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 is also a member of the Miyamizu family, where she participates in rituals for her family's shrine to create kuchikamizake as a shrine maiden. 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 with an average build and height, who is noted for being very beautiful and the spitting image of her late mother, Futaba. She has brown eyes and 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 and yellow-colored braided cord.

After going to Tokyo to find Taki, she gave away her braided cord to him and cut her hair to chin-length with two strands framing her face. She began wearing the braided cord again when she got it back from Taki when they met at "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, much like before. In adulthood, Mitsuha grows out her hair to almost the same length as she had when she was a teen. She has her hair down with a small piece of it tied into a braid at the back with the braided cord.

Mitsuha was often seen wearing her school uniform, which consisted of a short-sleeved white shirt with a pocket and a red ribbon on the collar. The shirt was tucked down a gray-colored skirt she was wearing. For shoes, she wore 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 was seen wearing a blue-colored yukata with white flowers, a red obi and light-brown sandals.

In 2016 when time reverses, Mitsuha was 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, organized, caring, and supportive girl. She is also determined, 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 when as Taki, he had gained the admiration from his crush at the time, Okudera. When she is in Taki's body, she helps him to get closer with Okudera. By then, however, 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. Mitsuha also speaks in a dialect like most Itomori residents, having the suffix -ya in her sentences.

Background
Mitsuha is the first child born to Toshiki and Futaba Miyamizu. Being a Miyamizu, Mitsuha was taught about the Miyamizu shrine and traditions from an early age, and both her parents were both active in the Miyamizu traditions as well. She lived in happiness and peace with her parents and younger sister Yotsuha. However, everything changed when her mother died due to a sickness when Mitsuha was about 12 or 13 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 he only loved his wife Futaba and not the Miyamizu shrine. Refusing to live with their father, Mitsuha and Yotsuha began living with their grandmother, Hitoha, 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 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 and Tessie. Tessie is the son of Mitsuha's father's contractor, which is why Mitsuha and Tessie were sometimes the subjects of teasing from their classmates.

Itomori Incident (2013)
Coming to school one day, Mitsuha was surprised to see that everyone was cautious of her. In class, she found strange notes which were not written by her. When the teacher called her and Mitsuha replied, everyone commented if she knew her name today, all things making Mitsuha clueless. Later on, her friends told Mitsuha that the reason everyone acted oddly towards her is that she was acting like another person the day before, though she was normal today. Mitsuha claimed to be fine, but she commented that she did feel like she was dreaming of someone else's dream. After school, she strolled around in town with her friends and expressed 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 performed a public Miyamizu tradition where they made kuchikamizake, an ancient traditional way of creating sake involving chewing rice to intake yeast for fermentation, to which the sakes became "half" of the sisters. However, during the ritual, her classmates were watching and making fun of her. This seemed to be the last straw for Mitsuha's bottled feelings, as after the ritual, she exclaimed to the Gods that she disliked her life and her boring hometown, and instead wished to live as a handsome Tokyo boy in her next life.

The next day, her wish was somewhat granted, as she woke up in a teenage boy's body in Tokyo named Taki. Soon after, she realized that they were switching bodies in their dreams, though Mitsuha was 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 began loving her life as Taki, where she treasured every moment and enamored Tokyo. She thought it was stressful at times due to Taki's part-time job at an Italian restaurant, but she enjoyed it either way and managed to get closer to Taki's crush at the time, Miki Okudera. They created rules to protect each other lifestyles and promised each other to leave reports as they would communicate by writing messages on paper or their phones. Although they were grateful towards each other at times for helping out in their respective lives, they also experienced annoyment and bickering, often leaving messages like "fool" and "idiot" on each other's skin.

One day, Mitsuha arranged a date between Taki and Okudera. She was happy for him and thought that they would end up together. However, she later cried as she had already fallen in love with him. She then decided to go to Tokyo to find Taki and meet him in person. On her way there, she was having thoughts about how he would react when he would see her. But when she tried to call him, it was to no avail, which made Mitsuha hopeless and claim that they "could never meet". However, Mitsuha was 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 was waiting for her train in the evening. However, something immediately caught her attention and so, she hopped on the train and went through the crowd― where she found Taki. She nervously looked up at him waiting for a reaction, only to be shocked that he didn't notice her at all. Mitsuha called out to him and asked him if he remembered her, but Taki bluntly asked her who she was. Mitsuha was saddened by his answer, and although she didn't further her inquiries, she knew it was Taki whom she switched bodies with. When she arrived at her station, Mitsuha went away without saying anything, only to be stopped by Taki asking for her name. She gave him her name as well as the braided cord she was wearing, which Taki would later wear as a good-luck charm.

When she returned, Mitsuha asked her grandmother to cut her hair due to her meeting with Taki. She then got ready to attend the autumn festival, where the peak of the Comet Tiamat's brightness would be visible as well. Mitsuha, Sayaka, and Tessie went to an open area to watch the comet clearly. Suddenly, Mitsuha saw how the comet unexpectedly split into two, and though the larger piece kept moving, the smaller one crashed onto Earth and destroyed the town. In the process, it killed Mitsuha and most of the other Itomori residents.

