Symbolism and deeper meaning

I've been requested to put this comment here so it doesn't get lost. https://kisskh.at/782446-call-me-by-no-name#comment-22767876

Be warned, this contains all of the spoilers.

Q:

I just didn't understand one thing in this, why were kotoha's stuff all wrapped in polythene bags?? anybody has an idea about that? 

A:

It's a reference to the trash motif. When Megumi first found her she was laying in a heap of trash. The stuff in her house looks like bags of trash. An engagement ring made of trash. When Megumi waits for Kotoha in hallways, she sits on the floor next to literal trash cans. When that one dude hears Meguchi say she's dating Kotoha, he considers 'his turn' with Kotoha to be over, and right after that, he throws something in a trash can and says a homophobic thing, and Meguchi pushes him onto the trash cans for it (serves him right). Due to the sexual assault, Kotoha's self esteem is so low she considers herself trash, a commodity to be used up and then thrown out. It's common among SA survivors to think of themselves as dirty, impure, ruined, trash. She says 'someone like me doesn't deserve to be loved.'

It's specifically trash from the sea. Fishing nets. Floating plastic bags. The scenes where Kotoha feels underwater (aquarium, blue petals, water sounds, water lighting, rain, the fish with the name change) feel reminiscent to dissociation to me; Kotoha is floating aimlessly through life, not really connecting to anything, least of all herself. Nothing matters.

Kotoha metaphorically got fished up out of the sea by Meguchi (picked up out of trash in first scene, right after which we see her drying her hair), like that one teddy bear drifting away. The series makes the analogy between the bear and Kotoha explicit. To Kotoha the bear (a commodity bought by the girl's mom!) can be replaced, has no value, and she tries to stop Meguchi with the line 'you're too nice', but Meguchi sees irreplaceable value in the bear, and doesn't think she's being 'nice' at all while fishing it up. That's not her motivation.

The series strongly resists that narrative of Meguchi as the 'savior', or Meguchi doing a 'nice' thing. That's there to show us that Meguchi isn't fishing Kotoha up out of pity, charity, or out of a self-important savior complex, but simply because she genuinely loves Kotoha.  Their relationship would be unhealthy and fake otherwise. The roles also get reversed in the bear scene, with Kotoha being the one to fish Meguchi out of the sea (hand grabbing motif), and Meguchi saying out loud that she wasn't trying to save Kotoha from that heap of trash in the first scene, but that she'd already fallen in love with her, and instead felt like she was the one being saved.

It's no coincidence that Kotoha wears so much blue, always the same shade, same as the petals. It refers to water, dissociation, flashback, trauma. And Meguchi usually wears red or pink (and her room, especially bed, is pink), to represent the 'love' in her name and personality. They also often get lit in blue and pink respectively.

The little otter plush represents genuine love. Otters are the only marine mammal with paws that can pick stuff up and bring it to shore, and with a reputation of being very lovable to boot. Meguchi gives Kotoha that otter shaped sleep mask the first night, when Kotoha expected to have to have transactional sex with Meguchi, but found safety instead. In the scene where Kotoha's mom SA'd her, the first version of the otter plush dramatically fell to the ground, 'genuine love' destroyed.

In the scene where Meguchi confesses her feelings to Kotoha, it's raining and Kotoha has no umbrella, so she'll get wet. Kotoha says she hates rain (it was raining when her mother SA'd her) and she feels safer with someone close to her (Meguchi has umbrella). After Meguchi confesses her love, Kotoha gets scared of the feelings getting too real, and she proposes sex, so that she can run away from the feelings and reduce the relationship to being transactional again. Then Kotoha steps out into the rain, without umbrella. Another reference to being underwater.

Kotoha is stuck in a cycle and resistant to change.  She thinks having transactional sex and no actual personal value/love is her destiny/curse. She's scared of changing that, and doesn't believe it to be possible anyways.

Instead of changing, she tries to impose her curse onto Meguchi. After she meets her mother again she pushes Meguchi into the 'trash' in her room and forces sex on her, with the little plush otter (genuine love) having been stuffed in a plastic bag by Kotoha, having been turned into a commodity ready to be thrown out as trash. The otter plush silently resists by looking at it happening, judging it, representing an alternative. But Kotoha dissociates/has a flashback and does it anyways. To Kotoha that's just the way things are. It's all she knows. People are commodities to be used up and love is fake and temporary. She relapses. And right after, she tells Megumi the reason she calls her Meguchi was to remove the 'love'.

