Weathering With You Film Review: Of Sunnier Days

Film Positives

I am one of the many who got wrapped up in (and standby) the phenomenon that was Director Makoto Shinkai’s 2016 mega-hit Your Name. Therefore, I couldn’t help going into 2019’s Weathering With You with certain expectations. To that end, I would say those expectations were met.

First off, Weathering With You was a beautiful film. The animation and visuals were nothing short of spectacular. If there is one thing Mr. Shinkai can do, it is lighting. The use of sunlight and how it bounced off the world right after a rainstorm was stunning.

To take this praise one step further, Weathering With You is the better animated between itself and Your Name. Don’t get me wrong, both films are breathtaking, but Your Name only had one big showpiece that fully highlighted its outstanding colorwork and spectacle. By comparison, Weathering With You was so much more ambitious with its visuals.

Between the two, I still have to give the overall win to Your Name, and I do that for one reason: The characters, specifically, the two main characters.

You may be wondering why I am mentioning this in the positives section of the review. It’s because Weathering With You’s characters, if this were any other movie, were its best feature. And again, that is why I wanted to make it clear that I am referring to the two leads, Hodaka Morishima and Hina Amano.

I want to set Hodaka aside. All you need to know about him for the moment is that I don’t think he was a bad character. However, compared to Hina, Hodaka was lacking.

As such, Hina was great, and she was as good as anyone in Your Name. She was well-rounded, and every decision she made, every action she took, they not only made sense, you knew where they were coming from. Hina was put into a difficult position when she had to become the head of her household. Everything she did was to ensure she and her brother could stay together. Hina was a selfless person who knew there were things only she could do.

Hina was also not someone who needed saving; she was never the damsel in distress. There may have been things she needed help with, and there were those who would risk everything to be by her side, but she was more than capable of taking care of herself.

Hina was easy to understand.

Plus, and this is more a personal thing with me, Weathering With You was much more straightforward than Your Name. After all, a girl who can change the weather is much simpler to follow than body-swapping, time-traveling teenagers.

That is why I think this film is in an interesting position.

Although I enjoyed Your Name better than Weathering With You, if you are someone who didn’t care for the former, you might have more luck with the latter. You need to know this if you decide to check out this film:

This is Weathering With You, not Your Name 2. These are two fantastic, separate movies. And that is what I liked about this film; it relied on its own merits.

Film Negatives

Weathering With You’s most significant struggle point was its pacing, particularly in the beginning.

This film felt very fast-paced, and from where I was sitting, it seemed as though Weathering With You wanted Hodaka and Hina to meet as soon as possible. And when I say “meet,” I mean the movie needed to get to the scene where Hodaka and Hina actually began their relationship. Everything before that moment was rushed and hurriedly established.

For example, why did Hodaka come to Tokyo? Or rather, why did he decide to run away from home?

The film did explain that Hodaka was trying to follow the Sun. However, there were also hints that he didn’t want to live at his parent’s place anymore. The problem was the movie never explained his reasons. This was why Hodaka wasn’t anywhere close to as good a character as Hina. The film never established his motivations, or, at least, not as well as it did with Hina.

From what I could see, it appeared as though Hodaka’s running off was something he had been planning for a while. After all, he had enough money to get to Tokyo and survive for about a week. Therefore, he had some money saved up. Still, Hodaka didn’t appreciate the enormous step he was taking.

To be blunt, Hodaka felt like he was around to be Hina’s love interest; that’s how little background he had. As such, it’s hard not to compare Hodaka and Hina’s relationship with Taki Tachibana and Mitsuha Miyamizu’s from Your Name.

With Taki and Mitsuha, they were equal in what they needed to do in their story. More specifically, Your Name WAS their story. This made you want to root for them, and it’s what made Your Name’s ending so good.

Weathering With You tried to have something similar, but there was no balance between Hodaka and Hina. Thus, this film’s closing moments lacked punch. As for myself, I can remember walking out of the theater and missing that same wow-factor I felt after Your Name.

Be that as it may, these two films are perfect companion pieces. So, you really can’t go wrong with either of them.