Friday, February 28, 2020

Romancefest 2019: Weathering with You


Written and Directed by Makoto Shinkai. Starring Brandon Engman, Ashley Boettcher, Lee Pace and Alison Brie. Japan, 2019.

A teenage boy runs away to Tokyo and falls in love with an orphaned teenage girl who has magical powers that control the weather. Together, they start up a weather-control business, but the more the girl uses her powers, the more she begins to disappear, and the worse the imminent flooding of Tokyo becomes.

This Japanese animated film was from the creators of YOUR NAME, which I watched for last year’s Romancefest, and the two movies have many things in common: a young adult love story, magical powers in an otherwise realistic world and the effective use of pop songs to punctuate emotional moments. The best thing about this film is that it is beautiful to look at – the worst thing is probably the American voice-acting for the lead character, who seems to only have one setting: always spazzing out. On one hand this is kind of typical for American dubs on Japanese cartoons, but on ther other – that doesn’t make it right. I guess I should have watchd it in Japanese! Oops.

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