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Picking up from the smash success of Makoto Shinkai's Your Name, Weathering With You carries forward its torch for visually resplendent young-love stories, hitting many of the same notes, but not to the same aplomb. While well-received overall, Weathering With You is often criticised for its more predictable narrative, and an inferior chemistry between its leads, neither of which I can contest outright.
However, I'm afraid I'll have to defend Shinkai's later outing. While I'll admit it doesn't measure up to the emotional highs of its predecessor, I found Weathering With You was more thematically ambitious, and more topically poignant. The inevitable comparisons to his own past works stands testament to Shinkai's impact as a filmmaker, but being contrasted to the cream of the crop is a general disservice to Weathering With You.
Set in a version of modern Tokyo offset by tumultous rainstorms, the emphasis of this film lies in weather, and the role it plays in city landscapes. Seemingly framed as a backdrop for the budding relationship between its two young leads, the setting and its juxtaposition against elements of mysticism are the core of this film.
A spot of sunshine (or maybe not)
The most obvious comment I can make is concerning the animation, which is unquestionably gorgeous. Using a careful blend of traditional and CGI animation, with beautiful panning shots of the urban environment, the focus is not-so-subtly placed on how weather affects us as a society. So it naturally follows that the story follows two youngsters, one of whom demonstrates the uncanny ability to control the weather in an otherwise apocalyptic climate.
It lacks the subtle dynamism of Your Name's body swapping antics, but the reason this meteorological premise works for me is probably best captured in a recent anecdote. Sunlight is nothing special for a kid growing up in South India, just as it means little to a college student in California (both me, by the way). And it means even less when you happen to be in London during the worst heat wave in recorded history. On the twenty-second of July, 2022, I sat in my musty student dorm without an AC, without a fan, and the oppressive heat had me stuck on a single thought: "make it stop". This was barely a week ago.
As I sat there, all alone with my thoughts during the tail-end of the heat wave, I heard something. Something soft and shortlived. And then again. And again. I looked out my window to see, with little warning, a small drizzle in the eye of the hot-spell. It was as I walked (ran) out to stand in this feeble rain that I understood the happiness we could experience from the simplest acts of weather.
Now, I'm aching to analyse the use of setting and conceit in this film with regards to climate change, but I'll leave that for the analysis. Firstly, let's acknowledge the successes and failings of this film.
Young love, found family, and wacky mysticism
Given that the prevalence of young love features so often in his movies, it should come as no surprise that Shinkai develops the relationship between his romantic leads—Hodaka and Hina—appreciably. The slice of life montages (complete with music by RADWIMPS, 'cause if it ain't broke...) and focus on found family develop our own bond to the characters, but where the character writing really shines is in its presentation of shared experience.
What the film reinforces to its main trio is their place in the world. As a runaway from home and an orphan attempting to support her brother respectively, Hodaka and Hina struggle against a society attempting to displace them and demanding that they change. There's an oppressive air to their experiences (particularly in the later acts), as they fail to reconcile with the values and rules of adults.
United by the animosity they're constantly subject to, our main characters find comfort and security in each others' presence and support. Honestly, these are ideas we've seen before, but that doesn't make them any less effective.
If there's any major flaw in the characters, it would be Hodaka himself. In spite of being the protagonist of this film, we understand very little about his deeper motivations. While there's a good argument that it was left open to interpretation, the severity of his situation never seems to coincide with his circumstances, nor does it balance out against Hina and the other characters' own dilemmas.
Although I decried comparisons to Your Name in this very post, I'll also concede that there's validity in contrasting the two films' main duos. In spite of both being well-established enough to function in their respective stories, the deeper foundation of Hodaka and Hina's connection isn't as well fleshed-out, or immediately evocative, as Taki and Mitsuha before them.
It should come as no surprise that the movie champions the strength of romantic bonds, but its interplay with mystic elements (another Shinkai mainstay) range from grand visual storytelling to vaguely explored metaphors. Although the mysticism is clearly defined in the beginning, later parts leave it so indeterminate that it just doesn't have the same impact.
The whiplash from a somewhat grounded story to... whatever the final act showed us... is something Weathering With You never truly recovers from, but that's frankly just indicative of the greater risks it wanted to take. While its larger-than-life presentation might have been an attempt to measure up to audiences' ridiculous expectations, it doesn't contribute much to the overall message regarding climate responsibility.
Analysing the environmental message
From here till the Closing thoughts, spoilers are unmarked (and there are tons of them).
