Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement left a gaping hole in the Japanese animated moviemaking world, with fans wondering who would dare try to step into his shoes. Enter Makoto Shinkai, who wowed myself and most of the world with mthe splendid Your Name. For his followup, Shinkai proves he can nail that fable like storytelling and wonder consistently like Miyazaki, but he needs to go deeper to find that beautiful storytelling magic he showed with his first globally beloved feature. Unless you’re a teenager….
On a boat going toward Tokyo, 16 year old runaway Hodaka (Kotaro Daigo) almost gets washed up in a sudden rainstorm, only to be saved by a Mr. Suga (Shun Oguri). Hodaka, with nowhere else to turn, takes a job from Mr. Suga writing for tabloidish magazines. One of his first assignments is to find “The Sunshine Girl,” a girl who supposedly can control the weather. Hodaka’s search leads him to Hina (Nana Mori), a soon-to-be 18 year old working part time at Mickey D’s, who claims to have that power.
In general, most great kids stories come from old tales, fables, and books. Weathering With You isn’t based on any Japanese folklore specifically, but it feels inspired by themes and stories previously explored by Studio Ghibli films. While watching Weathering With You, I couldn’t help but see all the ways nature is more than alive: it’s animalistic, with feelings and behaviors like anything else in the world. In addition, Shinkai shoots the sky in all its glory and grandeur, making it an imposing force. When the ceaseless rain arrives, we get aggressive grayness, as if they sky sucked out the world’s life force. But when the sun comes out, the light changes colors and reflects brightly on each building, amplifying the light and with it, joy and zest for living. This depiction gives Shinkai’s story an unpredictability, propulsion, and mystery that allow him to slow down the movie at times to give us some lovely character beats, painting each character with complexity and dimensions.
So what’s keeping Weathering With You from the heights of the superior Your Name? Your Name contains a depth in its thematic storytelling, building layers upon layers of text into its third act, elevating the stakes and impact of each payoff. Weathering With You isn’t quite as subtle as the 2017 film. If you’re paying attention, you can figure out where Hodaka and Hina’s stories are building towards. When we get where we’re going in the third act, Shinkai’s storytelling at least gives us some consequences to the decisions each of the leads makes. However, I wished Shinkai gave us 20-30 more minutes of exploration of those consequences, instead of cramming them all into an epilogue which feels rushed and slightly unfulfilling to get to where it believes the audience wants the movie to end. Weathering With You feels explicitly targeting a teenage audience with the main storytelling choices (especially a couple GREAT easter eggs); adults might struggle to connect with the movie’s leads: I personally found myself more moved by Mr. Suga, a secondary character.
Weathering With You is my recalibration on Makoto Shinkai. Sometimes my expectations for a director get so high, that they can’t be topped. This film at least is really fun and sometimes very interesting, unlike some other recalibrations. Yes, I’m looking at Where’d You Go Bernadette? you, Richard Linklater. Take some lessons from Makoto Shinkai on how to properly calm down your legend so you can get back to making amazing stuff.