Weathering with You review – beautiful and affecting anime romance

In 2016, Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name conquered the world in a way that few non-Studio Ghibli anime films ever do, so expectations for his follow up, Weathering with You, are naturally sky high. Thankfully, his latest film captures a lot of the same magic of its predecessor, even if it can’t quite reach the wonderful emotional peaks and structural perfection. It’s another supernatural teen love story set in gorgeously animated and textured environments, and though the story might get a little too busy at points, it still makes for a highly affecting, spirit-lifting watch.

Hodaka (Kotaro Daigo) is a teen runaway who escapes from a small island town to Tokyo, where it has been continuously and mysteriously raining for the entire summer. Struggling to find work and a place to stay, Hodaka eventually meets Hina (Nana Mori), another teen in a similarly precarious position who appears to have the ability to control the weather. It’s a remarkable – not to mention profitable –  power, though as Hodaka falls more and more in love with Hida, he realises that her relationship with these powers is far more complicated than they first appear.

Weathering with You is obviously concerned with the climate crisis that is currently gripping our world, yet Shinkai chooses to tackle the issue not with political grandstanding but through a magical realist romance that is always engaging, if a little slight. Hodaka and Hina are an adorable pair who you find yourself rooting for wholeheartedly, reminiscent of Your Name’s lead duo, Mitsuha and Taki, who make a crowd-pleasing cameo here.

Their moods are infectious and your feelings for this couple are strong enough to paper over the fact that the supporting cast – with the exception of Hina’s prodigious younger brother – never quite make a real impact. The occasional dips out of romantic comedy into action-thriller territory are also largely forgettable, but the animation itself is so lush that you hardly resent spending extra time in Shinkai’s world. There is perhaps no one better than Shinkai at bringing the modern world to animated life, and the environments here are breathtaking in their beauty and detail. Apartments feel warm and lived-in, streets blare with life and light, and the food, though possessed of the warm, fantastical glow of anime, looks real enough to make you very, very hungry.

Like Your Name, Weathering with You has a climactic dash to save a loved one from a cosmic injustice, and it proves just as heart-in-mouth exciting and moving this time around (there were audible tears and sniffles in my screening). Unfortunately, some of this brilliant work is undone by a bizarrely fatalistic coda that sours the ending and leaves a very confusing message behind – a rare misstep that ultimately fails to reflect the finer qualities of the rest of the film. Yet at the heart of Weathering with You lies the idea of a single sunbeam piercing through the clouds to improve your entire day – watching this film on a cold winter afternoon guarantees the same effect.