Makoto Shinkai is quickly making a name for himself as the next big name in anime, at least as far as American audiences should be concerned. Following in the footsteps of the legendary Hayao Miyazaki, Shinkai’s 2016 Your Name (Kimi no Na wa) reached heights seldom reached for an animated feature not released by Miyazaki or Studio Ghibli—in fact, it achieved the second-largest gross for a Japanese film in Japan behind Spirited Away.
Released in Japan in summer 2019 and shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, Shinkai’s follow-up film has finally found its way to American’s theaters. While it doesn’t quite reach the Everest-level lofty heights of Your Name—a feat few films can claim, in my opinion—Weathering with You (Tenki no Ko) is still an unbelievably gorgeous movie that serves as a very worthy successor and continues a career I will be watching very closely.
First and foremost, it must be said that the animation in Weathering with You is nothing short of incredible, sometimes to a fault. Everything is beautifully animated, from the sweeping panoramic shots of a rain-soaked Tokyo to the characters themselves. Our main characters, Hodaka and Hina, as well as the rest of the cast are very expressive and convey emotion just as easily as if they were being played by real actors, big Miyazaki-esque tears and all. The only problem with a movie this well animated is that some shots feel like they have a distracting level of detail. In one scene in particular, our protagonist is served a Big Mac—not a generic burger, mind you; he’s at a McDonald’s eating a Bic Mac—and it is the most detailed and well-animated burger I’ve ever seen. Did McDonald’s make sure the animators made the greatest-looking Bic Mac of all time? Thankfully these moments don’t take away from the pacing or feel of a scene and would probably be more appreciated on repeat viewings so you can fully grasp how much detail was put into a pair of scissors cutting a spring onion.
There are a few times when it feel like certain shots were added to the movie simply for vanity’s sake. Large shots of swirling storm clouds or painstakingly reflecting raindrops are abundant; this is to be expected in a movie about a girl who can control the weather, but some shots seems like they were added simply so the filmmakers could point to the screen and say, “Look how great our movie looks!” And honestly, if I made a movie that looked this good, I would do the same thing. The good news is while these shots can seem vain, they are usually used during montages or character exposition and provide a sense of connection between the world itself and the characters. I know it’s a weird criticism to gripe about how a movie might have looked too good, but it was definitely the lasting impression Weathering with You left on me.
Among the biggest reasons why Makoto Shinkai’s movies work is how well they balance real life with fantastical elements. He is able to ground you in reality by making you connect with characters because they feel and experience very relatable things, and then he adds the fantasy elements within the rules of the world in a way that makes sense. There is no deus ex machina or magical MacGuffin used to half-heartedly explain magical elements of the world; everything exists as either a legend or story maintained by the people that live in that world and then applied to the characters in the story.
One of the ways in which Weathering with You differentiates itself from Your Name is that it is a funnier movie. Not that either film is necessarily a comedy, but Weathering with You definitely has more moments that made me laugh compared to its predecessor, especially in its more lighthearted first half. Natsumi Suga, voiced by Alison Brie in the English dub, provides a good majority of the laughs, which isn’t surprising considering Brie’s comedic chops, but there are plenty of great moments divided up among the rest of the cast. There also seems to be a significant tonal shift about two-thirds of the way through the movie, when things get more serious and dramatic leading up to the finish.
On the other end of the spectrum, though, Weathering with You seemed to struggle in landing an emotional connection in the same way that Your Name did on multiple occasions. Without spoiling anything, you can definitely see and feel which parts of the movie were supposed to deliver the kind of gut punch the 2016 film did so seamlessly. It’s not as if these scenes aren’t emotional in their own right, but they seem to fall a little short of delivering the impact Shinkai and the rest of the team were going for. And by the end of the movie I was coming up with ways to rework a few of these scenes in my head to really achieve the kind of emotional devastation that I was expecting after Your Name.
That being said, the hardest part of trying to judge Weathering with You on its own merits is how easy it is to compare it to Your Name, and ultimately the biggest issue with this film is that it simply isn’t the previous one. The shadow cast by its predecessor looms so large that you constantly find yourself comparing the two and waiting for a similar experience. With each self-gratifying beauty shot of Tokyo, your mind wanders back to Your Name, trying to remember whether it had as many shots seemingly for the sake of vanity. Will you be disappointed by the end of the movie when it doesn’t leave you in tears at least once, whereas Your Name made you cry on three different occasions? I’m not saying that seeing Your Name first will make it impossible to enjoy Weathering with You in any way, or that you need to expect a fully different experience to enjoy the movie, but I personally would have benefited from a longer break between viewings to separate the two films in my mind and better appreciate Weathering with You for what was by itself.
At the end of the day, it’s very simple: if you enjoyed Your Name or any of Makoto Shinkai’s previous films, you are going to go see Weathering with You, and you are going to be rewarded with a gorgeous movie that almost reaches the same amazing levels as its predecessor. It’s a fun, visually stunning movie that makes you invest in its characters and their lives perfectly.
*Originally posted on Twin Cities Geek on January 28th 2020*