levels.
Because, when it all comes down to it, our entire experience is in our brains. There are literal, actual physical differences in the brains of people who are nonbinary, trans and cisgender that can be identified and are recognized by doctors (source: I've talked to two medical doctors on the subject over supper, one of which went on a long thirty minute explanation of how it all works and was very enthusiastic about the new breakthroughs). If I remember correctly, it's in the endocrine system, which develops independently somehow to your physical sex. Essentially, you can have a female brain in a male body, or half-female half-male brain in a male body, or any percentile in between your body's sex and the opposite sex.
If you are trans and go into the body of someone who is cis, you would remember being trans (and as that's the identity of your own body, it's something you can still call yourself) but you would be able to experience what it feels like to be cis. And so on and so forth. Really cool stuff!
As for the pain question, that's a really good one to explore! Because your body is "used" to the pain to some degree, or at least is aware it's been around for a long while, even when it still hurts so much that if you gave it to someone else without it they would probably scream, depending on how severe it is.
Also, our pain tolerance changes from person to person, but our brains actually also change in response to pain. I heard a really interesting thing about that, from a person who was in excruciating chronic pain refusing to take pain meds so she could tell the difference if she hurt herself more and the doctor told her that she wouldn't be able to tell, because of something with the way your brain deals with constant high levels of pain. It's been a long time since I heard that, from a family member with severe chronic pain, so look it up if you're curious and don't take my word on it, but it is an interesting thought.
If you just swap your memories though... Well, how much of dealing with pain is helped by your mind knowing it and being mentally prepared for it? More than we'd think, I'm willing to bet. So probably whoever swaps in would still be shocked and have no idea how to deal with it, despite the body being used to having this issue.
I'm willing to bet that in all aspects, except _maybe_ memory issues (if we're pretending that the only thing being swapped is the memories... but does that include the memory organ?), you end up experiencing other people's problems. Including mental diseases (and god, I can't believe how many people are willing to believe that you can have other organ diseases but _brain_ diseases, our most fragile and important organ is 'all in your head' and not real? Come on).
So we're talking depression, maybe also other aspects of Alzheimers, Dementia, (would having your memories implanted into the part of the brain that deals with memories make you experience what that's like first hand, with the _other_ symptoms or would it also influence recalling your personal memories?), etc. But also literal brain differences like other neurodivergent traits.
Also, we'd be able to see how much of muscle memory is actual muscle memory!
How much of PTSD is _also_ stored in the body itself and how much of it is memories being dredged up and interacting with the brain? How much of it is a memory of the brain, extending over the rest?
Would having someone go through a trauma response they don't know anything about help? Make it worse, because they panic even more?
Would someone informed be able to calm the body and help the original person deal with it when they return, since they helped reduce a small obstacle? Like, if they stayed long enough to ease the body out of reacting that way to some triggers. Would the person who was body swapped end up having that trauma of that trauma themselves, because they remember going through what the other person experiences and it scarred them?
What about panic attacks that aren't caused by PTSD? What about dreams and nightmares? What about emotional attachments? How much of your love for a person is your memories of loving that person and how much of it is your body? Would you make the person's body your in fall in love with those you love? How about people you hate, how would you feel to suddenly not really care?
So, so, so many interesting things to explore beyond just gender identity, I guess I can only hope to find and maybe someday write these kinds of questions into stories!
wanted to let you know i rewatched it 2 days ago with 3 other tgirls in vc and cracked the egg of a 4th one while we were watching
That's so cool
That hilarious 😂
Tale as old as time
one cis guy entering a vc with 3 T girls is a recipe for an awakening. I always make sure to have at least one tboy or otherwise in it at all times if I’m there lest they come for me
This movie really is making omelettes with how many eggs its cracking
I was so threatened by that intro
why was she feeling so strongly about it tho... there *is* a lottt of white girls named emma...😭
Fun fact if anyone's seen "Weathering With You" that film is set in the same timeline as "Your Name" because Mitsuha can seen in it when she was as old as she was when Your Name ended.
i actually went to see Weathering With You with my girlfriend when it first came to theatres in the US. also a great movie. i still need to watch Suzume, since its made by the same people
@goIdy suzume is great to I highly recommend watching it 👍
I really liked how you tackled two very similar tropes (gender swap and body swap) in such vastly different ways. This is the type of content I’d like to make (not necessarily the topic at hand, just the way you went about it and the finesse behind it), you can really tell that you know what you’re talking about and passionate about the subject. Goated video.
I myself don’t really see body swapping stuff, or Your Name as a gender or trans thing. Which probably makes sense since I identify as between agender and genderfluid
I just see them as what they are and what they show me, and what I see is a shit ton of man I envy that
Ever since I was a little kid I’ve always had such an obsession with anything relating to transformation/shapeshifting, and I’ve always felt such ginormous envy for characters in those situations, but it has never and will never be gender related. All I want is to be able to transform, body swap, whatever, like in these things, but that’s impossible, and I’ll never live out my one wish for my identity and body
Great video, made me cry, which made me wanna vent way too much.