It's up to Meguchi to change Kotoha's core beliefs, by continuously insisting 'I really love you, Kotoha', to prove that such a thing is really possible.

I also don't think it's a coincidence that 'Furuhashi Kotoha' means 'old bridge, writer' (as is made clear in the series), and that all the most healing/changing scenes for Kotoha happen while they're standing on a literal old bridge. What do bridges cross? Water. (And Kotoha's mom's last name contains 'bridge' too, so 'old bridge' could refer to an old connection she'd rather be rid of). Kotoha struggles with having a sense of self that she gets to decide/write for herself, away from her old curse/name. When Meguchi asks her what she'd like to be, the new identity Kotoha wants is to become 'a bride' (=she wants to become someone worthy of receiving genuine love). Meguchi proposes marriage to her on that bridge.

But then Kotoha gets scared again and leaves Meguchi in the trash, again. Change is hard. She thinks to herself 'Megumi wouldn't love me if she knew the truth about my vile past/identity/destiny', 'I am not worthy of love'. And so it's up to Megumi to prove her wrong again, by finding out what that past/identity is, and still loving her anyways. When Megumi does prove it she says it out loud 'Whether you're Kotoha or Yotogi, I love you anyways.'

On second watch it's all quite on the nose. I recommend watching it a second time. You'll notice a lot more.

(I have no serious personal experience with SA, but I do know PTSD and dissociation, so take it with a grain of salt, but I'm not completely talking out of my ass.) 

Here's a comment that explains the meaning of Yotogi: https://kisskh.at/782446-call-me-by-no-name#comment-20844376 

Bonus stuff because I tried (and admittedly failed) to keep my original comment somewhat short, so I didn't put everything I noticed in there. I know I'm longwinded as fuck lol.

Notice how Kotoha refers to herself as 'uchi' and changes Megumi's name to 'Meguchi'. She's initially equating Megumi to herself, doing onto Megumi what her mother did onto her, continuing the cycle of abuse. In that scene where she flashes back, shots of her mother SA'ing her are interspersed with shots of her doing the same to Megumi, to the point that it was at some points hard for me to tell what was what. The show itself tells us that 'uchi' is an unconventional way to say 'I' in Japanese. It's dialect. The writers made Kotoha speak that dialect for a reason, and drew attention to it for a reason.

Notice when they switch colors, and what that says about who is at that moment playing the role of distressed person and who is playing the role of loving rescuer. When Megumi is very down and wears all blue for the first (and only) time, it's her friend who shows up in all red to emotionally pick her back up off the floor. 

After Megumi and Kotoha have sex in that hotel, we see a shot of Megumi drying her hair, and the next day they both wear a combination of red and blue or purple. This means Megumi felt saved, picked up out of the sea, geuinely loved, by Kotoha, and they briefly both occupy the role of rescuer and rescuee at the same time. 

In the first episode, Megumi asks Kotoha what her favorite color is, and Kotoha says she's never really thought about it, but maybe blue. Meaning, she doesn't actually like blue all that much, it's just what she's used to. The trauma is just what she's used to. The colors she wears are not an active decision. The show uses Megumi's question to draw the viewer's attention to the way they use color in the show. To me it seems like this show doesn't contain a single line that doesn't have a purpose.

The reason the ring is made out of trash is so that when Megumi offers it to Kotoha, Kotoha can look at it and straight up say 'that's trash'. The ring stands for the genuine love Megumi offers Kotoha, so in that moment it is metaphorically made clear that Kotoha can't see that genuine love for what it is, and only sees it as trash, a commodity to be used up.

Lastly an opinion, I don't like that Megumi told Kotoha that she didn't need to apologize for pushing her into the trash/SA'ing her during a flashback. It wasn't okay. Don't accept abuse from someone just because they're traumatized. Girl, get yourself some boundaries. I do like that Kotoha apologized for it and meant it. Is that enough to make it ok? I don't know. I don't think she's irredeemable.