Also known as “Weathering with You”, which came out in my local cinema a few days ago. This is also the reason why I’ve been clearing my backlog of animes to review so quickly (and sloppily).

Okay, where to start…

If you haven’t read my review for Kimi no Na wa., then you should read it first. “Kimi no Na wa.” absolutely destroyed box office records, being one of the best, if not the best, work of Makoto Shinkai. “Kimi no Na wa.” was able to touch millions of hearts, being the role model of character building, world development and story telling for all of anime, even though it was a movie. “Kimi no Na wa.” was also the anime that resparked my dormant emotions for the “Romance” and “Drama” genre; both of which I have absolutely no interest in normally.

Beautiful visuals, amazing soundtracks, appropriate timing for events, and honestly breathtaking emotional moments, they all add up together to make a hearty soup of feels that just punches through your guts.

With that pretext out of the way, let’s begin by asking a question: do you like rain?

Do you like rain? | Source: WeHeartIt

Rain

For some people, they might like it; the relaxing sounds of water droplets hitting the ground, combined with the cooling effect that rain has on the environment; it makes urban cities with their flashy LEDs, traffic lights, and car headlights more vibrant and breathtaking. Some children enjoy rain because they get to play with water, some teenagers enjoy it because it lets them sleep longer, and some adults enjoy it because it gives them a break from hectic life to think about, well, life.

Rain is a small wonder of the planet, able to bring about emotions unconsciously, like depression, anxiety, and sadness, giving us time to think and reflect of our actions for the week. It is a temporary seclusion from our everyday lives, and a mechanism automatically triggered by mother nature, almost as if to coax us into reflection.

Rain is beautiful; visually and audibly.

Maybe you like the sun instead? | Source: Tenor

For some other people, they hate the rain; it’s suffocating and restrictive, and they would much prefer to have a sunny day to air their laundry, and play in the park. Perhaps their profession relies on the sun to be out; or maybe they enjoy being in the heat, exercising and playing their heart away. It gives humans the feeling of being in society when we do something in the heat together; the sun literally and figuratively brightens up the mood and atmosphere of any event, and conveys emotions like joy and excitement.

Walking in the park with the sun out paints a beautiful picture, wonderous and almost other-worldly. Imagine the children laughing as they play under the sun, the teenagers hanging out with one another, and adults going about their lives, busy with work that as a collective, pushes humanity forward.

The sun is a welcome sight; and it powers our society.

What is the rain to you?

Weathering with You

If you could control the weather, which will you choose? Sunny, or rainy? Would you even choose to control the weather?

The weather works in mysterious ways. Even with all of our technology, our predictions for weather is only informative at best; “Weathering with You” leverages that unknown, and amplifies it a notch; to a story that can be parsed and understood by us, and create an engaging narrative that only we can understand.

The setting of “Weathering with You” lies in the city of Tokyo, which can really be replaced with any other city in the world - any urban environment where the jobs are the only way to survive. Cities like these are depressing and gloomy, where everyone is focused on their work, unaware of the pleasures of life as our ancestors know it; after all, the secret to life has been changed from around a few hundred years ago. Now, it’s all about working to get money to enjoy momentary pleasures before going back to the same routine everyday.

As such, being a youth is the only long-term escape to such a boring life - it’s kind of similar to the setting of “Kimi no Na Wa.”. However, the main characters of this movie is far from being ordinary; as you will see when you watch it.

A love story that can only occur in a harsh urban environment, “Weathering with You” does an excellent job at setting the scene. What about the story itself?

Thinking about it in hindsight, the story was quite interesting; plot devices were added for a reason, and all of them come into full effect later on. It was really a spectacular thing to see all the pieces falling into place during the climax, and I believe it touched everyone in the same movie theatre as me.

However, the pacing was kind of off - things happen so quickly that sometimes, it was difficult to catch what was going on. Characters progressed their thoughts and relationships really quickly, which doesn’t give us enough time to synchronize ourselves with the characters; in other words, the actions of the characters didn’t resonate well with the audience.

To be frank, the impact that “Kimi no Na wa.” left on the world probably made this anime less enticing to react to; the emotions didn’t get conveyed to the audience well, and some of the actions the characters take were rashful. This review from anime_feels summarizes this very well:

• No one laughed
• No one cried
• No one cheered or got excited
• No one clapped at the end

anime_feels also bring up a good point about the characters; they’re unique, which makes them difficult to relate to. Combining this with the fast-paced plot really throws me off balance, which was a shame, really. Perhaps it was the time constraints of the movie, but if this story was repaced differently, I feel like it could have helped in stabbing more people in the heart.

All in all, while the story was good, the impact was not there; at least not as prominent as “Kimi no Na Wa.”

Visuals and Sound

The visuals were fantastic. The first few seconds of the movie zooms out on a curtain, and it was the most well-drawn curtain I’ve ever seen in my life; I would buy that curtain if it was real. The sound is top-notch; almost on par with “Kimi no Na Wa.”.

If the pacing of the movie was better, the visual and sound would have impacted me a lot longer, so I don’t have to search YouTube for the OST; but alas, it was unavoidable.

Should I watch it?

Yes. It’s not going to be as great as “Kimi no Na Wa.”, but it’s still quite exemplary - leaving an impact can almost be attributed to production luck; and this one didn’t hit it. There’s no fixed formula to make something impactful, and “Tenki no Ko” proved it by following the same formula as “Kimi no Na Wa.”, achieving no success.

Anime like this, which are targetted to young audiences (like me ) sometimes do trigger some thoughts - such as the question about rain above. If anything, this anime taught me that the smallest pleasures can lead to overall happiness; sometimes living in an urban city as dull and depressing as Tokyo will require the person to be resilient; and that can come from many sources, one of them being the ability to enjoy the simplest pleasures in life - be it to enjoy the weather, warm food, or a cold beverage.

In this mindless world, the only way to survive is either to be resilient enough, or await death. The act of choosing one path will help configure the other options that will help a person survive to the bitter end.

Conclusion

That was half an essay, and half an anime review. The bottom line is, you should watch it, but don’t expect too much; I gave it a high rating because it got me thinking about my own life, alongside the beautiful visuals and sound.

This concludes the review spam. Enjoy your anime!

Happy Coding

CodingIndex