Mitsuha Miyamizu

Mitsuha Miyamizu (宮水 三葉) is the female protagonist of Kimi no Na wa.. She is a 17-year old high-school student living in a small rural town called Itomori, and a member of the Miyamizu family, where she serves as a priestess in her family shrine. However, Mitsuha feels dissatisfied with her small-town life and due to the strained relationship she has with her stern father and the criticism she gets when performing as a shrine maiden, she wishes to live as a handsome boy in Tokyo. Her wish was eventually partially granted as she would start switching bodies with a high-school student named Taki Tachibana in her dreams.

Appearance
Mitsuha is a teenage girl of an average build and height who is described as very beautiful and the spitting image of her late mother, Futaba. She has straight, upper-back length black hair which she wears in a unique hair-do; two braids on each side tied into a small ponytail with a red, blue and yellow-orange-colored braided cord and brown eyes.

After going to Tokyo to find Taki, she gives away her braided cord to him and cuts her hair to chin-length with two strands framing her face. She begins wearing the braided cord again when she gets it back from Taki during Kataware-doki. On a promotional video, a twenty-year-old Mitsuha is seen with her hair in a bobbed-hairstyle with the braided cord styled as a hairband. In adulthood, Mitsuha grows out her hair to upper-back length, where she has her hair down with a small section of it tied into a braid at the back with the braided cord.

As a student, Mitsuha was often seen wearing her school uniform, which consists of a short-sleeved white shirt with a pocket and a red ribbon on the collar. The shirt is tucked down in a gray-colored skirt she is wearing. For shoes, she wears brown loafers and black stockings. In winter time, she would wear an orange (later blue) colored sweater on top of the shirt.

On the day the comet struck, Mitsuha is seen wearing a blue-colored yukata with white flowers, a red obi and light-brown sandals.

In 2016 when time reverses, Mitsuha is seen wearing a white dress with stars and a yellow cardigan, along with a pair of heels.

In adulthood, Mitsuha usually wears a light-orange colored shirt with a light pink cardigan on top. She wears a pair of peach-colored jeans that reaches down to about her shin bone with a brown belt and a pair of yellow-colored heels. She is seen wearing a necklace and carrying around a brown bag quite often.

Personality
Mitsuha is a kind, caring, organized and supportive girl who is also determined and sometimes persistent, frank, as well as adventurous. She is tired of her close-knit lifestyle in the small and rural town of Itomori, and as so she is also flaky and uninterested in her family's traditions and wishes to explore outside of her hometown. This is why when she starts switching bodies with Taki, she appreciates every small thing in his life and makes the best out of it. She also becomes enamored with Tokyo city.

When she is in Taki's body, Mitsuha is constantly happy and extremely appreciative, because Taki's life is exactly what Mitsuha has dreamt of. She treasures every moment, and when going out to cafes with Taki's friends, she spends a great amount of money and takes pictures of everything, including "normal" desserts and Tokyo's sceneries. But since she lived her whole life in the calm Itomori, Mitsuha thinks that Taki's part-time jobs are tiring and stressful. She is dignified and proper, being strict with Taki when they switch bodies and demands him to be careful with skirts, not to look, and not to take any showers. When Mitsuha inhabits Taki's body, he is considered "girlish", feminine and speaks in an "odd" dialect, though she still manages to maintain her composure.

Mitsuha had grown to be a bit embarrassed to perform her family traditions since her classmates make fun of her. Her stern and strict father makes her insecure as well. This is apparent since, in contrast to Taki, Mitsuha takes the belittlement from her father and her classmates without so much as a whisper in retaliation. In Taki's case when he embodies her, he delivers verbal (and in some cases, physical) lashings. However, Mitsuha is later inspired by Taki to boldly take action, and such she gains the confidence to force her father to evacuate Itomori. Mitsuha is also shown to be straightforward and she will not give up on something until it's done, as she was ultimately the one who saved the Itomori residents from the comet.

