Weathering With You, Shinkai's newest work is also Shinkai's biggest failure. Unlike Garden of Words, which was just boring and weird with the relationship between the two main leads, Weathering With You attempts to do too much and none of it ends up working out. But why is that? Simple; Shinkai does not even attempt to do anything new or approach these subject manners in any way but as a vehicle for the main focus of this movie; the relationship between our main leads. Yet what should end up making it feel as a much more focused work ends up filling it to the brim with too many errors.

To get the positives out of the way, I do think the first half of the movie is, like... kind of enjoyable? It's not enough to make it work, but I did find the relationship between Hodoka, Natsumi, and Keisuke to be pretty fun. And the movie itself is quite pretty. It's not too pretty, it feels very much like a flex without any real style or substance behind it and doesn't feel as good as Your Name or 5cm/s, but it is well animated and works well.

Now, to get to the biggest failure of the movie; the relationship between Hodoka and Hina. It is just horribly rushed for what is supposed to be the core of the entire movie. As individual characters, they are boring. Hodoka has nothing to him except being selfish and running away for... no reason, really. We only really get to know about a "darkness", but no details outside of that, which makes it feel less as if Hodoka is a character, but more of a self insert. Some people might have seen Hodoka in themselves, and be able to relate to him; we can recognize the darkness as something specific to ourselves and thus understand his thought process, but when you're making a movie where the character and personality of our lead IS the crux, you can't exactly just have a self insert for the protagonist. And Hina also has nothing to her except the fact she is trying to care for her little brother and is nice. So how do you write a romance between a character whose entire personality is "nice" and another who is a "self insert"?

Shinkai's answer is simple; you don't! Rather than having a realistic set up and dynamic between these two characters, you simply see them bonding through a montage set to music, and rather than seeing them develop, you are rushed through it to get to the forced end point of a romance between them two. While I don't necessarily agree with the comparisons between Your Name and Weathering With You, I feel this part is important to understand why WwY's dynamic feels so empty. Your Name's main leads are forced into this situation together and have to cooperate, and the montage is seeing them being bothered but also grow to enjoy each other's company, so the twist by the middle makes it hurt much more, and makes the protagonist's choices much more realistic. WwY's montage, or anything, doesn't demonstrate any of this growth. Both our leads are not forced together, they were friendly already, we simply jumped from "in friendly terms" to "in love with each other" with no real set up or development. And this isn't a case of the movie being too short, it's two hours long. That issue lies somewhere else.

Shinkai, in this movie, somehow decides that tackling social commentary is the best way to make a movie relatable to our viewers. Now, keep in mind I'm not Japanese. I'm not exactly living in Tokyo or am an expert. This is simply from a viewer's takeaway. But every single piece of commentary is most probably the emptiest and most vapid thing I've seen in a while. It can range from the entire foster thing the movie sets up, with the police looking for Hodoka who ran away, and Hina's entire deal, where while I see what it is going for I don't think it's executed very well, or the... gun stuff? Thing? Where I have no idea what exactly it's trying to say other than it just... being there? And the thing is, this movie attempts to fill the movie with this commentary, but it never does anything with it but only bring these issues up. What am I supposed to take away about Hodoka not wanting to go home if we never know his reasoning? Sure, I feel bad for Hina who is being forced to separate from her house and her brother, but these issues are never really pushed anywhere but to drive our main characters from Point A to Point B.

And even outside of this, this movie is just full of weird set up that never goes anywhere. Remember how I said this movie was two hours long and yet still felt rushed? This is why; there is a lot of set up yet half of it goes nowhere. We know about Keisuke's daughter, but that doesn't go anywhere despite having around 10 to 20 minutes dedicated to it. We learn about a lot of weird mythology stuff from Hodoka's side gig, but most of it except for the rain girl phenomenon never goes anywhere. The gun, Keisuke as a character, Hina's sister's harem, even Hodoka running away from his home is pointless except for the reason why he's even there. This movie is filled to the brim with nothing that it both feels too long and rushed.

And the biggest issue has to be the final choice between Hodoka and HIna. Keep in mind, my issue does not lie in a personal sense, where I feel the world should be chosen over Hina; it's who made the choice and towards who. As I said before, the relationship between Hodoka and Hina does not work, so when your climax is entirely focused on making their relationship and Hodoka's love be as realistic as oossible, the movie itself rushing through all of it makes it feel frustrating, unearned, and just absolutely stupid. You could say that it's just Hodoka being a kid, but even then I don't thing that it's the choice being dumb, it's who did it doesn't feel earned. The climax fails, the characters fall apart, the entire movie just doesn't work.

And that's a shame, really. Because I think the idea of choosing someone over the world is a good one, if it's executed well. And I DO think Shinkai could have done it in a good way. Your Name was the opposite choice, but it could have had the same issues that would have made it a bad movie. But this doesn't work. It's too bloated, too rushed, too much that feels as if he's trying to do Your Name's structure, but more. But the simplicity of it was what worked, and adding more only makes it worse,