Movie Review - Weathering With You

This film was the official submission from Japan to the 92nd Academy Awards for Best International Feature. It's also a film that was eligible for the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It's rare for an animated film to be nominated for the Best International Feature prize. As far as I can tell, it's only happened twice in nearly a century, The Missing Picture at the 86th Oscars and Waltz with Bashir at the 81st Oscars. Since the Best Animated Feature began at the 74th Oscars, submissions from Japan have been nominated more frequently. Given that the previous feature from writer-director Makoto Shinkai was such a success, the odds for this film to make it seemed good. Shinkai's previous feature was Your Name (2016). That piece of animation made about $360 million in the worldwide box office. It became the second-largest film in Japan's history behind Spirited Away (2001). It was number-one in Japan for 12 weeks. Nine of which were consecutive. It was highly acclaimed but somehow it didn't get nominated at the Oscars. I suppose that would presage the fate of this film because it didn't get nominated in Best International Feature or Best Animated Feature.

I'm ultimately fine with this outcome. I wasn't as much of a fan of Shinkai's previous feature and I'm not a fan of this current feature either. Like with his previous feature, Shinkai takes a fantastical premise and doesn't really explore it in ways that I felt were engaging or any deeper than what a child might concoct, which is fine for something that is ostensibly a cartoon. Yet, the rating for this film is higher than his previous, which suggests that it might lean more toward being for adults. This film is longer than Shinkai's previous feature, which would be appropriate for a more adult story, digging deeper into issues and characters, but, unfortunately I was more bored by the extra length here.

The film focuses on a teenage girl named Hina Amano who lives in Tokyo and whose father is sick, possibly dying. One rainy day, she sees a torii, which is a "shrine gate." In the Japanese religion called Shinto, there are things called shrines that are built in honor of the kami. Kami are the spirits, phenomenon or holy powers that followers of Shinto believe exist in the world. Kami is literally a Japanese word that translates to "deity" or "spirit." The kami can also represent various things like the forces of nature, including the wind or the rain. In order to get to the kami, one has to pass through the gate known as torii.

When Hina sees the torii on top of a rundown building next to the hospital, she decides to go through the shrine gate and pray for her father's health and recovery. When she does, something happens, which transforms her into what's called the "weather maiden" or the kami of the weather. Hina discovers that she can basically control the weather. Specifically, she can stop the rain from pouring. This is particularly important because it has been raining incessantly, almost nonstop in Japan. This is based on a real thing. The 2018 Pacific typhoon season was above average producing 29 storms, 13 typhoons, and 7 super-typhoons. On average, a third of the year is spent in rain. For a majority of months, nearly half the month is spent in rain. Of course, a lot of death and destruction result from these storms, a good chunk of it from over flooding.

Hodaka Morishima is a teenage boy who is homeless, living on the streets of Tokyo after running away. The reason for his running away is never fully explored. All is known is that Hodaka is desperate not to go back home. The police who knows he's a runaway tries to catch him, but he keeps escaping them. Eventually, he gets a job at a small magazine company, run by a man named Keisuke Suga. Mr. Suga, as Hodaka calls him, tells him to be an assistant to one of his writers and go with her to interview people for articles. It's through this assignment that Hodaka meets Hina and learns that she is a weather maiden or what's colloquially called a "sunshine girl" because her main ability is stopping the rain and making the sun come out.

He starts to fall in love with Hina, as he spends more time with her and her younger brother. Hina and her brother are underage, yet they are living apart from their parents as well. Hodaka bonds with them over that, but he works with Hina to create a business out of her abilities. They basically ask people for money in order to have Hina use her power to stop the precipitation. For example, people pay them if they have an outside event like a wedding or something and they don't want it to rain.

What's strange though is that the police chase after the three teenagers, but they chase after the teens because they're runaways and living on their own without parental supervision. Why this is strange is because it becomes known that Hina can control the weather and this doesn't become a thing in the news or seemingly doesn't catch the attention of the government. Instead of exploring the idea of a person having the power to stop rain and possibly typhoons when those things are getting worse and no one in the media or government not doing anything about it feels like a waste of this idea. The film is instead limited to a rather lame romance between Hina and Hodaka, which would be fine, if that romance were developed more. For example, we never learn the reasons why the three teens ran away from their parents or families. Other details about them are thin, as such I couldn't get invested in their chaste love affair.

Rated PG-13 for some violence and language.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 52 mins.