I guess the point is just that, it’s not just a trans thing, it can be anything, the envy and sadness you feel, it doesn’t have to have the explanation of ‘transness’. Yes I am trans, but my gender is also the part of me I care the least about. I only want to be able to express myself, but physics and life decided I should screw myself and I’ll never do that
TLDR: body swap and transformation give big envy for me, but no gender envy, just literal envy
I feel the same way. I've had a fascination with shapeshifting for pretty much my entire life. I think it stems from an early interest in shapes. I'm agender, so I don't really care whether I'm male or female, and I'm not even sure if I would do a lot of shapeshifting if I had that ability, but it always REALLY interests me.
relatable. or at least for me, i don't really relate to most of the trans community, because it feels like a lot of the trans community (and cis people) are just obsessed with their genders. i just don't really care? i only really identify as agender because i don't want to be marked as male or female, and i find it confusing when other people do. that's it. i never had a strong desire as a kid to be another gender, because quite frankly i don't. i see no reason to put people in such arbitrary boxes. i am just a Cool Dude, i don't need to be gendererd because it's not really useful
Haha wow yeah, I can agree. I think there was a reason Ben 10 was my favorite show as a kid 😅 I always loved the transformation scenes and imagining what it would be like to be different aliens..
For me it'd definitely be the "wishing to be someone else in a different place and different circumstances" part.
I love tg transformations, as you say, it give me envy.
Body-swapping stories have always been a favorite trope of mine. I don't feel I've ever experienced "dysphoria", but calling it "envy" instead... yeah, that sounds more accurate. Although whatever the case might be, it's something I kept suppressed for most of my life, exploring it only as a trope in stories. That is until I met one very special person near and dear to my heart.
She was absolutely trans, and I think she must have seen a kindred spirit in me. She invited me to roleplay all sorts of transformative scenarios with her, and eventually we ended up dating for about 18 months. Unfortunately, she's not around anymore, and not because we broke up... we did break up, but she's also just plain not around in that more permeant way we all eventually end up.
Something of a consequence is that I don't really watch body-swap stories as much as I used to, or at least I don't seek them out the same way. I still read plenty of stories on the subject, but something about the trope in visual media just doesn't sit right anymore, and in fact, _Your Name_ in particular has been a movie I've been pretty intentionally avoiding.
This is the first time I've even so much as watched a video fully summarizing it, and even that hurts.
Maybe because swapping bodies is something we used to joke about with each other, not that it would have fixed everything for either of us, as we were both AMAB, but she was always worried that no amount of transitioning would ever make her "passable," whereas I'd probably pass pretty easy with minimal effort. Also, her dad was straight up transphobic, whereas I'm pretty sure my family would be entirely supportive. Maybe there's also a bit of survivor's guilt in that too. If we could have swapped, not only would she have had an easier transition, she'd also be the one who was still around.
It's been nearly 6 years, but I still miss her.
@@Oysters176: Maybe god gave us our bodies, but god also gave us our souls... and if they happen not to match, maybe that's just a test of faith. Why should it be so wrong to alter our bodies, which are temporary, to better match our souls, which are eternal?
If it were so wrong, why would god have even allowed us to develop the medical techniques that make it possible?
@@Oysters176: Funny you should mention style restrictions in school, by which I assume you mean clothes, but fashion is just a trend that changes over time and across different cultures. Many types of clothes we currently associate with girls used to be worn by boys and vice versa. Style restrictions are entirely arbitrary and ever changing.
Hence again my point that the body is temporary, the soul is eternal. One can be changed, the other is immutable.
If god didn't want people to be trans, why make people who feel that way in the first place? Even if you are convinced that no one actually feels that way, that they are just confused and misguided, why should that make any difference at all?
The body is temporary, the soul is eternal. When the body is injured, the soul remains intact. If we are all god's children, then at worst in god's eyes someone altering their body should be no different than a child foolishly thinking they know how cut their own hair. They might look weird for a while after doing so, but when the time comes to return to heaven it will all just be an embarrassing story.
@@Oysters176: See, now I don't really understand your position at all. You say you view "god" more like a constant than an entity. So, something like gravity I suppose, but gravity doesn't impose morality, mass simply attracts mass. If god is not an entity than the "rules" by which god operates should be fundamental, not arbitrary.
Morality is not fundamental. It doesn't exist in nature where animals act purely on instinct without any concept of right or wrong. If the rules are not imposed by some all-powerful all-knowing entity, then morality is just a set of rules for maintaining an ordered civilization, and thus prone to changing standards across time and culture.
Sure, there are some things that are seemingly universal, like don't kill and don't steel, but more fundamental than that the core of any morality should be as simple as do no harm.
The thing is there has been extensive scientific study on the issue of transgender, and it turns out forcing people to live in bodies contrary to their own self-identity is very harmful. It's why people who are transgender have a high rate of suicide and that rate only increases further if they are not allowed to receive gender affirming treatment.
Maybe you have trouble understanding why someone might feel that way, maybe you find it weird and unsettling, but none of that matters because, so long as they aren't hurting anyone else, what other people do with their own lives shouldn't be any of your business.
You started describing Your Name for a few minutes and it sounded cool, so I paused the video and watched the movie. It is probably the best animated film I have ever watched thank you very much.
Oh boy did i cry watching this video.
I watched Your Name pre-egg cracking with my pre-egg cracked sister, and we both fell in love with it in an inexplicable way. I havent given it much thought since then, but now i realize i have to rewatch this movie.
The moment the pen drops still destroyed me rewatching it im this video.
Most of the time the RUclips algorithm gives me the worst videos I've ever seen in my life, but sometimes it gives me video analyses made by trans people on media I've never heard of that makes me cry. Great video, 10/10 will cry again.
