Come rain or shine, this passion project intends to deliver.
One is hard pressed to find a director as widely reputed after a single other release as Makoto Shinkai. His previous work: Your Name (2016) has been permanently burned into the minds and tear ducts of fans around the globe. The only question after all of that has been said and done is… ‘What comes next?’ The answer comes in the form of this spectacularly animated, technically gorgeous and heart-wrenching piece of cinema that stuck with me long after I left the screening.
The film itself starts in a rather thunderous fashion, what with the protagonist Hodaka (Kotaro Daigo) nearly being drowned to death after a sudden storm nearly capsizes a massive freighter he snuck aboard on the escape his parents. After a few weeks scrounging the streets, he has a chance encounter with a teenage girl, Hina (Nana Mori), who is able to temporarily bring sun to the nigh-permanently deluged Tokyo. The story from there on seems to setting up another ‘boy meets girl’ story but, as with his previous works, Shinkai never lets us get accustomed to a status quo as supernatural shenanigans, which take profound inspiration from Japanese lore and religion, pile on top of each other leading to an unexpectedly powerful conclusion that awakened feelings in me that I was sure that I had managed to bury via copious amounts of contemptuous cynicism and emotional suppression training.
Shinkai again proves to me that he knows how draw emotional responses out of his audience better than many other, far more popular, contemporary Hollywood directors. When you sit down to watch one of his films you are not his audience, you are his puppets and you will feel exactly what he wants you to feel, exactly how intensely he wants you to feel it. Of course, I would be doing a great disservice to Atsushi Tamura and Hiroshi Takiguchi, who acted as the animation and art directors respectively. Taking time to imbue each character with their own minute quirks, and making the environment and weather lively enough to feel like characters in their own right. One can almost feel the amount effort they’ve put into creating the world the cast inhabits.
The cast themselves, however, can often feel like an after thought in all this wacky weather. Aside from Daigo and Mori, very few other performances left a lasting impression. Some of the lines perhaps intended to pack an emotional punch actually felt more like a deflated whoopie cushion, and whilst the leads thankfully never suffered this, the film as a result perhaps relied on their performances too much to carry it. Many plots threads introduced early on in the script, such as a literal body of water, are never addressed again and are left dangling with no resolution.
However, despite these shortcomings, the film still impresses me with it surprisingly human and mature conclusion which taught me that sometimes it’s okay to have selfish desires if it can ensure your happiness. A storm is often inevitable, but the sun after will shine all the brighter.
Clueless Reviews 