In my introduction, I made a point to highlight the presentation of city landscapes, and the role of weather in the functioning of society. At a very superficial level, one of the simplest ideas Weathering With You presents us with is how sunshine allows us to enjoy our surroundings.
However, this relatively simple idea—which Hodaka doesn't hesitate to turn into a business model—underlies a sinister conceit in the movie's themes.
You see, in showing us how sunshine is necessary for certain aspects of society, Shinkai lampshades how much of the daily bustle can carry on without it. In spite of the downpours, in spite of the near apocalyptic weather conditions, the grind continues. Life goes on.
And upon revisiting this movie, this terrified me. I was genuinely shaken to the bones by how accurately this movie represented how efficiently we—as a society—can ignore crises. How we can take something palpably real and trivialise it so we can go on with life as usual.
This is an alarmingly accurate depiction of our views towards climate change in the twenty-first century (particularly in light of 2022), because that is, in fact, the thematic core of this movie: the generational consequences of climate responsibility.
First and foremost in showing this is the establishment of a generational gap. Children and adults are clearly differentiated throughout the film, mostly because we're meant to root for only one of them. Our main characters are, after all, children, rejected or misfit in an adult world, trying to make it in spite of society's rules not working for them.
As stated before, it creates adversity towards the main characters that the bonds of young love must overcome (à la Your Name). However, the innocence of their adolescent romance is juxtaposed against the complexity of the world they inhabit. Take the gun Hodaka lucklessly happens upon.
I say "happens upon", but we all know it was maliciously planted on him. Throughout the story, it comes to represent adult violence and complexity, hence the significance of it being cruelly thrust onto a näive youth. Much like the mature violence the gun represents, it forces its way into Hodaka's life (either by going off or showing up in front of him) whenever violence might potentially solve his problems. In spite of the fact it never does.
The world of adults is shown to be foreign, complex, and imposing on children, but it's the view on the other side of the bridge that I appreciate most in this movie. The adults are shown to be fundamentally confused with regards to their stance on future generations.
Firstly, there are the cops. While they are often portrayed as antagonists by standing in the main characters' way, they're really just doing their jobs. They seem jaded and insensitive, but that comes with the territory. When it comes down to it, they don't mean poorly.
Then, there's my favourite character, Keisuke Suga. Introduced as a wacky uncle-type father figure, he embodies adults' confused decisions to save some children at the cost of others. Desperate to reunite with his estranged daughter, he tells himself forsaking one or two children for the sake of everyone is surely fine. But even as he says it, he's a mess of conflicting morals: contrarily smoking (an act that endangers his daughter, whom he's trying to protect in the first place) as he justifies abandoning Hodaka.
Unlike most father figure characters, Suga isn't an unshakeable pillar, nor does he provide an example for Hodaka to follow. As an adult on the other side, he can't see eye-to-eye with the main cast, contrasted against his niece, Natsumi, who stands in the transition: empathising with the children because she's failing to be an adult (shown in her interview flops).
Thing is, in spite of not being on the kids' "side", Suga still tries to be there for Hodaka in the final act, even if it compromises his own agenda. He might not be helping at first, but his heart was in the right place for even showing up, and when push came to shove, his paternal instincts took over.
Although none of the adults in the movie mean poorly towards children (for from it, in Suga's case), their selfish and contrarian decisions end up endangering future generations by propagating accountability. The parallels to climate awareness could not be more clear.
Weathering With You's message regarding climate change is in clarifying that the onus isn't on future generations to do better. Instead of pushing off the repercussions of their actions, adults should own up to their mistakes and accept the consequences. Rather than taking the easy way out by sacrificing children, it's their responsibility to accept the unnatural weather they brought about. And in doing so, the natural order may eventually return.
At the same time, however, the movie shares a criminally understated message to the young 'uns, telling them to accept the "crazy" world they inherited. It's not their fault it ended up like that, but it's ultimately their world. And given the endless negativity and fingerpointing surrounding climate change and the future, there's something enduringly important in this little memo, advising us to relish the beauty we can still find in the world.
Closing thoughts
Weathering With You probably isn't topping any charts. Nor is it going down in history as a monumental achievement in anime cinema, and yet, that's why I feel the need to celebrate it for what it is. By no means is it a perfect movie, even within its genre alone, but in our search for perfection, we so often can't see the forest for the trees.
Delving into painfully relevant subject matter, Weathering With You might just be a near-perfect environmental film, its only glaring flaw being structural limitations and an inability to carefully package its remaining elements with a neat ribbon. That, and living in the shadow of its older sister.
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