Due to her nice and 'feminine' personality as Taki, he had gained the admiration from Taki's crush at the time, Miki Okudera. When she is in Taki's body, she helps him to get closer with Okudera. However, by then, Mitsuha has already fallen in love with him. When it comes to love and Taki, she becomes a bit flustered, especially in his presence, but she became overjoyed nevertheless when seeing him for the first time for real. She also seemed to give good advice when it came to love, as she gave some to Taki before, though Taki noted that she was only mocking him.

Background
Mitsuha was born on December 1, 1996, as the first child to Toshiki and Futaba Miyamizu. Being a Miyamizu, Mitsuha was taught about the Miyamizu family and the shrines, traditions, and rituals surrounding it from an early age. When Mitsuha was eighth years old, her younger sister, Yotsuha Miyamizu, was born. The four lived a very happy and peaceful life up until Futaba's death when Mitsuha was about 11 years old. Following her death, her father was devastated because he couldn't do anything to save his wife. He then rejected the Miyamizu shrine and its traditions to pursue a career in politics, confessing that Toshiki only loved Futaba and not the Miyamizu shrine. Toshiki tried to take Mitsuha and Yotsuha with him, but the girls preferred to live with their grandmother, Hitoha Miyamizu, instead.

Mitsuha continued to have a normal and relatively happy childhood even without her father and mother, though she continued to have a strained relationship with her father, especially when he became the mayor of Itomori, and had to put up with his strict actions. She also disliked the criticism and comments she received when performing Miyamizu traditions.

Mitsuha began attending Itomori High School around 2010 or 2011, where she would often hang out with her best friends, Sayaka Natori and Katsuhiko Teshigawara. Since Tessie is the son of Mitsuha's father's contractor, they were sometimes the subjects of teasing from their classmates.

Itomori Incident (2013)
Coming to school one day, Mitsuha is surprised to see that everyone is cautious of her and that she has strange notes in her notebook which were not written or drawn by her. And when her teacher calls on her and Mitsuha replies, everyone comments if she knew her name today, all things making Mitsuha clueless. Later on, her friends tell Mitsuha that the reason everyone acted oddly towards her is that she was acting like another person the day before, though she is normal today. Mitsuha claims to be fine, but she comments that she did feel like she was dreaming of someone else's dream. After school, she strolls around in town with her friends and expresses her concerns about living in the small country-side Itomori, instead yearning to live in Tokyo once she graduated.

Several days later, Mitsuha and Yotsuha perform a public Miyamizu tradition where they make kuchikamizake, an ancient traditional way of creating sake involving chewing rice to intake yeast for fermentation, to which the sakes become "half" of the sisters. However, during the ritual, her classmates were watching and making fun of her. This seems to be the last straw for Mitsuha's bottled feelings, as after the ritual, she exclaims to the Gods that she dislikes her life and her boring hometown, and instead wishes to live as a handsome Tokyo boy in her next life.

The next day, her wish is somewhat granted, as she wakes up in a teenage boy's body in Tokyo named Taki Tachibana. Soon after, she realizes that they are switching bodies in their dreams, though Mitsuha is unaware that she was switching with Taki three years in the future, and that the Taki in her timeline didn't experience the switching and therefore didn't know who she was. Mitsuha begins loving her life as Taki, where she treasures every moment. Although she feels as it is stressful at times due to Taki's part-time job at an Italian restaurant, she enjoys it either way and manages to get closer to Miki Okudera, Taki's crush. They create rules to protect each other lifestyles and promises each other to leave reports as they communicate by writing messages on paper or their phones. Although they are grateful towards each other at times for helping out in their respective lives, they also experience annoyance and bickering, often leaving insults on each other's skin.

