Shinkai's movies are, as usual, quite manipulative with emotions through the use of basic storyline structure, sob stories, and great audiovisuals to account for those elements. This is no different from Weathering With You. Though this may seem monotonous, it wouldn't be fair to judge Weathering With You based on other anime. In its own respect, it is a very good anime standing on its own. With an extra theme of weather and hardships to go along with it, it is indeed a pleasant story with a new simple idea that Shinkai has brought us.
Story - 6
Again, with most Shinkai movies, there is no effort in trying to make a great story. Weathering With You features runaway, Hodaka Morishima, and his experience in Tokyo with 'sunshine girl' Hina Amano. A boy meets girl story. Whilst the idea seems pretty normal, there is an interesting idea added to spice up the story a little, though this idea, at least, in my opinion, backfires greatly, it is probably the story's weak point, and that is the introduction of a 'bad guy'. For a Shinkai movie, I could only say one of two things for this idea:
1. He had no ideas about trying to prevent a monotonous storyline from happening.
2. He felt the need to follow general movie antics.
Either way, both outcomes lead to an awkward aftertaste to remember. It just didn't seem fitting for bad guys to enter the story, in such a forced manner nonetheless. It was quite disappointing for the story to take this path. If it had just stayed within Shinaki's unvaried romance formulas, it probably would have been better by default. Saying this, however, I don't know of any other way the movie could have progressed without those bad guys at play. The matter simply comes down to the fact that Shinkai had just screwed himself over by having a story that needed some antagonist force.
Another thing I find interesting is that the story takes no means to expand, by this, I mean that the story just stays within its hole and throws random supernatural elements, answering vaguely, leaving a few questions behind, personally, this was distasteful to come across as I was quite interested in the world of Weathering With You as a whole.
Though, with all this negative feedback I have said, Weathering With You best point in the story is right there. The weather. It is interesting to see pathetic fallacy used in this movie with the rain showing all the hardships the characters go through, whilst the sun shows all the pleasant joyous moments the characters experience. Although this is a natural response when creating a movie of its kind, it was still interesting to see how it all played out. It is a basic element to hold the story on, though it was presented in a simple way which made for a quite nice watch.
All in all, the story is has a basic foundation, with a few interesting elements that were ruined by the main storyline structure and events that had taken place.
Art/Visuals - 10:
Not surprisingly, the movie is filled with fantastic visuals throughout the entire duration, from shameless McDonald's product placement to city views from rooftops, Weathering With You's visuals was just flawless all around. Not much else to say other than this is a visual masterpiece, as expected from a Shinkai movie, even the animation was greatly detailed, the water drops had a nice fluid motion, individuals that appear for about 5 seconds had as much attention as the MCs, the list goes on. In a nutshell, this eye candy.
Sound/Audio - 9:
Again, with the audio, great sounds to remember from, the Fireworks Festival, in particular, was one of my favourites, the OP is very catchy too, a few of the soundtracks had vocals too which were pleasant to listen upon if I say so myself. VAs did a pretty good job with the characters as well giving them that human nature the characters are based upon.
Characters - 7:
The characters, although generic, were better than the story at hand because as mentioned before, they didn't run the risk of taking an unusual path. Despite this, the characters had some basic development but their ethics and ideal were as unembellished as so. There were just simple characters, not thinking over their actions half the time as an excuse to push the plot forward. It was quite disheartening with a story such as this since there was potential to make for a more interesting character considering their environment and preternatural nature at hand.
Starting with the MCs, Hodaka had run away from home looking for a job, you could already see how he would end up, and with this being a Shinkai movie, he was going to end up in the positive side of things. The same was with Hina, she had been in a problematic situation when Hodaka first properly encountered Hina. This situation had shown that Hodaka and Hina were both simple-minded teens with good intentions, but that is just it. There is nothing much to hold the boat of the two other than that.
Side characters... they weren't that bad, they had some importance such as Nagi Amano, Natsumi and Keisuke Suga, all the while, they felt like regular people of the regular world. Although they acted as plot devices from time to time, they did have their moments to develop themselves, saying this, this usually happens to Suga and Natsumi. Since Nagi was with the MCs, most of the time he didn't have much time to develop himself, though he did have an interesting personality being a ladies' man type character.
Familiar faces Taki Tachibana and Mitsuha Miyamizu from Shinkai's movie 'Your Name' made an appearance in the film as well, though, Taki was being used much more than Mitsuha which is slightly disappointing that there was no equal screen time shared between the two.
Enjoyment - 9:
Amazing audiovisuals was enough for me to enjoy the film a lot, but the story fell flat which is a shame. It was a nice drama romance, which didn't feel so melodramatic given the event that happened in the movie.
Overall - 8.2 (8)
TLDR Review:
Story - 6: Basic boy meets girl story with a cool theme of pathetic fallacy, but slightly awkward 'bad guys' appear
Art/Visuals - 10: A visual masterpiece, no less.
Sound/Audio - 9: Great catchy sounds, VAs did a good job.
Characters - 7: Generic character behaviour and ideals, but cool side characters.
Enjoyment - 9: The audiovisuals made it enjoyable, a regular drama romance with little melodrama.
Overall - 8.2 (8)
If you have enjoyed many Shinkai movies then this movie is certainly for you and to a general audience, I would recommend this movie anyways as it is one of the few visual masterpieces offered to anime viewers. Whilst this isn't special in the grand scheme of things, it is certainly a must-watch.
