Tenki no ko (Weathering with You)
TENKI NO KO (WEATHERING WITH YOU) - Toho
Three years after his mega-successful Kimi No Nawa, known in the West as Your Name, director and visual auteur Makoto Shinkai returns with Weathering with You, a beautiful tale of adolescent confusion and accepting one's responsibilities in the same level of jaw-dropping animation seen in his previous features.
The comparisons to Kimi No Nawa will be imminent, since from the very first day it carved its legacy into the anime walk of fame; there was a large concern on how Shinkai will ever top that. The answer is that he does not. This statement might sound negative at first but, in actuality, it is a big positive. Instead of trying to chase after the legacy of his ultimate success, Shinkai decides to take a step back and re-live the intimate style of filmmaking that he created with his earlier works like 5 Centimeters Per Second and The Garden Of Woods.
That is not to say that this film is cookie-cutter or passive by any means. Throughout the film, there is this feeling of an imminent danger coming for our main protagonists and the viewer cannot help themselves but hope that the moment never arrives. This feeling is further cemented by how the dread is smoothened over by its light-hearted moments, which will almost make the viewer forget the possible tragedy that is to be overcome — it is touching in the most Shinkai way possible.
The shots of the skies, like all of his previous works, are the most beautiful pieces of animation present in this film; the streets, shops and all sorts of other locations are the most realistically animated recreations of its real subjective locations. There is one thing that makes this film’s animation unique from its peers and it is the fact that the animation shines the most during the day scenes — as in contrast to Kimi No Nawa’s night scenes or 5 Centimeters Per Second’s blizzard/cherry-blossom scene — which is understandable when analyzing the animation with respect to the film’s central themes. That is not to say that the rain — another main background feature of this film — looks ugly in any way, as it is the one which carries and subsequently reveals the real and hidden emotions of its characters and how they ultimately decide to deal with them.
While no other Shinkai character may ever live up to the tragic-romantic duo of Taki Tachibana and Mitsuha Miyamizu, it is safe to say that the characters of this feature may become memorable in their own unique way. Both the two main leads and the three side-leads are written in such a way that they will be remembered most by their sensibility and personality compared to their design, names or dressing sense. Even if at times some of their reactions may feel one-note, those subsequent reactions will never feel out of the character’s motivation or personality.
The conclusion of this story might not be as emotionally explosive as expected from the previous experience in Shinkai’s ventures, leaving a feeling a loss since some of the plot points could have been explored much further but sadly are not. Still, there is nothing of the sort that will either frustrate or be bewildering in any negative way and any small inconvenience will be glossed off by this film’s multiple positives that are there to provide the right amount of raw emotions that is directly proportional to the situations and decisions on hand. Weathering with You, while not being of a higher or even similar quality experience to the one film everyone will be comparing it with, is still a brilliant journey through the emotions and sceneries that made Makoto Shinkai a household name in the first place.
Tenki no ko (Weathering with You) is released January 17th, 2020.