Have you ever fallen for somebody so hard, that you’d risk the environmental collapse of the entire planet just to be with them? This is the brilliant premise of Makoto Shinkai’s Weathering With You, his exquisite followup to the similarly lovelorn Your Name, one of the finest animated films of the decade. The climate crisis may be the most urgent issue facing people the world over, which has singlehandedly led young people across the globe to leave their classrooms and take to the streets to protest a ruling class that has failed to prevent impending doom. But such real-world concerns are notably absent here.

Anime John Hughes

Shinkai’s greatest strength as a storyteller is his innate ability to get into the teenage psyche, a place where saving the world can quickly become a distant second to getting with the girl or the guy you like. It’s a testament to the sheer imagination present in his most recent films that more critics haven’t written them off as mere teen escapism – the high concept premises are one thing, but the lack of logic in character motivations would otherwise prove a barrier to older audiences.

In Shinkai’s world, the characters’ plans to tackle any big obstacle placed in their lives (be it an unexplained body swap scenario, or being homeless in a city ravaged by climate change) come a distant second to being with their crushes. He may have been described by several writers as an heir to Hayao Miyazaki, but Weathering with You suggests something altogether different: he’s the John Hughes of science fiction.

16-year-old Hodaka Morishima has run away from home to start a new life in Tokyo. With very little money and no permanent residence, he finds life in the world’s biggest city extremely difficult – until he bumps Suda, a sketchy businessman who owns a publishing company specialising in magazines about urban myths. One day, he sees Hina, a girl who is being pressured into working in a strip club.

He rescues her, and quickly discovers her special talent; she’s a sunshine girl, somebody born with the power to clear away the rain through a special form of prayer. Sensing a business opportunity, the pair team up to use that power to clear the rain-filled skies for whoever needs a sunny day. But with the weather being manipulated so much on a daily basis, the grift can’t last forever.

The main criticism being leveled at Weathering with You is that it bears too close a similarity to Your Name. This might be true when considering the bare-bones – this is, after all, another high concept teen love story, boasting a soundtrack by Japanese pop-punk group Radwimps, that builds to a crescendo with a stirring “race against time” finale.

But to me, it plays out more like the stranger film a director gets given a blank cheque to make following an unprecedented breakthrough success. Yes, the elements that made Your Name the highest-grossing anime film of all time are still firmly in the mix, but this time they are entwined with a twist on something specific to Japanese mythology, that could risk getting misinterpreted in translation.

Indebted to Japanese mythology

The myth of the “weather maiden” referred to in the film is a spin on the far more sinister myth of the Yuki-onna, a spirit in the form of a woman who would leave ice and snow behind her, after mysteriously visiting villages in ancient Japan. Such creepiness is nowhere to be seen here, and if you were to be deeply critical of Weathering With You, and apply a realistic lens to a heightened teenage fantasy, you could theoretically describe the film’s politics as inherently conservative.

This is, after all, a film centred around a boy’s love for the human embodiment of a spirit afforded the same affection that you’d afford a religious deity, and he shrugs off the impending destruction of the ecosystem in a race to stay with her. Of course, this is something of a reach (Shinkai is arguably one of the few filmmakers whose films can’t be interpreted as having any discernible political ideology), but it is likely to be a bone of contention for anybody who can’t get on board with its fantastical nature.

Weathering with You is, much like its predecessor, the rare teen film that feels devoid of cynicism, even as it shrugs off the fate of the entire planet as a secondary concern to the insular romantic desires of one boy. Which is probably why it feels so refreshing at the minute, when teen-oriented pop culture is either trying to be overtly gritty in a way that resembles very few teenage lives (HBO’s Euphoria), or overburdening itself with presenting a progressive political attitude absent from the teen movie classics (Booksmart).

Shinkai understands that teenage years are defined by trying to find that first romantic partner more than any other aspect – and it’s refreshingly uncool in the way that’s far more authentic to the awkwardness of the teenage experience, even when placed within an outlandish high concept.

Conclusion: Weathering With You

Weathering with You may share some superficial similarities with Your Name, but overall, it’s another delightfully unique effort from one of the most exciting voices in animation today.

Weathering With You is released in the USA on January 15, 2020, and in the UK on January 17.