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i was going to just complain ad nauseum about the paper-thin characters, cringe-worthy dialogue, eye-roll inducing teenage melodrama, absolutely atrocious pacing, and uncanny valley-esque interpretation of internet culture that gets the macro-concepts mostly right but completely fumbles the details – culminating in a clumsy trainwreck of a film – but most of those things are present in most anime films (at least those involving high schoolers), and i'm usually able to (mostly) get past them, especially in the director's past works which i genuinely enjoyed. instead, i'll cut to the chase and say that this movie left me in a delirious state, wondering if the ... problem was with me, if i had changed, if the past decade of my weebdom had finally reached an end and maybe i just no longer cared for the medium.

turns out that's not true and this film just blows.

Manufactured. If there’s one word I would use to describe Tenki no Ko, it’s manufactured. Nothing about this film seems genuine, from the generically designed, nigh-personalityless teen mc, to the overly perfect clearly too-good-for-him love interest, to the incessant use of bland J-pop and rock ballads, to the blatant product placement — I most certainly am not loving it. Everything about this is so by-the-numbers, so tedious, so insipid. This project reeks of focus-grouping and market-targeting, yet I honestly can’t tell if Shinkai’s doing this purposefully or is actually that much of a one-dimensional man-child. What’s more, I don’t know which one is a sadder ... thought.

Do we really need five (5!) insert songs throughout this John Greene-adjacent film — three of which were back-to-back-to-back in the last 25 minutes? Does the film really need to tell us, “HERE, DO YOU GET THE FEELS?? YOU SHOULD CONSIDER CRYING.” I imagine it works — otherwise they wouldn’t do it — but I found myself rolling my eyes for the first four inserts, and stifling laughter for the last one as it seemed to border on parody at that point. Can you possibly think of a more generic scene than the misunderstood, angsty teen running up the hill after spotting his almost gf, who then turns towards him, hood blown off by the wind, smiling, as the music swells and Yojiro Noda’s nasal vocals burst your eardrums? Everything is presented as so grandiose and self-aggrandizing, but it comes off as hollow and uninspired. I’d say it’s reminiscent of a high-schooler’s idea of the ideal film project, but that would be a disservice to films I’ve seen high-schoolers make. I felt more emotion when the two horse girls entered a dead-heat during a foot race in this fetish show I’m currently watching than in the entirety of Tenki no Ko. It’s simply soulless.

To even tackle this project as a genuine effort leads to disappointment. I won’t even bother with the fact that this movie is beat for beat Kimi no na Wa all over again (though Shinkai would tell you otherwise). While the message of society not always coming before the individual rings clear and is especially pertinent to the culture wherein the film was made, it’s handled so sloppily. Hodaka, who thus far had done nothing to endear us to him besides threaten people with guns due to a lack of impulse control, kills and dehouses millions of people for the sake of his UwU anime gf. But don’t worry, the anime granny will tell you that things are just going back to how they were before: Hodaka actually made the right choice, not just for himself, but for the Earth. Not to even mention the fact that Hina is only able to stop being a self-sacrificial lamb once she receives permission from the dude she met only months before.

As a minor aside, some of the character decisions simply did not make sense and were plot conveniences at best. The niece and uncle (y’know, the uncle who quit smoking and was trying to straighten out his life so he could get custody of his daughter) seemingly throw their lives away at the end of the movie for the sake of a teenage runaway they only kind of know. The uncle literally assaults a police officer, and gets a slap on the wrist.

Predictably, the only saving grace of this film was the visual presentation. Yes, the sweeping shots of Tokyo, the water-physics, the lens-flare and depth-of-field, it’s all very impressive (though I still contend that Shinkai peaked technically with Garden of Words). And I’ll admit, the cloud mesa was dope. But ultimately you’re just left with a very pretty but empty shell of a movie.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the big mac was probably the most organic part of this entire thing.