When I was a kid, I was very into manga/comics where a girl would need to dress as a boy for some reason or another. Everyone would think that they were a boy, and they would have to hide the fact when in dorms and stuff. I didn't like reading the endings because she would reveal that she was a girl and happily ever after. It was my "favourite" trope for a while and I was upset that there wasn't more of that specific plotline out there... I wonder why that was O_o
As a plural system we've always been drawn to stuff about body swaps or people pretending to be someone else, I guess it just kind of speaks our experiences in a way that not really much else can. i think that's interesting!
omg plural comment. exactly my thoughts, having to pretend as someone else.
y’all… remember stuff?
@@NotFinnishi’m not plural, but from my understanding memory stuff isnt universal among systems
Like all brain stuff, everyone experiences it differently
@@Swaxemanso I don’t remember writing the above comment… not sure what that means
@@NotFinnish probably means you have some memory issues. I apologize, i’m not a psychologist
BABE WAKE UP A NEW GENDER IDENTITY VIDEO ESSAY JUST DROPPED
I think for me the allure of body swaps was less the specific envy (I was too repressed to really have that yet) and more just . . . the film or show or book entertaining the idea that there was a way to change identity at all. Like I don't know I was just so starved of validation for the feelings I had that _any_ promise of "hey maybe you don't have to be who folks think you are" was almost intoxicating
4:19 While I’m obviously interested in seeing more stories with trans characters, I don’t think a story needs to explicitly be about trans people in order to meaningfully explore the concept of gender dysphoria. Cis people experience gender dysphoria (and euphoria) too. Just because a cis guy looking like a girl when he doesn’t want to is temporary doesn’t mean that the discomfort he feels is any less real.
In that context I feel like body swap stories can be a great argument that everybody deserves to feel like the gender they want to feel like! Not that body swap stories always are, but it’s an avenue worth exploring.
Okay, this might be a bit of a long one. First off, I won't really delve too much into the second half of the video, but what you said hit hard and made me cry, so there's that. Beautifully said. What I do want to talk about is the topic of body swap though, 'cause it's arguably (definitely?) the biggest part of my trans experience, as it pertains to media. While (mainly MtF) genderbend stuff has always intrigued me too for obvious reasons, I've always seemed to connect significantly more to body swap media for some reason. And with that I mean a "read/seen everything on Wikipedia's list of 'body swap appearances in media' plus significantly more" level of connection. I'm not sure quite why that is. For some reason I just feel a stronger connection to characters that specifically swap bodies (again, mostly MtF) rather than genders. I think a part of it might be the change in perspective you mentioned; trying to see things from the perspective of others has always been a core trait I've embodied (perhaps because I didn't want to be myself?), but no matter how well you manage to put yourself into someone else's mindset, it's fully impossible to know for sure how they experience things, right? So there's a huge appeal for that through body swap, but I feel I might be getting off topic.
Again, as someone who's spent thousands of hours in this topic, fact is that most body swap media is... Not great. There's really only four main categories; there's definitely exceptions, but virtually all body swap stories belong to one of these four. The largest and most mainstream one is comedy. These often use the same few jokes, a lot of it is just a character reacting unusually or being a fish out of water, and there's usually a lesson to learn about appreciating the other person more or whatever. Body swap is here used as a way to teach a moral lesson or simply entertain; rom- coms also belong to this category, like Your Name. Often very surface-level, it virtually always returns to the status quo at the end. The second one is horror. Body swap as horror can actually work really great, and it's not super uncommon to see either. There's an inherent horror in having your body stolen by someone else, and a lot of body swap horror can go pretty dark and don't always end well; this category can have really great stories in it. The third category is, well, body swap as a fetish. Not gonna delve too deep into this one, all I'll say is that as an asexual person I've spent a lot of time trying to avoid this category, which pops up wayyy more often than I wish it did.
The fourth category is using body swap as drama. This is the most interesting category to me. These stories are ones that use body swap as a method to explore various topics. You mentioned Inside Mari in the video; it kind of belongs in this category, and partially to the third one, but for spoiler reasons it also doesn't. Good story though. My personal favourite manga about body swap is Shishunki Bitter Change, which uses body swap over a significant time period to go incredibly in-depth on its main characters. But yeah, not a ton of stories actually use body swap in this way, and I think that's a shame, as it offers very unique ways to analyse not just gender, but mainly differences in perspective. For example, how we're affected by how others perceive us is a really cool topic and I wish more stories would explore it rather than just use body swap as a "haha they're so weird in the other's body, okay now they know how the other struggles, okay they're back to normal now".
As for body swap and how it relates to being trans, I will circle back to what I said earlier. I think for me, and probably many others too, it's about a sense of not really wanting to be yourself, so there's that inherent appeal in suddenly being someone else - especially if that other person is another gender. Genderbend moreso feels like a "okay, I'm a girl now, but... I'm not a real girl, so it doesn't matter", at least in my mind? It's that internal transphobia of you telling yourself you can never become a REAL woman (which obviously is false, but hey, dysphoria's gonna dysphoria), but if you suddenly become someone who's been a real woman their entire life, it's...Different? Somehow? Maybe part of it lies in the treatment by others too. Like, if you go from being a guy to a girl, there's two options. Either reality has not changed, only you have, and that basically means your old self is gone and now you have no identity and even if you convince people this is you, SOMEONE will probably report you as missing, and... It's complicated, though it is the most similar experience to that of trans people.
