Weathering with You

Tokyo is drowning under rain that literally never stops falling, and into this waterlogged city arrives 16-year-old runaway Hodaka Morishima from the countryside with no money, no plan, and no connections. He scrapes by with a job writing for a sketchy occult magazine, which is about as glamorous as it sounds. Then he meets Hina Amano, an orphaned girl supporting her little brother Nagi, who happens to have this impossible gift — she can pray and part the clouds, bringing actual sunshine to a city drowning under endless gray skies. Naturally, they start a business out of it. Sunshine for hire. Things go well for a while, but this is a Makoto Shinkai movie, so you know the emotional gut-punch is coming. The real question the film asks is deceptively simple: how far would you go for one person, even if it meant the whole world pays the price? If you loved Your Name, this is Shinkai working in similar territory — gorgeous teenagers, impossible circumstances, a Radwimps soundtrack that hits in all the right places — but with a more morally complicated ending that people still argue about. The animation from CoMix Wave Films is genuinely breathtaking; every raindrop, every puddle reflection, every beam of light breaking through clouds feels painstakingly crafted. Fans of The Garden of Words will recognize Shinkai's obsession with weather as emotion. It's a romantic, bittersweet film that sticks with you, and at just under two hours, it earns every minute.