One day, Mitsuha arranges a date between Taki and Okudera. She is happy for him, but the thought of them becoming a couple makes her cry as she had already fallen in love with him. She then decides to go to Tokyo to find Taki and meet him in person. On her way there, she is having thoughts about how he would react when he would see her. But when she tries to call him, it is to no avail, which makes Mitsuha hopeless and claim that they "could never meet". However, Mitsuha is certain that if they really saw each other, they would know right away, and continued the whole day searching for him.

Following an unsuccessful attempt to find Taki, a tired Mitsuha is waiting for her train in the evening. However, something immediately catches her attention and so, she hops on the train and goes through the crowd― where she finds Taki. She nervously looks up at him and waits for a reaction, only to be surprised that he doesn't notice her at all. Mitsuha calls out to him and asks if he remembers her, but Taki bluntly asks her who she is. Mitsuha is saddened by his answer, and although she doesn't further her inquiries, she is certain it was Taki whom she switched bodies with. When she arrives at her station, Mitsuha goes away without saying anything, only to be stopped by Taki asking for her name. She gives him her name as well as the braided cord she is wearing, which Taki would later wear as a good-luck charm.

When she returns, Mitsuha asks her grandmother to cut her hair due to her meeting with Taki. She then gets ready to attend the autumn festival, where the peak of the Comet Tiamat's brightness would be visible. Mitsuha, Sayaka, and Tessie go to an open area to watch the comet clearly. Suddenly, Mitsuha sees how the comet unexpectedly splits into two, and though the larger piece keeps moving, the smaller one crashes onto Earth and destroys the town. In the process, it kills Mitsuha and most of the other Itomori residents.

Main Story (2016)
Three years later, Taki experienced the body-switching, though it was with the Mitsuha before the incident when she was alive. Taki also had no idea about Itomori's state and that she had passed away.

When Taki was on his date with Okudera that Mitsuha arranged, he sees a picture of Itomori at an exhibition and looks at it in awe. He is then noted by Okudera that he is now in love with Mitsuha instead of her, whom he previously had a crush on. Taki blushes and tries to deny this, indicating that these statements are true. After the date, Taki attempts to call Mitsuha and tell her about the disastrous date, but at the same time in Mitsuha's timeline, the comet struck and she perished. Taki's switching with Mitsuha thereafter ceases, which leaves him in shock. Since he was unable to contact her in any way, Taki decides to meet her in person. However, he didn't know the town's name so he solely relies on his memories of the town and draws different scenarios of Itomori. After completing his drawings, he goes on a trip to find her, only to be hit with the shocking truth about Itomori's state and as he finds Mitsuha's name in the records of fatalities and discovers the date of the disaster.

Hoping to reconnect with her body and warn her of the comet strike, Taki goes on to the Miyamizu shrine in the "Underworld" to drink Mitsuha's kuchikamizake. Taki then went through a dream sequence with Mitsuha's braided cord as a connection. He sees most of her life in the dream, including the time where Mitsuha, having fallen in love with him, met his past self while trying to meet him personally, until moments before her death. Taki desperately tells Mitsuha to escape before the comet struck, and before seeing the comet strike in the dream, Taki wakes up in Mitsuha's body, making him overjoyed. He immediately goes out to convince Sayaka and Tessie to help evacuate the town by cutting the power and broadcasting a false emergency alert, but the plan fails. Taki thinks that Mitsuha would be able to succeed, and when he realizes that since he had fallen asleep in the Miyzmizu shrine, Mitsuha should be in his body since they are switching places, and starts to make his way there.

Meanwhile, Mitsuha wakes up in Taki's body in the Miyamizu shrine. She is surprised and wonders what Taki was doing in the shrine, and goes up to the crater; Goshintai, where she sees half of Itomori gone. She realizes that at that moment three years ago, she had died when the comet struck, making her horrified. When Taki reaches the crater as the sun set they sense each other's presence but were separated by their different timelines by three years. Hopelessly, as they watch the sun go down, Mitsuha and Taki return to their own bodies and are placed within the same timeline, commenting that it is "Kataware-doki". It surprises them both deeply upon seeing one another in person for the first time.

