'Weathering With You' is a poignant depiction of the innocence of teenage love and the fragile barrier between carefree adolescence and the unrelenting march forward of adult responsibilities. Paired with the commentary on climate change, it offers viewers a look at a world detached from reality and lost potential in exploring topical issues of the present.

The failure in character development is a glaring problem with the film. We are simply given that our runaway protagonist, Hodaka Morishima is running away for little reason other than the apparent "darkness" of his home, no normal person would runaway for a reason other than domestic violence or a natural disaster; rather than taking the film's climate change commentary in stride and dealing with the issues for a teenage runaway, the director instead chooses to shy away from poignant issues that affect real youth in today's day and age. This is not much different from the female lead, Hina Amano who is simply shown to be an orphaned teenager caring for her younger sibling. Similarly to Hodaka's case, the director once again shies away from current social issues and instead decides to leave it at that. By putting such critical issues at a low priority, we are simply shown two lifeless puppets we follow along on a fantastical journey.
Every adult character serves as a mere prop to further the narrative and possesses no idiosyncratic ideologies, being more devoid of life than the protagonists, tension is artificially induced and their actions are motivated for similar reasons to reach the desired ending.

The highly random montage of disparate events in the lead up to Hina's disappearance fails to capture the nuance of teenage life or even adult responsibilities, instead it decides to poke at all these issues and leave the audience to mindlessly follow along in a journey of shallowness. Rather than focusing on the culturally significant rape culture in Japan, or childhood trauma, or the reasons behind running away from home, or even the glaringly obvious issue of orphaned children, we are given a slice of life exposition of meaningless events.

Strange and irrational symbolism is used throughout for effects unknown to the audience; the gun is a recurring one which served little purpose than acting as a prop to further the nonsensical plot; why was the gun used in the first place? Was it to serve as a symbol of adult responsibilities and a sobering twist in maturation? Was it simply a prop to allow for more action sequences between the police and Hodaka? There is little to explain the reason the director gave a weapon to an adolescent when the themes explored in the film have little connection with action sequences. While the animated visuals in the weather symbolism was absolutely astonishing and definitely something to be commended for, it was difficult to grasp upon anything to which it represented; Innocence? Responsibilities? Being stripped away from a home? The limited interconnection between human life, climate change and weather metaphor resulted in a purely optical spectacle with no further intellectual depth to create meaning.

It was difficult to enjoy this film due to the messy plot and ridiculous character development resulting in animated marionettes jumping along to the whims of the creator. I applaud it on its subtle but ineffective attempts at satirising social issues which had potential to powerfully impact and inform audiences. The beautiful musical accompaniment is wasted on a film with such potential. 'Weathering With You' panders to great concepts but fails to execute when it matters.