First-year high schooler Hodaka Morishima (voiced by Kotaro Diago in the original Japanese version) flees his home on the island of Kozu-shima to make a new life in Tokyo. After his ferry gets caught in a huge rainstorm, he meets a businessman named Keisue Suga (Shun Oguri) who soon gives him a part-time job at his publishing company. As Hodaka and the company begin investigating urban legends regarding Tokyo's unusually wet weather, Hodoka and Suga learn of the mythical "sunshine girl" with weather-controlling activities. But Hodoka is about to learn she exists, and he finds her in the form of Hina Amano (Nana Mori), a fellow high schooler and a McDonald's employee who gave him food just after he arrived in Tokyo and was homeless and unemployed. So now he tracks her down again and they form a strong connection, particularly after she proves her powers to him. The powers that be, however, of course won't let them be together, so they must find a way to do so.
This latest effort from anime writer-director Makoto Shinkai begins really very promisingly and engagingly, but like its predecessor Your Name (2016), it peaked about 30 minutes in for me. Again, the visuals are gorgeous and painstakingly detailed, but Shinkai's pacing is, I think, more erratic than a toddler's handwriting and I swear some of his dialogue here is so corny it makes James Cameron's sound like opera. I also don't think its narrative is nearly as thematically deep as it thinks it is (and as it arguably should be), and Japanese rock band Radwimps' score (they also scored Your Name) feels much too electronic for a film so overtly about nature and connection; I think a really organic, new-age score would've fit much better.
If you read this and you're about to watch the movie, that's my forecast for what you'll get with Weathering with You. 6/10.
If you read this and you're about to watch the movie, that's my forecast for what you'll get with Weathering with You. 6/10.
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