Mitsuha begins crying and Taki explains that he is just as happy to see her. He details the process he had to go through to save her, including drinking her kuchikamizake, to which Mitsuha comments on Taki being a pervert. She also calls him out for touching her chest and he quickly apologizes. Jokes aside, Mitsuha realizes that Taki still had her braided cord around his wrist.

Taki explains that he had kept it for three years from the first day they met, and gives it back to Mitsuha to wear. After conversing, enjoying each other's company and treasuring their moments together, Taki explains to Mitsuha about his plan and that she has things to do. Taki then suggests them to write each other's names on their hands so they would remember each other, to which she happily agrees to. With Kataware-doki ending, Taki writes his name, but before Mitsuha can do the same, they are returned to their original timelines, with Mitsuha being sent back to 2013 to prevent the comet, and Taki to 2016, trying not to forget Mitsuha's name.

Sad but hopeful about her situation with Taki, Mitsuha and Tessie continue with the plan set up by Taki; Tessie has set up explosives in a power plant so people would think that there was a fire, and would get the citizens to evacuate to Itomori High School for safety. The plan is successful, and with Sayaka in the broadcasting room transmitting an evacuation warning, people start to proceed to the high school. Meanwhile, Mitsuha and Tessie go to the festival and tell the remaining citizens to evacuate to the high school because of the explosion. Because of their lack of time, Tessie calls out to Mitsuha, only to see her crying because she couldn't remember Taki's name. Tessie tells her to go persuade her father to rally the town since they wouldn't be able to evacuate all the citizens by themselves. Mitsuha agrees and starts making her way to her father's office. However, their plan starts falling apart when Sayaka gets caught leading the broadcast and Mitsuha's father sends out a new broadcast ordering the citizens to stay put. Undeterred, Mitsuha proceeds to run to her father's office. Along the way, she tries to remember Taki's name and realizing she forgot it, she sees as the comet breaks off and that tragedy is about to strike. Dazed and exhausted, she trips on a rock and falls. Suddenly, she remembers that Taki had told her that they should write their names on each other's hands so they wouldn't forget each other's names.

To her surprise, he had not written his name, but "I love you" instead. Mitsuha begins crying and she comments that she wouldn't be able to remember his name with only his message. This gives her the motivation to prevent the tragedy though, so she continues to her father's office. When she arrives there, her father is not very happy to see her. Despite this, she walks up to him with a very determined look on her face. Moments later, the comet struck the town with most of it disappearing.

Subsequently, it is revealed that every resident survived the comet. This is because Mitsuha successfully convinced her father to evacuate all the citizens before the comet struck in the end. Although she was ecstatic due to being able to prevent the accident, she felt as though the one she most wanted to celebrate with wasn't there with her. However, she decides to continue her life along with most of Itomori's residents by moving to Tokyo.

Epilogue (2021-22)
Following the destruction of Itomori, Mitsuha has moved to Tokyo with her family members and friends. By the time of 2021, she is 25 years old, has graduated from university and been placed in a big company. Mitsuha lives alone in an apartment which is decorated with "a bit of Itomori" that she brought with her. She says that once in a while when she wakes up, she finds herself unknowingly crying. The feeling that she has lost something precious to her lingers around her for a long time after she wakes up. She looks at her palm at times and remembers the message "I love you" that had been written there. She has had these feelings ever since the destruction of Itomori.

Mitsuha and Taki pass by each other a few times on the streets of Tokyo, but thinking they are mistaken, walks by.

Time passes by, and during a spring day in 2022, Mitsuha sees Taki when their trains draw parallel. Mitsuha, who is shocked and lost for words, stares at Taki in awe and upon seeing her, he makes a similar reaction as well. At this moment, both understand that they had been, for the past years, searching for each other. They are compelled to disembark and search for one another, finally meeting on a staircase; Mitsuha at the top and Taki at the bottom. However, none of them says anything despite being so shocked. Taki ends up going up the stairs and while Mitsuha is hesitant, she makes her way down. This makes them both regretful, but Taki soon calls out to Mitsuha and tells her that he felt like they had met before. Mitsuha begins crying and replies that she thought the same. The movie ends with them simultaneously asking for each other's names.

