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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Weathering With You
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2484 Location: United States |
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So it's basically a typical Shinkai film that bites off more than it can chew and suffers for it. Not surprised. He really tries to go big when he doesn't really need to.
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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I might just see it for the weather. Seriously, Makoto Shinkai loves rain, and my favorite part of Garden of Words was how utterly beautiful it was. Every drop sparkled and/or otherwise added atmosphere to a stunning garden landscape. Otherwise, I’ve found the plot and characters in most of his movies either bland or hard to grasp (I’m still not sure what The Place Promised in Our Early Days was about, and 5 CM Per Second was too melancholy for my tastes).
One concern: this movie has so many elements, it sounds like it has a very long runtime (I may be a minority opinion, but I thought Your Name. was a tad too long, although otherwise very good). Is Weathering with You longer than Your Name? |
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Frog-kun
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 118 |
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According to ANN's database Weathering With You is six minutes longer than Your Name. |
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Chichiryuutei
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I wonder when Funimation/Toho will announce an US wide release
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Vannil
 Posts: 240 |
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GKIDS has the license and will release next year animenewsnetwork.com/news/2019-05-23/gkids-licenses-shinkai-weathering-with-you-film-for-early-2020-screening/.147022 |
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omiya
 Posts: 1851 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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Just attended a screening of Weathering with You in Tokyo (not at Toho Shinjuku which appears in the movie). I can only vaguely follow spoken Japanese so some of the story was lost on me.
It didn't feel as connected as Your Name, which I also first saw in Japan as a Japanese language only screening. I will get to a screening in Australia before commenting further. |
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egozi14
Posts: 105 |
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The review just gave my thought on the overrated Your Name,
YN had a nice plot that got mixed up with another sub plot that felt unneeded and had a lot of holes, the characters don't act like themselves near the end (MC also lose it, but in the bad kind of way that you can imagine someone losing it), Also the OST felt to me like meh, as if it not fit to what I see on the screen, guess it didn't effected me too much too cause 5 mins after the movie ended I didn't recall it in my head which never really happened to me before, Speaking on endings, when YN ended I for the first time didn't felt like I gain something from watching this film, each Japanese movie I've watched so far always gave me some good feeling or a lesson, but not YN, I felt really disappointed with this film, Most of my friends and people I know felt the same but still scored the movie high cause of social anxiety which made me really hate how people lies when it come to this overrated film, even the director himself told people to not watch it cause he didn't like the end result (but changed his mind after he saw many people liked it), I have hard time to believe YN was really that good for most of the people who scored it that high, for me it was just empty husk that had the amazing look but not any plot or characters that worth to be remember in my brain cell, look alone is NOT everything |
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omiya
Posts: 1851 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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I just saw the subtitled Australian release (roughly 15 people in a smaller cinema at an art house complex).
I would have liked the song lyrics to be subtitled as well, but at least the story started to fit together. What seemed to be lacking was for there to be a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. |
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Dragonsandphoenix
 Posts: 82 Location: Malaysia |
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I just got back from watching it. First thing, this was the first time I've watched an anime film in the cinema and I didn't regret it. Makoto Shinkai's beautiful rendition of Tokyo and the sky can only be fully appreciated in the cinema. If you love Tokyo, you should probably go watch this movie just to experience it. There were a few scenes when my jaw dropped at the sheer beauty of it. In the end though, I came out not having particularly strong feelings about the film beyond "Man, this movie is pretty" and "Well, I guess we're all gonna die then". I didn't particular like or dislike any of the characters, and even though I came in aware that the movie's themes may be more "Japanese" than Your Name I still didn't think the movie had much of a point if it was making any. It focuses more on the emotional struggles of its characters rather than themes or plot, and yet I still felt the film never developed the personal stakes of the characters well enough. So yeah, it was okay. |
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Marc Nix
Posts: 18 |
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(Little note, but thank you ANN for reposting the review for Weathering With You -- the site reviews movies super early sometimes because of fests or other showings, and in the past the reviews weren't always repromoted and I had to dig back 6-12 months when a movie was showcased in like a Fathom event.
I know there's a siteload of brand new content to focus on, but sticking up an old review on the day I'm deciding about buying tickets or looking for critical opinion after seeing a movie, that's very handy to see bubbled up.) |
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tojikomori
 Posts: 71 Location: Minnesota |
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Guess I'm an outlier here, at least in the comments: I came out of this film with an extremely positive impression. I honestly think this is Shinkai's best work yet as a writer and director. No, really: I didn't know he could write dialog this snappy – perhaps he couldn't until now. There are far fewer moments of unfocused introspection, and I found it quite satisfying how story elements returned to deliver a new significance.