The other option is the reality change, aka "everyone now thinks the character's always been a girl", which is actually pretty great (if this could only happen in reality...), but runs the risk of not being familiar enough with the character pre-transformation, so it essentially becomes the same as having had a female protagonist all along (of course, there's exceptions that do it well). And, well, while there's nothing wrong with a story like that, and the character's internal thoughts are what matters most anyway, the appeal of body swap stories is that you can often see both the "before and after", so to speak. You (often) get to follow the character in their new life (well, body), while also getting to see another character in their old life, so the comparison between the two becomes extremely pronounced. That juxtaposition, I think, is a huge aspect of what can make body swap media so appealing for trans people (especially uncracked eggs).
Anyway, sorry for making this comment so long! It's just a topic I'm quite passionate about, and it's interesting to see your perspective on it! If you made it through all this, thank you for reading, and I hope I managed to provide another perspective on this topic!
i love reading long passionate comments about topics like this because at the end of the day, that's how all these videos start out lol. i think your perspective on how the trope relates to the trans experience is really interesting and a big part of why i didn't want to outright say "this is bad !" because obviously it's not. another thing i love is getting to see a bunch of people's different views on things like this because while it may be a shared experience to many, everyone has a different perspective on it. i was actually going to bring up shishunki bitter change, but i haven't read that yet so i didn't want to voice any non-fully informed opinions on that, but it does seem really intriguing. i think i have definitely felt the want to be someone else (sometimes even now) but i don't think i've ever really related that back to the body swapping trope. i think something like that is in full force in a work like inside mari, and that's partially why i loved that story and its ending so much.
Ahhh, you replied! That makes me so happy. And that's definitely very true. Like, I think you could discuss these topics for hours if you wanted to go more in-depth, but the base line is that everybody's different, right? We all experience things like gender dysphoria in different ways, and so the way we seek refuge from those feelings are also going to differ drastically, as will the ways we look at both our problems and ourselves. I don't want to spoil Inside Mari for anyone that might be reading this, but I very much agree with you on that; it investigates certain topics in really interesting and thorough ways, and the way it shows through the ending is so good. As for Shishunki, I'd very strongly recommend it! It explores the topic of being someone else in a very different way from something like Inside Mari, but does it with the same kind of thoroughness and deep exploration. And again, thanks for the video, it was really, really good!
hello it is me again, after seeing your first comment i decided that i'd go give shishunki bitter change a proper read. (spoilers for anyone else). honestly the first couple chapters didn't really hook me, i'm pretty sure i had actually read them before and dropped it before i gave it a fair chance. however, over the last couple weeks i've been reading through it, actually i just finished it today, and wow i was really really surprised how much i ended up liking it. the one thing that the story really made me think about was how both yuuta and yui had kinda made their own lives in each other's bodies, and so it makes total since that yuuta wouldn't want to go back. all of the friends they've made, all the relationships, they'd all kinda go back to square one because yui doesn't know yuuta's friends in the same way as he does, and vice versa. i think the way their love interests were dealt with could've been a little more creative, i think them ending up together is a little cliche but then again, it does make sense. you quite literally know the other person inside and out. i like how yuuta struggled with "being a girl, probably because i read that through a trans lens, but just the general life stuff was interesting to see. i think takaoka is an interesting wrench to throw into everything but i don't think his character did all that much until the story was wrapping up. but yeah, i'm glad i finally got to give that manga a read i really did enjoy it, but now i guessss i'll go back to working on school stuff.
@@goIdy Whoa, I did NOT expect this reply, but I'm really glad you went through it and liked it! I do echo some of your thoughts such as re: the ending, but I think everything else in the story more than makes up for that. Interestingly, the original version of the story (which was a shorter webcomic) had a completely different ending, where Yui ultimately ends up unable to deal with it all and, well, yeah. It's a very dark ending to a story, with one of them gone and the other completely alone, and it's interesting to see how the author's thoughts changed when expanding the story into a manga.
But yeah, your comment made me very happy to read! You're an awesome RUclipsr, and I can't wait for your future videos! Also, best of luck with your school stuff!
*haven't watched this video yet but:
I LOVE YOUR NAME!!! IM A TRANSGIRL AND I THINK ITS AWESOME BECAUSE LIKE ALL HE DOES IS TOUCH HER BOOBS AND LIKE THAT'S LITERALLY ME WHEN I STARTED HRT- 😭
i cant help itttttt boobs are so funnnnnn. i mean there's also things i dont remember about your name but i remember i liked a lot of aspects about how it displayed swapping and gender i think
edit: i think i should say that your video was a good enough retelling that i teared up a little and i don't usually cry soooo
and i guess if u want to hear about my gender envy it's high pitched anime-girl-like voices. I do voice training and i definitely do have a passing voice, and i do get a lot of euphoria from just that, but i so desperately want to have that anime girl voice. im not sure if i can really explain it but that voice is cuter. it's more like me. maybe...
