[SPOILERS] I just came out fresh of the theater, so I'm just gonna rant here. Weathering with you (aka Running with you) is what many would like to believe as the spiritual successor to Kimi no Na wa, this puts a lot of burden on it to be as good, if not better than its predecessor. However, I do believe that Weathering with you is a miss as its own stand-alone movie, much less as the follow up to Kimi no Na wa, in terms of story-telling and characters at least. The story was really lacking of any purpose and identity. I know there's the
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saying of 'its not about the destination, but the journey', but that quote doesn't even apply to this movie. I felt like nothing was really going on throughout the movie, it was just pretty visuals for the sake of it. And don't even get me started on the rushed ending.
Towards the end of the movie, there was build-up to the reunion of our two main characters, Hodoka and Hina. We see Hodoka getting used to the Tokyo lifestyle and him meeting up with familiar characters, he was even on the same slope where another pretty scene was taking place to ponder about what to say to Hina to comfort her regarding the flooding of Tokyo (which was due to their selfishness btw as Hodoka saved Hina from sacrificing herself to keep Tokyo flood-free). All this build-up then got to literally eat shit and die as Hina happens to be on the same hill as well!!!!!!! And they get their nice 'run up to each other and hug' reunion while Hodoka just says 'well fuck all that, we changed the world that day when we re-flooded Tokyo and made it rain forever, none of that matters! I'm with my Hina again!'
The characters man......they're really unsympathetic and apathetic to the things around them, especially Hodoka. So the thing with Hodoka is that he ran away from his town because of his parents, but we were never told the reason why his parents were so hard to deal with. He keeps insisting on not wanting to go back no matter what but it is all just empty words as we do not see justification in his actions, he just comes off as a spoiled brat going through a rebellious phase. He is also really impulsive in his other actions in the entirety of the movie, never giving them any second thoughts. Here are some examples: He finds a gun spilled out from a trash can, which he decides to keep despite being y'know....a minor with no license whatsoever. The reason he provides us is that he thinks that its a toy gun, which doesn't even matter, he can still get in trouble for possessing such a thing if he gets caught. Next, he later uses the 'toy gun' in self-defense quite hastily in a fit of rage....surprise surprise, it was real and he nearly killed someone with it. Blah blah blah moving forward in the movie he gets arrested for being in possession of a gun and for being a runaway, he was gonna be interrogated but he runs away from the fucking (incompetent) police and gets fucking chased all for a gamble at the chance to save Hina.
That's all I can think of for Hodoka. Next is the not as severe but still annoying and impulsive Hina. So the police was gonna bring social services to pick her and her younger brother as they've been living alone with no guardian or custodian. So what did she decide to do? Run away with her brother and Hodoka with no long term goal. They were essentially running away from the police, which is not as crazy as you think in the context of their world as the police there are fucking incompetent in their jobs. Unsurprisingly, they finally got caught, and a police officer had Hodoka pinned on the ground for trying to run away from them. She then tackles said officer and summons motherfucking lightning with her special powers. The lightning proceeds to strike a nearby truck and it fucking blows up. Blah blah blah and they finally found a hotel room to stay in and they had a grand o' time in it. What really bothers me about the aftermath of that incident is that Hina impulsively summoned lightning with her powers, whether it was intentional for lightning to strike is irrelevant. She and the gang felt no remorse whatsoever, they all literally laughed it off. For all we know, that truck could've contained someone in it or at least have someone within its vicinity.
Alright....that's all I have for the negatives. The good thing about the movie is that it's really beautiful visually and the music is great as it really makes the 'emotional' scenes have a bigger impact. Rant over. Thanks for coming to my probably grammatically incorrect TED talk. But for real thought, thanks for reading even a part of my emotionally charged and biased rant.
Sep 20, 2019
Tenki no Ko
(Anime)
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[SPOILERS] I just came out fresh of the theater, so I'm just gonna rant here. Weathering with you (aka Running with you) is what many would like to believe as the spiritual successor to Kimi no Na wa, this puts a lot of burden on it to be as good, if not better than its predecessor. However, I do believe that Weathering with you is a miss as its own stand-alone movie, much less as the follow up to Kimi no Na wa, in terms of story-telling and characters at least. The story was really lacking of any purpose and identity. I know there's the
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Apr 18, 2017
Shinano Mainichi Shinbun
(Anime)
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I don't know what to say if you can't even spare 15 seconds of your life to watch this.
Story 1/10: There's not really a story here, just a girl chasing a train or bus (I can't remember) that is carrying her dad. The bus/train that goes into a tunnel, which leaves the girl sighing 'Dad.....' In Japanese. Art 10/10: It's good Sound 10/10: It's good Character 1/10: Like I mentioned before, the only character in this story is a girl chasing after her dad and then sighing afterwards. ... |