It didn't hit me with the emotional wallop that many of his previous films have, but I don't think he was going for "feels" here and I got something else out of it anyway. He didn't want this to be a romance in the way that Your Name was: he's reaching out to an audience that's either prepared for or would be put off by that sort of sentimentality. There is a romance as a story element, but it's not the point of this story. In fact, the emotional themes here remind me more of Sarazanmai than Your Name: feeling at a young age that you've sabotaged your life, and the intense frustration you feel, as a teenager especially, that can make you lash out and push people away in ways that seem practically unforgivable, and yet finding something like redemption. Like Sarazanmai, the redemption was delivered a little too swiftly here, and that's why it's missing an emotional payoff, but the emotions that lead someone to that brink were expressed so well. Really interesting review because it's such a different read on the story than my own. Looking forward to Zac and Lynzee talking about this one on the podcast, too: from Zac's teaser it sounded like he has some interesting criticism to share as well. Last edited by tojikomori on Fri Jan 17, 2020 10:31 am; edited 1 time in total |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Right after seeing it, my overall impression is it's certainly a good movie, though unsurprisingly not as good as Your Name. The music and its integrated-ness were both significantly better, though--in the interview video they played afterward, Shinkai basically described the writing process as "I wrote a script and sent it to Radwimps, they sent back two songs and we collaborated through the rest of it, and no songs were added after the animation was done," and I don't doubt any of that. Some of the music in Your Name honestly came off as jarring; nothing of the sort in this one.
Comparing this to his previous movie makes it seem like an outlier, but honestly, Your Name is the real outlier in the Shinkai collection; it's the only one that's really tailored for mass-market appeal and blockbuster-ness. The rest of his movies are much more complicated and open-ended. Weathering With You has some of those newer elements (bantering, action scenes, sexual jokes), but his sort of trademark thoughtful ambiguousness has returned in force for this one, which is likely to throw off a lot of people who started with Your Name. (Certainly doesn't bother me, though! It's what keeps even his technically-bad movies interesting.) In regards to the ending, spoiler[I'm sort of trying to guess what exactly everyone is likely to be bothered by because, again, ambiguousness. It's very obviously about climate change, which is going to bother some people because they don't believe in it, and others because the story doesn't blame anyone for it. For the latter group, one thing that's important to remember is that Japan does not have very many people in the former camp. Making a magical-realism metaphor out of it isn't going to make them immediately think of climate denialism, because they hardly ever encounter that stuff. It's still true that in real life certain powerful people are to blame, but this movie seems more aimed at inspiring young people who have kinda ended up in this situation against their will, and not at trying to take out the bad guys. (Which may not be an invalid perspective, since we're kinda reaching the stage where taking out the bad guys won't do much beyond making us feel better.) And although it doesn't go after any metaphorical oil executives, there's a pretty obvious anti-establishment vibe throughout the whole thing. The whole Big Decision of "save the girl even though it'll make the endless rain return" is likely meant to say that young people shouldn't have to sacrifice everything to fix a problem that isn't their fault. Even in a partial apocalypse, life goes on. Though it also kinda reminds me of a certain scene from Evangelion...] |
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Maidenoftheredhand
 Posts: 2634 |
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I agree with the previous post that Your Name is the outlier. I loved Voices of a Distant Star and then have been disappointed in every Shinkai film since. His films just don’t usually appeal to me despite the beautiful art. So I went in to Your Name with middling expectations despite great reviews and was shocked how much I loved it.
I’ll be hopefully seeing Weathering with You on Saturday and I guess I’ll keep my expectations in check. Traveling to DC from Philadelphia to see it. One because I’ll be able to go with a friend and two because it wasn’t playing anywhere for me to get to in Philadelphia with public transport. Ironically the weather is going to be bad that day lol |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18451 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Saw this earlier this evening. It definitely felt to me like Shinkai was trying to find a balance point between the more widely-accessible style of Your Name and the more niche approach of his earlier works (he mentions at length in the interview afterward about how he's trying to find a popular path that's not Miyazaki's), and in retrospect I fully agree with Kim's observation about its connection to Voices of a Distant Star. In fact, I'd even go further and say that this is a response to most of his previous works, where trying to make connections across great divides is a recurrent theme. The downside of this is that, as others have mentioned, the emotional appeal isn't as strong. Overall, the grades Kim gave the movie are probably the exact same ones I would give it.
Oh, and if you haven't had a chance to see it yet, watch for some choice cameos when you do. There are two really big ones. (Let's just say that this is set in the same universe as at least one of his previous works.) |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2268 |
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Having seen the movie and the director interview that followed, I can’t help but feel that Shinkai seriously misread the younger generation in thinking that they’d favor a declaration of love over spoiler[choosing whether or not to usher in climate change], especially given the recent spoiler[climate protests]. I think if the overall theme was meant to be spoiler[the perseverance of the human spirit in the face of irreversible disaster], there was not nearly enough plot laid out to support that, and it was largely relegated to the back half of the third act. Having said that, Shinkai totally nailed having a teenage protagonist who feels like a teen, complete with making a multitude of short-sighted decisions.
Caveat in that my friend who is a self-described hopeless romantic adored this movie, while my romance-indifferent self couldn’t stop thinking about the spoiler[food shortages] and spoiler[rising inflation] mentioned in the background radio, or the logistics of spoiler[evacuating] so many people, particularly people with no money, like the homeless. That, and that it was spoiler[awfully depressing] to think that those two cameos had spoiler[a rather bleak future ahead of them after everything they went through. ] |
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