i totally agree with getting envy over voices. i actually recorded this video originally in a more voice trained voice, buttt didnt like how i sounded, so i redid it all and used my normal voice. i wasn't ready for hundreds of thousands of people to be hearing my voice but here we are lol
@@goIdy awww nooooo u cant let the dysphoria get to youuuu- use voice trained voice more!! even if its not super perfect its okay :)
You thought it was Emma... but it was me Ella all along! 😈
damn. 10/10 video essay, made me cry (which is pretty impressive even at 1:30am). i dont particularly know a lot about being trans or being myself - although ive been trans for 4 years and myself for a bit longer i think - but something in here struck a chord that hasnt been struck before and im very grateful to you for making this because of it. for me, i think what i found particularly strong about body swapping in relation to the transgender experience is that for a lot of people, it really does feel like becoming a different person as for those in the closet for extended periods of time, it can become a very difficult task to tell whats you and what is your mask to the point where your true self isnt even made happier by steps you take in your own journey because the mask isnt made happier by it. self identity is a struggle and i think one of the only ways your name and serious body swapping doesnt capture the true nature of it is because in these shows and tropes, the characters arent truly alone or at least theyre picking up a baton of a different character whereas for a trans person, it can feel as if you are building a new person from the ground up almost and even though this is you, the most familiar person in the world, you cant entirely see you for all of you ever because humans cant do that. its been a long journey for me to get where i am and im not happy and it would have been easier for my body to just get swapped but every day is progress and perhaps itll be more satisfying when im where i want to be because i made me into me. fellow trans people and anyone who read all this, have a good life
YES OMG THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO!!! Also a shout-out to ceicocat's video The Incel to Trans Pipeline and Inside Nari?! I love this channel.
When I watched Your Name, I could only see the surface. But even in my shallow perception, I knew it was special. The depth of the characters and how the narrative interconnects them felt so profound, this is not the first time I have seen the phrase "we are all connected in life" but as we do live our day to day, the meaning fades, it feels like fancy talk. But we are connected, each of us.
So when I saw someone online talk sh1t about Your Name saying it was just a bad story hiding in pretty animation, I got upset, but I couldn't coherently say why. Deep down, I think when critique gets so empty like that, it feels like it's pointless to discuss it with that person, they clearly don't like it. Probably have their own reasons, but still, sucks to see that. It's not just a movie, it's a work of art made by so many people, it's an experience! Its value only increases as our own life intertwines with our interpretation of it.
I hope to find and experience more, so I can put together my puzzle pieces myself. If I can help others with theirs, and they help with mine, that would be nice. I like to think this video and channel is one of them! The gender envy and grieving a past that we couldn't have, it is lonely feeling that way but somehow knowing the name of it and feeling seen and heard. It helps. Thank you again and great video!
My First Exposure To Body Swaps Was Freaky Friday By Lil Dicky
Shoutouts little richard 🙏🙏🙏
it's so cool that a lot of us have this shared experience with these silly lil cartoon tropes lol
I would like more body swaps when characters are different species
That's basically species swap
Only body swap like episode i remember watching as a young kid is the mlp episode where their cutie marks are swapped
Oh yea, that episode!
It’s really interesting to bring this one up because, yeah. Punk Hazard in One Piece is a real example of it getting used for gags in spite of there being a purpose for it in the arc. As a kid, the concept of body swaps were alluring solely off of an envy perspective, but yeah. I think it’s often not as capitalized upon as it could be. It’s also really interesting to see this from the lens of other people too. Often times it’s easy to forget trans people won’t all share the same experiences and it’s really nice that someone else is openly making content like this. Found your channel like 3 weeks ago and it’s honestly very resonant and great to have content like this out there.
I know bodyswaps aren't that good of a trope for the trans experience, but through day dreaming about them I've been able to deal with these many years of dysphoria
So I ended up having an idea, a lot of young trans people cling to bodyswaps before they can properly express those feelings even though they weren't really written with that purpose in mind, so what if I just make a bodyswap story were over the course of the story but parties involved are revealed to be trans to call back to how a lot of those young trans people viewed those stories but actually making it about the trans experience, just making that escapist fantasy a reality, not every trans story has to be about the suffering and who knows maybe there are some people who will get something out of a wush fullfillment story like that
this was a really interesting video! its neat seeing other people's trans experiences reflect on different things (and vice versa)- as a bigender/nb person, i dont share the exact same experiences and reasons for finding these kinds of stories meaningful, but there are similarities. (edit: specifically! i love when bodyswaps show people finding parts of other people/experiences that they DO like. a guy liking having boobs, a girl who's more comfortable in her swapped environment compared to her own. your name touches that, but tbh the biggest example is the one piece bodyswap... for all its issues.) also, half of me is sad that i am unable to watch your name spoiler free, but half of me, actively crying bc of how you described the plot, is very excited to watch this movie youve introduced to me. it seems *really good.* thx!!
I'm not trans, I'm genderfluid but I always had gender envy of swapping bodies with the opposite gender. Eventually as I grew older I realized that feeling like a girl sometimes wasn't normal, and Your Name helped to realize that my true self was hiding all along.
“Your name” reminds me a bit of a live action film about this romance that takes place through time. Same idea minus the body swapping and they ultimately help eachother prevent disasters n try to find a way to meet. I wish I could remember what it’s called but playing with time like that is a great excercise for storytellers
I loved your name and is genuinely one of my favourite films ever, a couple years later I found out in trans and went back and noticed I wanted to swap into someone else so bad and I truly realised what it meant wanting this type of life, I never knew because I didn’t have those words… I can’t count how many times I’ve cried to this movie and more how many times I’ve watched it but every time and more recently I sympathise and feel that connection.
urghhh still crying at this film even at a distance ;-;
9 mins and 55 second. thats how long it took before i started crying.
