Following the massive financial and critical success of his 2016 movie, Your Name., Japanese animation director and screenwriter Makoto Shinkai quickly became a household name, not only in his own specific field of animation but in the greater world of cinema as a whole. Fans of Your Name. and Shinkai’s filmography in general have since been eagerly awaiting his next film, and on July 19, 2019, Shinkai and his team at CoMix Wave Films released Weathering With You (Tenki no Ko). However, a US release has only existed relatively recently (on January 17, 2020), and as a result, we had the opportunities of watching the film in the local Regal Cinemas and Ithaca’s very own Cinemapolis.
The plot of the movie is rather straightforward: a sixteen-year-old boy named Hodaka runs away from his home to Tokyo and struggles to find his own footing until he meets a girl named Hina who has the power to manipulate the weather. The two must discover and deal with the role Hina has to play as a “weather maiden,” specifically whether or not to accept it, and the subsequent consequences of their decision on Tokyo as a whole. Other supporting characters include Hodaka’s unofficial caretakers while in Tokyo and Hina’s younger brother, who try to help the leading pair in their journey. For the most part, however, the characters in the movie are very cookie-cutter; their character motivations and personalities are generally superficial and rarely go too deep. One of Hodaka’s unofficial caretakers, for example, is a single parent who acts in order to get custody of his daughter from his mother-in-law, which is essentially his only motivation and defining trait.
Of course, like most of Shinkai’s previous films, the movie is absolutely beautiful. Tokyo is portrayed gloriously and its vastness is bound to make some viewers feel miniscule, with visuals of thousands of people commuting through the city and an incredibly detailed portrayal of the city’s architecture and skyline. The animators do not shy away from using real brands, taking inspiration from real advertisements and displays to portray a realistic vision of the city. The painstaking attention to detail in the environments is hard to miss and creates a feeling of awe at the dedication and skill of the artists involved.
One of the main attractions in the movie is the rain, as the film revolves primarily around the weather. Similarly to one of Shinkai’s other films prominently featuring rain—2013’s The Garden of Words—the rain was added as computer-generated imagery over the original digital art, which was combined with changes in the color and tone of its background to better fit the mood and more accurately portray the environment. In cloudy weather, the rain takes on a melancholic tone, darkening and obscuring the scene, but with sunshine, also a prominent element of the film, breaks through the clouds. The scene is turned into a spectacular kaleidoscope of colors, augmented by the reflective and refractive properties of the water and the glass and metal of the city. These lighting and color choices, like in many films, reflect the emotions of people in the movie, with clouds mirroring feelings of suppression and boredom while the sun, coupled with a clear sky, conversely mirrors feelings of elation and limitlessness.
The film does involve some relevant issues in modern Japan such as child labor and the justice system, although they are mainly used in setting up the positions of the characters and aren’t the main focus. It also adopts the motif common in most of Shinkai’s films: lovers separated by some obstacle who struggle to overcome it, often with mixed results. Just like in Your Name., Japanese rock band RADWIMPS provides the music for Weathering With You, with some songs featuring vocals from actress Toko Miura. The music does quite a good job at setting the tones for different parts of the movie, keeping it light and cheerful early on and shifting to a more serious and sad tone as the film progresses, while enhancing the emotional appeal of the buildup and climax. As long as the viewer doesn’t expect a deep character study of the players in Weathering With You, one can certainly appreciate the beautiful animation and emotional, albeit somewhat forced, payoff of the film.