Tenki no Ko
In the year 2021, Mitsuha appears as a jewelry saleswoman for a shop in LUMINE, shown when Hodoka asks her whether the ring he has chosen for Hina is suitable. At this point, Mitsuha hasn't reunited with Taki yet.

By the time of 2024, it is mentioned in the Tenki no Ko novel that Taki's grandmother has a picture of her grandson's marriage and she wears a braided cord on her right hand, though whether it is Mitsuha who made it is unknown. However, Makoto Shinkai clarifies in a director's interview that Mitsuha and Taki did indeed get married and doesn't care about the different timelines of his works.

Soul Exchange
As a member of the Miyamizu family, Mitsuha has spiritual powers and can passively exchange her soul with another person. Mitsuha's exchanges with Taki are triggered by sleep and possibly her spiritual powers, as she had unconsciously wanted to “reincarnate into a handsome boy living in Tokyo”. This phenomenon only occurs during her youth. Exact conditions and causes are unknown, but it can transcend both time and space. It can only be forcefully triggered by the other person via the consumption of her kuchikamizake. Memories during the exchanges gradually fade afterward, because it is described to be more of a dream rather than a memory.

Taki later theorizes that perhaps the reason for the body-switching was for the Miyamizu females (and their respective others) to be able to warn the town of the incoming comet impact.

Needlework
As a braided cord traditionalist, Mitsuha is also good at needlework.

Trivia

 * Her name, Mitsuha (三葉) means "three leaves".
 * This also applies with her grandmother, her name meaning "one leaf"; her mother, "two leaves"; and her younger sister, "four leaves".
 * Mitsuha was named by her father, Toshiki, who thought it was fitting in regards to her grandmother and mother.
 * Her family name, Miyamizu (宮水) means "shrine water", reflecting the family's role as priestesses.
 * When Mitsuha and Taki met each other at Twilight (Kataware-doki), it was the only time both of them were the same age, as one can experience inhuman things at Kataware-doki
 * According to Makoto Shinkai, the colors of the braided ribbon that Mitsuha wears symbolizes different things. The center of the ribbon represents the comet; the blue color represents the lake of her town; and the red and orange represent "Kataware-doki".
 * When Mitsuha gave Taki her braided cord, it may have made them connected in a reference to the Japanese myth, "The red string of Fate". The two people connected by the red thread are destined lovers, regardless of time, place or circumstances. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break.
 * This is also associated with the concept of the movie: "Musubi"; time, which has a similar description. Mitsuha and Taki were separated by time, circumstances and memory, but when they found each other at the end after so long, their feelings were still connected.
 * Mitsuha speaks in a dialect like most Itomori residents, having the suffix -ya in her sentences.
 * When Taki inhabits her body, he wears Mitsuha's hair in a ponytail since he doesn't know how she did her hairstyle.
 * It was mentioned by Sayaka that on the first day of switching bodies, Mitsuha went to school with bed hair.
 * In Taki's body, Mitsuha is frequently shown eating large sugary and creamy desserts, suggesting she has a sweet tooth.
 * According to Yotsuha, when Mitsuha sleeps, it's very hard to rouse her. She also has frequent bouts of sleeplessness. Mitsuha and Taki 2016.png
 * From the official MV Sparkle from limited DVD of RADWIMP's album Ningen Kaika, there is an image that could be from three years later after the Itomori incident and features Mitsuha's new appearance at around 20 years old.
 * Apparently, this scene is not in the Youtube version.
 * According to Makoto Shinkai, the director of the film, Mitsuha not only moved to Tokyo to take shelter, but she also to search for a job in the fashion industry, probably due to her childhood traditions.