Weathering with You is not the next "Your Name"

While I've personally been a Makoto Shinkai fan for a long time, his fame has skyrocketed since the release of Your Name, the second largest grossing anime film in Japan since Spirited Away. Given such success, Weathering with You rides on the selling point that it has been created by the same mind behind Your Name. After all, "From the director behind Your Name" has been plastered on every poster I've seen of it. But I'm not here to say whether it's reached the greatness of Your Name, but to evaluate it by itself. Warning, this review contains heavy spoilers, but there is a spoiler free summary at the bottom of the article.

My first impression of the movie immediately after watching it was that it feels very similar to Your Name. While the plot is not exactly the same, the general plot structure and emotional journey is. Boy meets girl, cue montage of cute scenes of them bonding, then boy is separated from girl via supernatural means causing great heartache, then there's the cathartic moment where they find each again. While a good story in its own right, and I especially appreciate how much simpler and easier to understand the plot was, I think its similar feel to Your Name detracts from its uniqueness.

Its characters aren't particularly complex or anything, as characters in Shinkai films tend to be. But they work for the most part- characters in Weathering with You are all pretty loveable. That said, I think it would've been good to explore the reasons why Hodaka runs away from his home. He says it's suffocating, but we never see what his home was like. Was life on the small island boring? Were his parents too strict? I think a brief exploration of such reasons would give his struggles in the story- making a living and running away from the police who want to bring him back- more believable stakes than just being toldit was "suffocating".

Put aside the fact its general plot structure is similar to Your Name, my biggest gripe with the story is that Hodaka didn't lose anything personal to him when he brought back Hina. Hina had to sacrifice herself to make other people happy by clearing the rain for them, but Hodaka didn't have to lose anything to make Hina and himself happy. Yes he did sacrifice good weather in Tokyo, but he seems to accept all the flooding that ensues pretty damn easily. God knows how much infrastructure has been damaged and the number of lives displaced. Though this could simply just be some kind of message about how the selfish desires of humans are destroying our climate, I don't feel that has been the point of the movie, so this leaves an slight unpleasant taste in my mouth.

Beautiful scenery by Comix Wave Films

As expected of a Makoto Shinkai movie from animation studio Comix Wave Films, the visuals are nothing short of stunning. We already know from The Garden of Words, which also stars a lot of rain, how damn beautiful this studio does water effects. How the rain is illuminated by the pool of sunlight, how the water droplets reverse their trajectory back into the sky when Hina prays, and especially the still, clear water in flooded Tokyo shone upon by the sun when the heavy rainfall stops. I loved it all. Also, who knew Big Macs could look so good?

The OST is great, especially its insert songs by RADWIMPS, the same band behind the songs in Your Name. It's feel-good, uplifting music that really enhances the emotional parts of the story. However I would appreciate subtitles for the lyrics, because if there was any meaning from the songs tied to what was actually happening on screen, I've missed it.

Conclusion

Weathering with You is not a bad movie- it is beautiful, it is emotional, and most of all enjoyable despite being a bit too similar to Your Name and bearing some minor grievances with its story and characters. 7/10.

In terms of the bigger picture, it seems like cathartic love stories with supernatural elements are what Shinkai seems to dig now. And it works- who doesn't love a happy ending? However, gone are his more grounded tragic romances dealing with separation- like how distance and time separates the characters in 5 Centimeters a Second, or how the age taboo separates the couple in The Garden of Words. Personally, I've always loved 5 Centimeters a Second and it remains my favorite work of his to date. I'm not gonna ask for another of that, but I just hope future Shinkai movies don't follow a similar formula that tries to be the next Your Name. They don't have to be.