Weath­er­ing with You

Rain has always been a promi­nent nat­ur­al force in the work of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion direc­tor Mako­to Shinkai’s, emblem­at­ic of a sort of spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion between Heav­ens and Earth. In Weath­er­ing with You, his fol­low-up to the acclaimed fan­ta­sy romance Your Name, this con­nec­tion has been thrown out of bal­ance, and the appear­ance of rain has shift­ed into some­thing more oppres­sive and ominous.

The film is set against the back­drop of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change and fol­lows 16-year-old Hoda­ka Mor­ishi­ma, a run­away fend­ing for him­self in an alter­nate Tokyo where it hasn’t stopped rain­ing for sev­er­al months. While mileage may vary with Shinkai’s par­tic­u­lar brand of melo­dra­ma, there’s no deny­ing the plea­sures of the film’s tac­tile, detailed and beau­ti­ful­ly paint­ed animation.

Grandiose tech­ni­cal flour­ish­es empha­sise the film’s emo­tion­al peaks with a per­fect mix­ture of CG and dig­i­tal paint­ing, dis­play­ing sweep­ing vis­tas in tan­dem with Hodaka’s bleed­ing-heart nar­ra­tion. The film also bears all of the nar­ra­tive hall­marks of his pre­vi­ous work: the band Radwimp’s orig­i­nal score kicks in as the vir­tu­al cam­era dra­mat­i­cal­ly tilts to the sky; teen romance is threat­ened by ancient Japan­ese prophe­cy; and horni­ness over­comes apoc­a­lyp­tic disaster.

Despite the grand scope of the plot, Shinkai still val­ues the lit­tle dra­mas of being a teenag­er, whether that’s Hodaka’s paralysing fear and excite­ment over going to a girl’s house for the first time, or his bur­geon­ing feel­ings for a girl whom he fears might be com­plete­ly beyond his reach. It would be a mis­take to think that Weath­er­ing with You is strict­ly about cli­mate change, as this is a fan­ta­sy romance first and foremost.

There’s no real solu­tion to envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe, but the clos­est thing to it is a moment where Hoda­ka and his friend and sav­iour, Hina, find them­selves falling togeth­er, hand in hand. Per­haps the faith that every­thing will be okay in each other’s com­pa­ny is where Shinkai sees our salvation.