short disclaimer: It's been months since I was able to watch the movie so these thoughts aren't that fresh. Nontheless I tried my best to recall the whole movie and my experience watching it.
Weathering With You tells the story of a boy and a girl who meet, some supernatural stuff coupled with romantic themes occurs, The End. Sound familiar? That’s because this movie, and especially the story, bares striking similarities to Your Name, and in fact, a lot of Makoto Shinkai’s work up until now. This just goes to show how much Shinkai needs to get out of his comfort zone and tell different, perhaps more realistic love stories, something along the lines of a remastered Five Centimeters per Second.
But that’s not to say that the story isn’t as endearing and emotionally powerful as it was before. It certainly is that. Although the characters aren’t that deep, it allowed me to apply my own feelings and experiences into the story. Whatever Hodaka and Hina went through seemed like a metaphor for whatever I went through. So sure, while the characters aren’t the deepest, the movie still manages to feel personal enough to make them relatable.
Weathering’s animation sees the return of Makoto Shinkai’s gorgeous art style and techniques that not only makes the audience more invested in the story in the long run, but also helps this film differentiate itself from his previous work.
Your Name’s dreamy moments and colorful night skies are replaced with eye-catching and considerably realistic weather effects, some of which I’ve never seen in an anime. Rain pours heavily and bounces from the pavement, lightning strikes, and as if that wasn’t enough, the film just bombards you with a beautiful shot of the sun suddenly revealing itself. In fact, the animation in general looked amazing, especially in a theater. It almost didn’t feel like traditional anime at times and almost looked 3D. All of these made for some really effective moments.
Because of this, although the plot has definitely been done before, it doesn’t really feel done before at times. The visuals are so good and unique that it felt sufficient to differentiate the whole movie as its own thing.
Hodaka’s character design could definitely look more unique though. While he’s drawn really well, I feel as if his fundamental design could use some work, just to make him look less generic.
While the voice actors are relatively unknown, we still get excellent performances from them. I can’t really say what I liked most about the voice acting without spoilers, so I’ll just say that whatever the characters felt, you could also feel because the performances just felt so genuine.
And lastly, we have the soundtrack. This OST, made by RADWIMPS, the same people who made Your Name’s, is just as good at complimenting the whole film as that movie's own OST was.
Most of the tracks on the OST are more of lowkey background noise that are never really meant to be noticed by the audience while watching but serves as an enhancer to the whole experience. (the music also matches the mood of the weather at times and I thought that was a nice touch) While these are nice themselves, obviously the anthems with actual vocals, played during the more important scenes, serve as the real meat of the soundtrack. I don’t speak Japanese, yet I still felt every word of the lyrics, and I think that really says something. Notable examples include We'll be Alright and Grand Escape, among others.
However I will say that I still much prefer the soundtrack of Your Name. While this soundtrack is still amazing, it doesn’t really compare to how good of an intro Dream Lantern was, how much of a banger Zenzenzense is, how beautiful and poetic Katawaredoki and Sparkle felt, or how satisfying it was to hear Nandemonaiya at the end.
Overall, almost no part of Weathering With You is perfect; The plot has been done before, the character designs could use some work, etc etc, but it’s the way those parts come together perfectly is what makes this movie great. I would definitely recommend it to anyone, especially fans of Shinkai’s other projects.
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