There's this tiny old sci fi show called Farscape - it's got one of the best body swap episodes I've ever seen just because of the love each of the actors and voice actors and puppeteers put into depicting each other. It's a show that involves a lot of aliens brought to life by the Jim Henson company, and a lot of characters that break the mold of traditional gender roles way more than you'd expect from a little early aughts science fiction show. It's got its problems, but I'd recommend watching a few eps and then diving into that body swap. They truly put their heart and soul into that piece and it shows. Also a show that was more playful with the concept then leaning into a particular trope.
been loving your commentary/analysis vids!! (also facts dipper is trans masc coded frfr)
Great video! I thought the final conclusion about how it takes active work to avoid feeling kinship with the characters over their "missing piece" as a trans person was particularly incisive. It reminds me of how strongly I felt about Shut Up And Dance by Walk The Moon as a trans anthem, long before I was able to actually name those feelings as trans yearning and discovery, when really it was obviously always actually about dancing in a club.
I agree that there's a really conspicuous aysmmetry between Mitsuha's yearning for Taki's life and Taki's lack of interest in Mitsuha's, but I think that's balanced by the way they engage with those lives. Mitsuha, as you say, is basically acting out the role of Taki when she's swapped, but that's not how Taki approaches it at all. When he's obliged to exist as a girl the teenage moodiness and sharp opinions and the strong physical presence that made him pretty alienated and unapproachable as a teenage boy crystalize into an extremely cogent and realized 'sukeban' persona. Taki-as-Mitsuha is still stubborn, and broody, and protective, and athletic, but in a vivacious, self actualized way that ties together nicely and draws people in instead of pushing people away. He seemed to be getting love letters from every lesbian at her school within a couple weeks! Now, none of that sticks in a permanent way, as you said gender roles are fake and the lesson is to move away from them, but I think that him having to push back against the new expectations of girlhood really helped him decide which parts of his identity were actually important to him and be a version of himself that he enjoyed being. Mitsuha's for-the-most-part refusal to do the same is at least as interesting as his divestment from the day to day pleasures of her life.
This was a really good video. You really caught me on a high-emotion crying sort of day, and this hit so hard. Just everything about Your Name sounds so beautiful and everything you said rings so true. I'm also really happy to see some clips from Star vs. the Forces of Evil, because that was a show that I originally watched when I was early in transitioning. It really does feel like Marco in it is very trans-coded in one way or another and I really overall love how it portrays all of that. It could have been a show that put a guy in a dress as a joke. And while it did have a few missteps, I do think overall it did it in a good way. It really feels like Marco, at some point, was more comfortable in a dress using she/her than as a guy. Or maybe I'm just projecting!
Can definitely relate to your point about drifting through life feeling incomplete, not knowing what it is. In hindsight, it was so obvious I was trans, but it took me literal years of questioning to figure it out. At least now I've figured out what was missing, and now i feel like im actually living. Thanks for making these video essays, I really love how you put them together.
I can vaguely remember watching all of these episodes
generally a lot better than other ones
Really recommend the book Yumi and the Nightmare Painter!! It’s partially inspired from Your Name and is super good (I cried)
I have not watched 'Your Name', nor am I plural, but I can see how plural people may also find their experiences reflected in such media.
Technically speaking, I used to be plural when I was young, and so that scene regarding Taki being sad that he and Mitsuha never swapped again actually resonates with me quite a bit. That being said, I didn't even learn what plurality was until long after that experience ceased, so I really don't know what I'm talking about frankly.
i dont often comment, especially before watching a video lmao, but damn goldy i think every video you've put out has been laser focused on me specifically. hyperbole, obviously, but Your Name is by far my favorite of the Makoto Shinkai Disaster Trilogy, and as my friends were trying to get me into fighting games i get recommended the "why are fighting games so gay" video. as a trans girl myself, who is out to very few people, its really nice to get real, genuine appreciation for stuff i like by someone of my demographic. thanks, goldy
Hittin' a lot of media I love in a v. well written and produced video essay! Regardless of the intent, a lot of my non-binary friends (and myself, nonbinary transfemme) adore Your Name. About had me crying again covering a few of those scenes I won't elaborate on here for spoilers.
Also love hearing a lil' Rav as the outro song. YOU FUCKERS WERE ASKING FOR THIS ONE was a favorite of mine for a long time. Deffo subscribing, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come out with next!
Banger vid after banger vid, really making my trans little heart happy
Feeling like you missed out on growing up in the gender of your choice really is SO painful, and I so rarely hear other trans people talking about it. It really is a gut punch every time it crosses my mind. Of course we still LIVED those years, but it's not the same and I hate that we have to feel that way. I transitioned after turning 30, and wow does the lost time feel unfair at times. Nothing to do but go forwards tho
For anyone who wants a novel similar to "your name" check out "yumi and the Nightmare painter" by Brandon Sanderson. Its a fantasy scifi bodyswap love story about an artist who loses his passion and a priestess who is living up to unrealistic expectations. Great story, and it's part of a wider universe called the Cosmere that has multiple other series in it.
I always loved Kokoro Connect for the body swap trope
I literally paused this video midway to watch Your Name without spoiling the big twist and come back to finish it, and OH MY FUCKING GOD Crunchyroll didn't translate the *I love you* message on her hand!!! I am SO MAD i missed out on that while watching. They so sparsely translated on screen text, and the fact they skipped out on one of THE MOST IMPORTANT ones RIGHT THERE drives me insane.
