Weathering With You is a 2019 anime about a high school boy who falls in love with a girl who can change the weather.
Not all anime has to be about a futuristic-like environment that includes ninja cyborgs fighting mutant hybrid kangaroos. Sometimes they can tell a really simple story about falling in love for the first time, like our main character in this animated feature from director Makoto Shinkai. Weathering With You‘s story is about a teenage boy named Morishima (Koataro Daigo), who runs away from his small village to live in Tokyo, Japan. On the ferry ride over, a huge storm almost knocks him overboard and he is saved by Keisuke Suga (Shun Oguri), who offers him a job at his publishing firm. His assignment is to join a reporter named Natsumi (Tsubasa Honda) to investigate mysterious storm patterns in the city and to talk with people who have seen sightings of a maiden who can manipulate the weather. After one night of saving a young girl from some scheming thugs at a nightclub, Morishimi soon discovers that the girl named Hina (Nana Mori), who thanked him by buying him a burger is the same weather maiden that they have been searching for.
We all in some ways remember our first love, but I hope I was never as obsessive as our main protagonist was in this feature. At the start of this movie, he is very aroused by every woman he meets and when Hina shows signs of affection towards him, he is locked onto her. This kid was willing to run away from the cops and even point a gun at someone just to be near this girl. Look, I get it that we don’t always think when it comes to being in love, but when he pulls a weapon or fights someone just to be near a girl he just met, he ought to be put in a straight jacket and thrown in jail. If this wasn’t an animated fable, Morishima would very much seem like a an obsessed stalker.
Being a huge fan of Your Name, I was very excited to see this latest movie by Makoto Shinkai. He has a really good way of expressing emotions not just in facial expressions of his characters but in the entire environment as well. He doesn’t show sadness by only animating people crying. He shows the whole entire city get drowned in a river of tears in this feature. This is a very well done movie that has some of the best hand drawn animation of 2019.
However, the main character and his obsessive nature kept me from really enjoy it. I know for many that is going to come off as being slightly cynical and maybe that’s so, it’s I just never saw any romantic connection between Morishima and Hina that would give any reason for him to behave the way he did. Weathering With You is highly recommended for those in a younger age demographic than myself or for those who believe so strongly in love that they will fight and almost kill someone just to obtain a small fraction of it. Maybe one day I will be there.