What They Say:
From Makoto Shinkai, the director of the global smash hit Your Name., comes a critically-acclaimed new romantic drama set in the rain-soaked streets (and skies) of modern Tokyo. The summer of his high school freshman year, Hodaka runs away from his remote island home to Tokyo, and quickly finds himself pushed to his financial and personal limits.
The weather is unusually gloomy and rainy every day, as if to suggest his future. He lives his days in isolation, but finally finds work as a writer for a mysterious occult magazine. Then one day, Hodaka meets Hina on a busy street corner. This bright and strong-willed girl possesses a strange and wonderful ability: the power to stop the rain and clear the sky…
The Review:
Audio:
We get English 5.1 DTS–HD, Japanese 5.1 DTS-HD, English 5.1 Descriptive Audio, and French 5.1 audio. All of these played back clear with no distortions of any kind.
Video:
There’s a nice, clear picture here. Colors are off-variations of primary ones to present a dreary setting. The subtitles are a bit small and white, so they can be difficult to read on a lot of the white backgrounds especially cell phone bits. Music lyrics appear periodically with the readable yellow font in the upper right corner.
Packaging:
We get a cardboard box with female lead Hina floating high above the clouds. The back has a sheet minimally glued to the box showing a screenshot at the very top an cretis, show information and technical data taking up most of it. There is a tri-fold disc holder containing 4 discs: the UHD, the blu ray, the documentary on Blu-ray, and a Radwimps CD of the soundtrack.
Menu:
The menu on the 4k disc is a single shot of a progressively blue background and animated puddle circles in the lower ¼ of the screen. The Weathering With You masthead is barely visible in the top right corner and there are sounds of rain cycling in the background. Text options are listed vertically in the lower-left corner. The sub-menu fonts are rather tiny.
Extras:
We get the usual assortment of trailers and teasers here, which is always good. In addition, there are some videos focusing on the film’s release in Japan primarily “Weather Front’ Featurette, Exploring Makoto Shinkai’s Filmography, as well as an Interview with Makoto Shinkai himself. There’s another disc exclusive to this set called The Making of Weathering With You, which shows the entire production as animators are shown drawing for traditional scenes, production meetings and press conferences are held and voice acting and scoring sessions are recorded. There’s a lot of information to take in here. It’s a bit of fun to watch Makoto Shinkai as both a manager and an individual creator right up to the film’s premiere screening. We also get a 104-page color booklet about the film with story, pics, and character info. Also, there’s a mini-poster and a sticker decal. The soundtrack CD by the Radwimps is included here too with 31 tracks, many of which are pretty short, at about 40 seconds to 2 minutes each. They’re also mostly instrumental pieces ranging from orchestral, to pop, to piano, to electronic. We don’t get to the first vocal until track 6. There are only a few vocals, a couple of which are performed by actress Toko Miura. There’s a nice mix of genres spread throughout though and as such, makes for good driving music while reflecting on the film.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The story begins with some narration from our lead character Hodaka (Brandon Engman) a teen running around Tokyo whose circumstances make it clear he is a runaway. He has trouble finding a job (even with internet help) and soon becomes out of sorts during the rainy season. At one point he’s at a restaurant and a waitress gives him a hamburger gratis. After more misadventures, he meets a free-spirited man named Suga (Lee Pace, Guardians of the galaxy) who gives him a card and tells him to come by the office some time. Hodaka wanders through the rain eventually to meet him and encounters Suga’s very attractive secretary Natsumi (Allison Brie, GLOW). Suga comes in and after some discussion, he offers Hodaka a job helping out with articles and general office work in exchange for food and a place to stay.
So starts a more positive time for Hodaka as he gains new skills and fun times through grueling work. As he runs around Tokyo, he learns more and more until he sees the girl who fed him a hamburger in a seemingly dangerous situation. In fact, it’s a carryover from one of his previous encounters that threaten to change his circumstances drastically, as well as the girl named Hina (Ashley Boettcher, Aliens In The Attic) since she has more than one secret to maintain. Curiously, the rain reacts in the oddest ways afterward….
Makoto Shinkai has a knack for developing characters’ relationships in the strangest circumstances, be it outer space or mythical dead realms. It makes the rather interesting world he’s built in each film easier to believe in like Stephen King’s in a way. So when we see more of who Hina really is and folks’ reaction to her, Shinkai fans tend to just go with it. There is a relatable aspect in that the kids need money and so they invent a job (the sunshine girl in this case) that pays decently and keeps them in the good graces of the public mostly. Throughout this, we get a romanticized rendition of runaway/orphan life, which is fun for a time before reality kicks in. There’s a mixed focus here as the film is largely depicted as Hodaka’s story but Hina is a large integral part. The supporting characters lend just enough weight to keep things moving but I’d honestly like to have seen a little more of Hina’s side in a couple crucial scenes. Hodaka proves himself to be rather capable and a fun focus character who manages to survive even though he clearly doesn’t have all the answers to hard situations.
One thing people are used to from Shinkai are highly detailed depictions of real-life locales mixed with mythical backdrops and abstract renditions at times. As traditional animation techniques are going by the wayside, fans of his tend to appreciate the amount of work he and his staff have put into these movies, ever since the days of creating Voices of A Distant Star alongside his wife in their solo debut. The CG and computer-assisted work on the backgrounds is truly amazing. In addition to creating incredibly detailed renderings based on real-life locations, Shinkai has an affinity for simulating a panning viewpoint and bending its image to make it like we’re seeing things through a wide camera lens. This particular technique is used several times and makes for an amazing transition between scenes. Also effective is how the rain is depicted using a mix of traditional hand-drawn techniques and CG drops which have the most impact in dramatic scenes, as well as the lovely abstract watercolors showing the skies and clouds.
The general atmosphere makes for an interesting contrast at times, between the overall gray-ish rainy setting with cloudy skies muting most of the probability of bright primary colors, and the whimsical music stylings provided by the band known as the Radwimps. Weathering With You represents Shinkai’s evolution best as an artist, as he commands different animation mediums here like he did with Your Name. His writing here though, based on his novel “Child of Weather” isn’t quite as strong as that film, or The Children Who Chase Lost Voices, for that matter as film struggles a bit to pull several story elements together in the latter scenes. Some aspects of the climax feel predictable, others stretch a bit too long for effectiveness I also feel we get cheated a bit in regards to Hina as it would’ve been nice to see more of the denouement from her perspective. Still though, everything is beautifully animated and the ending is a visual whopper, to say the least so the film overall makes for a good experience, making it still a better film than most others from his catalog or his contemporaries’.
The English acting is pretty decent on here. I didn’t see this movie in the theaters so I’d known of the caliber of vocal talent here. For the most part, everyone did well. I’m generally partial to Japanese dialogue in such films but the American cast sounded naturally matched with their roles and I didn’t have the urge to fast forward as I have with other dubs.
In Summary:
I got to see the U.S. premiere at Anime NYC last year and knew immediately I wanted to own this film in the best possible format for its visuals alone. It’s not Makoto Shinkai’s best work but still a very solid addition to his filmography. When I came across the listing for the extras-laden collector’s edition and saw there would be one of this man’s movies in 4K UHD, my expectations went high and I’ve largely been very happy to grab it. Here’s hoping to see more of his films on 4K in the coming days.
Content Grade: A-
Audio Grade: A
Video Grade: A+
Packaging Grade: A
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: A+
Released By: Shout Factory
Release Date: November 17th, 2020
MSRP: $79.98
Running Time: 114 minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Review Equipment: Samsung 4K UHD TV, Sony 4K UHD Disc player, Palk soundbar with sub-woofer