I feel so robbed.
great video, just wanted to point out a small nitpick as a your name nerd at 10:19 - the reason she's crying here isn't because she's jealous of the date, it's because just before was the last time she would wake up after being in taki's body before the disaster. taki experienced the inexplicable tears as well the last time he woke up after being in her body, because they'd both just lost something that they didn't even know they'd lost yet. all that said she is still jealous about the date lmao i just wanted to point out that it wasn't why she was crying. please excuse my um ackshually-ing
These movies are perhaps some of the most gorgeous works of animation I've seen in my life :)
This has inspired me to probably do the same and try to make some video essays.
Basically my answer to the question of wanting to share anothers life is to be someone they, and you, want in their life and share their life from beside them.
If I hadnt been exposed to stories where body swaps had a cost associated with them, maybe I would've agreed, and my life would've been significantly different as a result.
Your Name is one of my favorite movies ever, but i was never able to get much out of any lgbt reading of it. Maybe I'm blinded to aspects of it by fixating on different things I (cishet) loved about it, but it came off to me as the most normie the concept could be.
So it's always interesting to hear other perspectives on the film, because it connected with a ton of people in a ton on ways.
1:16 Owl house mentioned!!!! 💜💜💜
I've always loved and been fascinated by bodyswaps. The one that stuck with me most in my childhood was Jimmy and Cindy swapping bodies in Jimmy Neutron (or maybe that was just the first time I'd seen the trope done.) I need to go back and rewatch that episode.
Stunning and incredible video essay! You’re amazing!
your videos are genuinely wonderful. please keep creating with this much passion and self expression, it’s a wonderful thing.
Oh i was _so_ obsessed with this movie for _so_ long. Knew the entire dialogue by heart despite not even knowing Japanese.
It managed to portray gender norms with an unspoken attention to detail that no other media had managed to until then.
I didn't relate at all to the way Taki reacted on the first swap. I imagined that if something like that happened to me, i'd call the girl on my phone and immediately apologize and promise i would respect her privacy as much as possible. But then, that also makes sense given how obvious of an egg i was.
My dysmorphia awakening summarized
the mention of loss of childhood actually just kinda broke me...
i had heard of Your Name but this video actually got me to watch it
and i gotta say... thank you. YN is so good.
and you made some really good points that i never thought of while watching!
i loved this movie years ago and i never really knew why. something about it connected with me. years later and with a change in my name i now know im trans. thank you for reminding me of this beautiful movie, im going to go watch it again.
I was always into body swapping and transformation stuff then i got on vrchat in 2023 and it became clear quickly i had gender dysphoria my egg break in less then a month this feeling of something not right about my body had been there i just was not able to see it. I am so happy with way my body feels due to HRT i am a alive again.
I remember I watched this film a few years ago and I was kind of...disappointed? I did like the film for what it is, it's super good. I think I was looking for something in it through the genderswap that I wasn't going to find. I wanted something that could affirm my own feelings as someone who was still figuring out they were transmasc. This film is great but doesn't really lend itself to that, at least not to my own experience. Also since I had and still have the very distinct feeling of wanting not just to be viewer as a guy, but specifically a queer guy, which this film also doesnt really do. Your Name is a really good movie though. Thank you for making this video! It reminded me of that experience I had with it, and seeing how mine is different from other people's (maybe due to my different angle of transness) is very neat :D
I loved hearing Claire's theme from SLARPG in the intro
This was very well done. Your name is one of my favourite films but even as someone questioning gender identity I never really considered it to have anything to say about the trans expererience, not that it says anything negative about it either, but I thought it was moreso just a way to set up the connection between the characters. I guess I'll just have to rewatch it again...
I watched your name. a few days ago (I'm trans) and I couldn't explain it until watching this video but it just felt so surreal and like the movie was me and it felt as if it changed me. Thank you for making this video
Hey if you haven't already heard of it I'd recommend Shishunki Bitter Change for something kinda like Your Name, although it doesn't delve into gender issues all too much it's still pretty good
I just rewatched that Gravity Falls episode and watched the "Your Name" Anime thanks to you.
OH MY GOSH YES IVE WANTED A VIDEO ESSAY ON THIS TOPIC FOREVERRRRR
OMG ANOTHER GOLDIE VIDEO JUST DROPPED
Going to absolutely cry.
The grief of a childhood you couldnt and will never live....
I'm not trans (well, probably not anyways) but I've always never really liked myself or felt like I was myself in my own body, and have always wanted to be someone else. As a child, this manifested as a desire to transform into an animal or have another identity that is separate from my own. For me, part of the appeal of body swaps is having the character try and pretend to be someone else to the friends and family of the body they're in, as this is an experience I relate to alot.
I've never seen this movie, but I started crying just hearing about it... I gotta see this!
Thanks for making this ! It was beautifully written !
