Weathering With You [SUB] (2019) Review

 Weathering With You [SUB] (2019) 7.5/10

[THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE AND OTHER SHINKAI FILMS! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!]

Hello everyone. Today, I’ll be going over another Makoto Shinkai movie, Weathering With You. This movie was released on July 19, 2019, with Shinkai’s animation studio CoMix Wave Films producing the movie. In this review, I’m going to be more strict in this than normal as I have a few of his movies under my belt. I’ve been meaning to watch this film for a long time now and I figured now would be a good time. This is a good movie with excellent art direction (like with every Shinkai movie), but my God this has got to be one of the worst endings I’ve seen in a film. Let’s begin.

Our story takes place in modern day Tokyo, where it is constantly raining. Like endless rain with no end in sight. The movie starts with a young boy named Hodaka as he runs away from home to live in Tokyo. On the boat ride, a freak storm happens, almost killing Hodaka, but is saved by a guy named Kei. After sponging some sweet rewards from Hodaka, Kei gives him a business card, saying he can come to him if he needs help. Hodaka then lives as a homeless person for a couple of days, basically living at a manga cafe, until he sucks up his pride and comes to Kei. Kei runs a small-time publishing and editing business for a magazine. Hodaka is hired and is tasked with finding stuff to write about. Hodaka and Kei’s assistant Natsumi follow a story about a sunshine girl, a person that has the ability to bring sunshine wherever she goes. As Hodaka is living his life, he stumbles upon this person, who is named Hina. Hina and Hodaka form a relationship as business partners and soon become more. Some time passes and Hodaka learns of a cruel truth about Hina. The more she prays for sunshine, the more her body vanishes. The only way to stop the abnormal weather is for her to sacrifice herself. Some time passes as Hodaka, Hina, and her brother Nagi run away from home. The next day, Hodaka and Nagi wake up to see she is gone. Hodaka, now running from the police because of some stuff that happened earlier, needs to get back to the shrine and bring her back. Problem is, if he does this, the constant rain will come back and flood Tokyo. This is the story of two people fucking over the citizens of Tokyo.

Yes, you read that right. Hodaka brings Hina back and then there’s a three year time skip. In those three years, not once did it stop raining. Half of Tokyo gets flooded because of Hodaka’s tunnel vision for Hina. He brings back the one person that can stop the flooding for his own selfishness. And I get why he did. He loves her. But bringing her back has ruined the lives of thousands of people and caused so much damage to Tokyo’s infrastructure. And the worst part? They don’t feel bad about it. They cause so much destruction and they are just like “we can live like this”. What the fuck dude?! People have died, lost their homes, their businesses, and possibly their way of life to your selfish actions and your justification is “but we can deal with it”. Hodaka and Hina have to be some of the most selfish and conceited MCs I have ever seen in a piece of media. And I understand that some people will argue “oh well if you truly loved someone, you’d do anything for them.” To me, that’s incredibly immature. You gotta think about the repercussions of all of this.I’ll reiterate: so many people died, lost their homes, and lost their way of life because of the decision of one lovestruck teen. If I were one of the citizens that was affected by this and I found out about Hodaka’s decision, I’d be furious. I’m sorry, but I just can’t justify this.

The rest of the film’s story is fine. Outside of this shit ending, everything else is great. Hodaka is okay at best. Hina is cool as well. The best character imo is Kei. This guy is trying to live a decent life and is trying to get his daughter back. He possibly threw away his future for Hodaka. Nothing but respect for this man. The rest of the cast is forgettable.

It was really cool to see Taki and Mitsuha cameo in the movie. But, this just makes a massive plothole in either Your Name and Weathering With You. At the end of WWY, Tokyo gets flooded, but in Your Name, Tokyo isn’t flooded. I looked it up and apparently Shinkai doesn’t give af about continuity. Like, was using these characters just suppose to get the audiences up from their seats in excitement? Cause it worked for me. When I saw Taki emerge from the house, I was like “No way!” I feel like the only reason why Shinkai used Taki and Mitsuha was to get the audiences riled up.

As with all of the rest of his movies, Makoto Shinkai’s art direction is nothing short of amazing. On the same level as Your Name and The Garden of Words, Weathering With You is a phenomenal piece of art and this alone is worth watching the movie for. Every single detail is done with pain staking precision. At times, I thought it was a real life shot. The animation for the film couples the art direction perfectly. No animation errors that I saw and the animation itself is smooth as hell. I did find the whole product placement to be weird. It makes sense since this is suppose to be real life Tokyo, but an important plot point with Hodaka and Hina first meeting each other being revolved around a Big Mac is just weird. There’s also Toho Studios with IMAX, Google, Yahoo, Maruchan, and a couple of others popping up in the movie.

The music is also great, but not as good as Your Name’s. Radwimps returns to do the score for the film and it’s pretty good. Again, not as good as Your Name, but the music direction needs to be commended. I did like how there were two vocalists for the songs. Showed the perspectives of Hodaka and Hina.

Voice acting for the movie is good as well. I watched this in the original JP dub and it does not disappoint. The quality of the sound was great too and I felt emotion from their voices too, which is always a plus. Best performances go to Nana Mori (Hina), Kotarou Daigo (Hodaka), Shun Oguri (Kei), and Tsubasa Honda (Natsumi).

Overall, this is a good movie with a bad ending. If you are a fan of Shinkai’s works, then you’ll enjoy this film. Even if you aren’t, go watch this for the art direction alone. A friend of mine recommended this movie to me, saying it’s better than Your Name. Honestly, I still like Your Name better. Until my next review, stay frosty.

Thank you for reading.

This is Zorgak, signing off.