Film Name: 天气之子 / Weathering With You
Released this summer, the film has successfully become Japan’s 2019 box office champion, with more than 7.5 million viewers, ranking among the top 10 local films in Japan’s film history, and representing Japan to compete for this year’s Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film. ……
Weathering With You” has too many “halos” on it, and the last Japanese film to break 10 billion yen was Makoto Shinkai’s “Your Name” – however, “Weathering With You”, which landed in the domestic market with such momentum, is not as successful as “Weathering With You”. Weathering With You” didn’t get the same salute as “Your Name”.
“The story is confusing”, “dog blood”, “weak script” and many other voices abound – although in terms of overall Although the film didn’t do too badly in terms of overall box office and word-of-mouth, it was undoubtedly a minor setback for Makoto Shinkai (who suffered a setback in China).
To be fair, Weathering With You is a very “Makoto Shinkai” animated film in terms of its images, camera work, emotions, and audiovisual experience, so if you’re disappointed after watching it, then perhaps your expectations and positioning were off.
[Friendly reminder: there will be spoilers below].
Many viewers love Makoto Shinkai for his exquisite, beautiful, realistic, and detailed drawings, and the “wallpaper fiend” doesn’t disappoint this time around.
Weathering With You still adheres to the principle of “every frame can be used as wallpaper”. The water drops, colourful fireworks and pedestrians can withstand the most critical scrutiny from the audience.
Moreover, if you have a chance to pause and enjoy the film in the future, you will find that none of the water drops, fireworks and pedestrians in the same frame are duplicated, which can be described as “perverted level” of refinement.
Like Your Name, Weathering With You takes place in Tokyo, and in addition to promoting the city’s scenery, the latter film continues the worldview and style of the former to a certain extent.
The film has gone out of its way to emphasise the connection between the two, and there was also a joint promotional video released for both films recently, featuring the two generations of heroes and heroines in the same frame.
In Weathering With You, Tachibana Takeru and Miyamizu Mitsuba, the main characters of Your Name, are explicitly featured, with Takeru being the grandson of Hidaka and Yona’s client, and Mitsuba being Shigeru Miyamoto, the shop assistant who sells Hidaka’s ring, which is a little bit of an egg.
However, Weathering With You didn’t receive the same overwhelmingly positive reviews as Your Name three years ago, probably because the story was told in a way that was too “floaty”.
The film opens with the heroine, Amano Yona, accompanying her seriously ill mother, praying with devotion for a clear sky, crossing the Torii Gate and travelling to the heavenly world, where she becomes the “Haruna” with magical powers. ……
To be honest, the film’s story is a bit odd, with a fantastical enough tone at the beginning, followed by a descent into the world, a return to earth, and a detailed look at the day-to-day life of Morishima’s main character, Morishima Hidetaka, who has come to Tokyo to make a living, and then a slow development of the relationship between Hidetaka and Yona, as well as the film’s entire “weather” setting.
But what Weathering With You is really about is a strong “teenage spirit”, and nothing else matters, so the film’s plot feels like it has no beginning, no end, and no weight.
I’ve heard that Weathering With You has an original novel, but even with the many settings in it, there’s still quite a bit of lack of clarity in the film, not to mention the fact that most filmgoers don’t even know that much about the story.
Why does Hidaka run away from home and come to Tokyo alone? There is an element of domestic violence behind it, but the film’s focus on Hidaka’s quest for sunshine, rain, and freedom, and its silence on the darker side of the story, undermines the logic of the story.
In fact, there are many places in the film where this “emasculated reality, consciousness first” treatment is present, and many of them are in the tone of a light novel.
If one goes into Weathering With You with the same impression and expectation of Your Name, then the viewer may be disappointed, as the film’s storytelling isn’t really complete, the narrative is not surprising, and it doesn’t hold up on a realistic level (16 year old boy with no plans to run away to Tokyo gets to meet a nobleman, a beautiful girl, and a cat)… …
We have to understand the reality that Makoto Shinkai is a niche writer-director who puts picture over plot, and his stories have always started, landed, and been grounded in a very small place.
In my opinion, Your Name is more like an accidental overachievement by Makoto Shinkai, which puts him in a position where he didn’t belong, to be noticed and judged by the public, and it’s only natural that another Weathering With You with the same vestigial feeling in the flavour of Your Name will go downhill.
Once you’ve figured that out, it’s much easier to watch the film again. From beginning to end, Weathering With You is all about teenage desperation.
Both Hidaka and Yona are the same human being, simple, stubborn, and valuing the present over the future: Hidaka wants to survive as a “black family” working in Tokyo, and will be furious for Yona, who has done him a favour; Yona wants to take on the burden of the whole family at the age of fifteen, and will sacrifice herself for the sake of Hidaka’s smile and the smiles of others, while raising her younger brother. The relationship between Hidaka and Yona is more than that.
It’s not just that Hidaka and Yona are warming up to each other, it’s that they are fighting against the world with their naivety, and if we were to look at it through the eyes of a mature adult, we’d definitely feel awkward – besides, “adults” are exactly what they see as their enemies.
Weathering With You is a very dramatic and decisive way to break up the communication between teenagers and adults – the community service officers are looking for trouble with the Amano siblings because they can’t leave the two minors alone without parents. The community service officers “trouble” the Amano siblings because they can’t leave two minors without parents unattended, and the police keep trying to control Hidaka by questioning him because he accidentally found a pistol when he ran away from home.
Adults themselves do not have any malicious intent towards the teenagers, but in the eyes of the teenagers, it has eventually turned into an either/or, black or white conflict, or even an obstacle to stop themselves.
Whether this is appropriate or not, the film’s stance is on the side of the teenager …… So the most chewy character in Weathering With You is actually Keisuke Suga.
Suga is an adult who grew up exactly as Hidaka did, so he knows and understands Hidaka very well. He left his business card to give him a way out, and tried his best to let Hidaka earn his own living. …… However, he chose to take the side of an adult in the case of the “unavoidable”, after all, Hidaka’s words and actions are more like a willful act. After all, Hidaka’s actions and words were more like a capricious act.
When Suga finally beat up the police for Hidaka, he still lost to the “youthful spirit” that he could not forget (PS: Oguri Shun is really too suitable for this kind of slightly dishevelled, gangly and handsome uncle voice).
All the emotional outbursts, all the anachronisms, are just for the sake of Hidaka to sing to Yangnai, “You know, even if the rain turns the city upside down, I’ll give you an embrace.”
Without you, the world looks bleak even if the sky is clear; for the sake of having you in the world, even if the rain never stops – as long as this childish, selfish, warm, and determined emotion is expressed, then the story of Weathering With You will be complete.
Maybe Hidaka and Yona will regret it in the future, maybe many viewers will be dissatisfied and dislike it, but that’s all for the future and beyond.
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