It’s not fair that was so real and so sad i cried and I didn’t even watch the movie this is so real to my experience
I just want people to know there's a Your Name parody in Yokai Watch 3, which I found out by playing the game a few hours after watching this video. I felt like I was going insane at that coincidence
I stopped the video before you talked about your name, watched it and than came back here and yeah... it was an experience. But I also saw the points you made, like mitsuha was a lot like a trans man and it felt weird to see that she didn't transition... but alas maybe the creator didn't have that in mind. I felt like both character felt a bit trans at one point as well. When they both said "I don't want to date" yet both of them wanted to date when they were in each other's bodies. It felt like they didn't want to date anyone when they weren't themselves as if they were putting on a mask and don't want people to fall in love with that mask
I always felt I was one of those characters I’d have done the impossible to not witch back
quoting fairy tail is crazy i’ll tell u what
So THAT'S why 'Your Name' is my favorite anime movie
huh
Guess I'll be an older brother now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Damn it! Even when its being retold I still cry!
I loved your name when I was 13 and it really stuck with me..
Today I know why and i rewatched it recently
idk why but this video made me cry so much
very good video
your name still holding up as my #1 favorite movie :)
jumpscared by claire's idea of fun ost in the first minute 😭
i havent thought about this movie in years but it was my favorite when i was 11 or 12 and now i can see why lol. its really amazing for a lot of reasons but looking back on it Of course the story about a girl in a small town longing for the life of a guy living in the city would resonate with me. i still have this movie on dvd and i will definitely be rewatching it soon because of this video.
i also wanna say i saw your gender bending episodes video and liked it a lot. and in this one you mentioned "i saw the tv glow" and i absolutely loved that movie so id really like to hear your thoughts on it!!!
Fuxkin hell the your name part made me tear up
Oh my name? I mean it’s weird that you’re asking me that since I don’t know you, kinda parasocial tbh, like I’m not your friend I’m just some tgirl on the internet.
You wont tell you name to the internet but you will tell about one of the biggest changes you made in your personal life?
@@Thedawg2604 yes. Do you need to know my name? Is that crucial information? Like I’m allowed to tell people I’m trans and not disclose my name at the same time. Kinda weird and parasocial that you want to know my name like that. anyway this has been AroAceTfem#9, logging out
@@banbanthebandit4002 i dont want to know your name OR that your trans i just realy want to know why you feel the need to share one of these
@@Thedawg2604 your on a trans video by a trans creator. What did you expect? What am I not allowed to tell people I’m trans now? That’s really silly and frankly I don’t know why you’ve got a problem with it
@@banbanthebandit4002 idk why youtube recommended me this video when i usualy specificaly tell the agorith i dont want videos like this but no, im not saying what you can or cant do i just asked a question you guys are realy good at being victims
Likely because they came out so close to each other, I, as many others, have often directly compared Your Name and A Silent Voice. I really love A Silent Voice, it's my favourite movie, and it's probably because I can see a part of myself in it, just as you do in Your Name. Perhaps partually out of annoyance that YN sort of overshadowed SV, I have not given it another chance, at least until now. It seemed just "good", but nothing special. At times even a little odd and almost leering in some scenes. But a lot has changed between 2016 and now and while I'm pretty comfortably cis, I have gotten a lot of exposure to the trans experience through a friend and am happy to play with some more diverse gender expression myself. With this video serving as a new lense to view it through, I hope this time around I will be able to better understand and apprechate what makes this movie so special to some people.
Alright so I did watch it again and it was definitely better than I remembered. The awkward boob squeezing scenes were... at least less leering that I thought? Especially in the first third Mizuhas character was really good though. She specifically wishes to be reborn as "a handsome boy (in Tokyo)" and at some point just cuts her hair short without wanting (or being able) to give a real explanation why she did it? The most striking thing to me is how she cries when she wakes up back as a girl, like she's just very sad, but without knowing why.
Near the end this is sort of hinted at to be her just missing Taki, but that doesn't really make sense as a backwards explanation.
It's still just a 7/10 to me since it's not super relatable (at most it's when "Taki" acts feminine since I also like doing "feminine" things here and there) and it is quite annoying just how hard they shut down any queer reading in the entire second half. But still overall a lot better than the 4.5/10 I remembered it as.
Now excuse me while I watch A Silent Voice once more, making me try to learn sign language for a while as it always does.
I never understood how anyone else i talked to didnt think your name is a masterpiece, turned out i was just more trans than them
Not mentioning Kokoro Connect is criminal
As a femboy, I always was fascinated with genderswap episodes. As opposed to transfem, it's not that I want a different body, all I wanted is to freely show interest in feminine things, even just for a day to experience what's it like, and genderswap episodes definitely piqued my interest because of that.
Note that I did not know I was a femboy as a kid, I always just thought it was curiousity that, once fulfilled, would go away and I'd be just a normal boy.
Have you ever watched Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero? I liked it back in the day, and it had a central gimmick of transformation and teleportation of the characters that I think you might find interesting.
Cheers 👏🏻
People say once you start on HRT to transition to a woman, you start to feel more emotional and you cry more easily. I am already such a crybaby, I’m gonna be a total mess if I decide to go through with it LOL
Aah yes the crying movie 😭😭😭😭 thanks for the reminder
I almost cried watching this video
I got to watch movies for school once(very cool I know, I don’t remember what for), where a bunch of students picked the movies. Your Name was one of them. My school was pretty open about supporting LGBTQ+ people, and I now realize they might’ve been trying to crack some eggs lmao
This video forced me to watch Your Name b4 watching it
Thank you :D
your name consistently makes me cry, both because of the beautiful story and also the overwhelming gender envy
Crap I gotta watch Your name again now that I've started transitioning. It's been my favorite movie for years