well here i am, back to the first shinkai film i watched. i started this whole filmography watchthrough exactly 1 month ago, december 23rd on my first rewatch of your name in about 4 months. and now i return to the first shinkai film i watched, which makes this my first rewatch of it in five months.

some things stay the same. its visually spectacular. no more needs to be said. watching this in 4K HDR is quite literally a masterful experience with some of the most vibrant blues and greens i've ever seen.

radwimps soundtrack is insanely well done, and the songs with lyrics are tied with visuals here just as well, if not more so, than in your name. Especially with that moment when grand escape is playing as hodaka says “I care about you, I don’t care about blue skies" has no right going so fucking hard.

however, the story still really pisses me off. shinkai was definitely capitalizing off of the sucsess of your name here (if that wasnt obvious enough with the cameos of mitsuha and taki) and wanted to replicate that good old feel good ending.

HOWEVER the reason that your name's ending works so well is because of the payback/good karma of taki maturing and saving itomori along with the time they are apart, and how that affects their memories of each other. those circumstances make us want to see them together because they deserve to be together. hell, taki saved 500 people's lives. he deserves the world.

in weathering with you, hodaka, this films equivalent of taki, is a stuck up greedy asshole that runs away from his problems. he never has a 'come to jesus' moment where he has to face the problems he made and to learn from his actions, he essentially gets off scott free and doesnt have to work at all to find hina at the end of the film. he literally become a WORSE version of himself to see her at the end. thats not what i would want to see in a shinkai movie at all!

plus, suga's sudden change of heart to support hodaka at the end was just so dumb. he deserved to have custody of his kid and was frankly the only sane person in this whole narrative. he was the one who deserved to be with the person he loves. also, the ex machinas that popped up through the plot also bugged me big time, and the plot is often told and not shown like your name, which its lack of "telling" made the story 100x better. seeing things unravel like that is COOL. having an old ass man say "L + ratio, shes gonna die lmao" is DUMB.

hodaka needed to learn his lesson by being permanently separated from hina. this film NEEDED to have a bad ending à la 5cm/s.

of any emotion, this is the shinkai movie that angers me most. this film has so much potential, and it couldve been so great if shinkai was more willing to not copy your name as hard, and couldve hit emotionally way harder.

my rating remains unchanged. i appreciate every good thing this film offers and loathe everything it does wrong.

please dont fuck up next time shinkai i am begging you

6.5/10