Main Story (2016)
Three years later, Taki experienced the body switching, though it would be with the Mitsuha before the incident when she was alive. Likewise, Taki 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 saw a picture of Itomori at an exhibition and looked at it in awe. He was then noted by Okudera that he was now in love with Mitsuha instead of her, whom he previously had a crush on. Taki blushed and tried to deny this, indicating that these statements were true. After the date, Taki attempted 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 thereafter stopped switching bodies with Mitsuha, which left him in shock. Since he was unable to contact her in any way, Taki decided to meet her in person. However, he didn't know the town's name so he had to solely rely on his memories of the town and drew different sceneries of Itomori. After completing his drawings, he went 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 went 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 saw 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 told Mitsuha to get away from the area before the comet struck, and before seeing the comet strike in the dream, Taki woke up in Mitsuha's body, making him overjoyed. He thereafter immediately went out and convinced Sayaka and Tessie to help evacuate the town by cutting the power and broadcasting a false emergency alert, but the plan fails. Taki thought that Mitsuha would be able to succeed, and when he realized that since he had fallen asleep in the Miyzmizu shrine, Mitsuha should be in his body since they are switching places, and started to make his way there.

Meanwhile, Mitsuha woke up in Taki's body in the Miyamizu shrine. She was surprised and wondered what Taki was doing in the shrine, and went up to the crater; Goshintai, where she saw half of Itomori gone. She realized that at that moment three years ago, she had died when the comet struck, making her horrified. When Taki reached the crater as the sun set they sensed each other's presence, but were separated by their different timelines by three years. Hopelessly, as they watched the sun go down, Mitsuha and Taki returned to their own bodies and were placed within the same timeline, surprising them both upon seeing one another in person for the first time.

Mitsuha began crying and Taki explained that he was just as happy to see her and detailed the process he had to go through to save her, including drinking her kuchikamizake, to which Mitsuha commented on Taki being a pervert. She also called him out for touching her chest and he quickly apologized. Jokes aside, she looked at Taki's arm and realized that he still had her braided cord around his wrist. Taki explained that he had kept it for three years from the first day they actually met, and gave it back to Mitsuha to wear. After conversing, enjoying each others company and treasuring their moments together, Taki explained to Mitsuha about his plan and that she had things to do, which Mitsuha agreed. Taki then suggested that they should write each other's names on their hands so they so they would remember each other, to which she happily agreed to. With Kataware-doki ending, Taki wrote his name, but before Mitsuha could 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 continued with the plan set up by Taki; Tessie had 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 was successful, and with Sayaka in the broadcasting room transmitting an evacuation warning, people started to proceed to the high school. Meanwhile, Mitsuha and Tessie went to the festival and told the remaining citizens to evacuate to the high school because of the explosion. Because of their lack of time, Tessie called out to Mitsuha, only to see her crying because she couldn't remember Taki's name. Tessie told her to go persuade her father to rally the town since they couldn't evacuate all the citizens by themselves. Mitsuha agreed and started to make her way to her father's office. Unfortunately, their plan started to fall apart when Sayaka got caught leading the broadcast. The mayor sent out a new broadcast ordering the citizens to stay put. Undeterred, Mitsuha proceeded to run to her father's office. Along the way, she tried to remember Taki's name and realized she forgot it, she watched as the comet broke off and that tragedy was about to strike. Dazed and exhausted, she tripped on a rock and fell. Suddenly, she remembered that Taki had told her that they should write their names on each other's hand so they wouldn't forget each other's name.

To her surprise, he had not written his name, but he had written "I love you" instead. Tears started to flow from her eyes and she commented that she couldn't remember his name with only his message. This gave her the motivation to survive and prevent the accident though, so she continued to her father's office. When she arrived there, her father was not very happy to see her. Despite this, she walked 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 was revealed that every resident survived the comet. This was because Mitsuha successfully convinced her father to evacuate all the citizens before the comet struck in the end. She decides to continue her life along with most of Itomori's residents by moving to Tokyo.

Epilogue (2021)
Eight years after the comet struck, Mitsuha now lives in Tokyo. She moved there along with her family and friends. Mitsuha graduated from university and got placed in a company by the time she is 25 years old.

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 crying, though she doesn't know why. The feeling that she 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 that someone had written: "I love you". She has had these feelings ever since the comet struck Itomori. Mitsuha and Taki pass by each other various times on the streets of Tokyo, but thinking they are mistaken, walks by.

One day on her way to her job, 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 name.

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".
 * Her family name, Miyamizu (宮水) means "shrine water", reflecting the family's role as priestesses.
 * Mitsuha was named by her father, who thought it was fitting in regards to Futaba and Hitoha's names.
 * 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.
 * The red braided cord that Mitsuha gave Taki 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.
 * When Taki inhabited her body, he wore Mitsuha's hair in a ponytail since he didn'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, she is frequently shown eating large sugary and creamy desserts, suggesting she has a sweet tooth.
 * Mitsuha and Taki 2016.pngding to Yotsuha, when Mitsuha sleeps, it's very hard to rouse her. She also has frequent bouts of sleeplessness.
 * 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 also to search for a job in the fashion industry, probably due to her childhood traditions.