Weathering With You: Reckless Anime

I started 2019 with a podcast series examining every Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Unlike most of my creative projects, it has not stalled due to my own anxiety. Rather, it's because my friend and co-host Mattic's work schedule hasn't been very kind to him. Whenever he's free we'll get to finishing those bland, annoying, mediocre movies off.



There were two reasons I started that project:

1. I felt guilty over making Mattic watch The Neon Demon, The Happytime Murders and all three parts of Kizumonogatari over the course of 2018. He deserved to watch things he enjoys for a while.
2. Mainstream corporate art is interesting territory to look at closely. It's easy to say that it just voices the views of the wealthy but there's lots of specifics about that worldview which you can only see if you engage with such works as being worth or critical thought.

It's that second part I want to build on when talking about Weathering With You. This isn't 2002. Writer/Director/Animator Makoto Shinkai is no longer the upstart auteur making sad magical realist romances alone on an iMac. He directed a teen romance flick that is the fourth highest grossing film in Japanese history. A film that can sell itself on "From the Director of Your Name" is as mainstream as a Marvel movie.

Media isn't very good at changing minds. Its strength lies in using pathos to reinforce ideas you already have. Mainstream media is able to use its large platform to reinforce its worldview in a great many people at one time. In her essay Daddies in Film: Bad Dads (INFINITY WAR, MAN OF STEEL, BATMAN V SUPERMAN) with Maggie Mae Fish [note: boy is citing video essays a trip] argues that Avengers: Infinity War, the currently fifth highest grossing film of all time delivers a set of narrative, theme and visual language that can have harmful results. An abusive father could see how Thanos' claims of love for the children he abuses really is morally acceptable when the universe itself gives him tangible rewards for that violence. Likewise, a child who has been brought along by said father could in turn receive a message that any complaints or trauma from being abused are false and to be ignored. 

The base narrative of Weathering With You is fairly standard stuff for both teen romances and Makoto Shinkai's work up to this point. Boy meets girl, magical realist shenanigans separate them, some sort of rejection of those natural forces occurs and they happily reunite. My issue is the specific motif of climate used this time around. The girl, Hina, has been selected by some ambiguously defined force to be a human sacrifice. If she refuses this fate, the Tokyo region will have floodrains. Forever. Since the two reunite, this happens. In an abstract sense, this film works as a rejection of essentialist roles being forced on people in favour of making your own choices no matter how painful. This is 2019 though. Three years ago a major player in my country's politics made jokes about how our neighbouring countries are going to drown from rising sea levels. Seven days ago, Iceland lost an entire glacier for the first time. As I write this, Bolsonaro keeps setting the Amazon rainforest on fire, risking setting off a catastrophic chain reaction in carbon dioxide release. Weather and climate aren't joking matters. They're at serious risk of causing serious, irreparable harm. This film's still treating it like a mysterious, unknowable force you can learn to live with if you find a romantic partner.

There's a thread of anti-intellectualism running through Weathering With You. Protagonist Hodoka Morishima begins the film as a runaway. An immature 16 year old who needs to grow up. It's in this immature state that he suggests that weather and climate are subjects scientists study and understand. This is foolish behaviour, so he's put to work as a writer for a conspiracy theory magazine. Sure the magazine's framed as an entertainment-oriented grift, but the mysticism is proved right. Hina does have power over weather so long as she's preparing to be a sacrifice. An aged Shinto priest gives a lecture on the lore and tirades against those so-called "experts" who have a mere century of data, ignoring methods that Meterologists use to extrapolate and study earlier patterns. He's left unchallenged by both the characters and the narrative as well.

The English title of the film even adds to the idea that this is all something to just grin and bear with. We can't change anything. Severe weather changes are just something that kinda happens, y'know? It's okay if you love someone in the end. You feel warm and fuzzy when the young lovers hold hands, so why get so worked up about problems?

Weathering With You is mainstream enough to have sponsourship deals. Big ones. Yahoo! Nissin. Lawon. McDonald's. Is it any surprise that a major user of beef (a product that serves double time on deforestation by demanding both grazing cattle and high speed growth of said cattle through soy and corn crops instead of the slower grass) is happy to have its name tied to a film encouraging apathy towards a very serious global issue? This film is worth scruitinising the same as any other big budget vapid Disney flick.

I cried at various points during Your Name. It's edited well with the right sort of musical stings to get me feeling that way. The same beats are here again. I was left irritated when they came. This film is so beautiful to look at it broke my heart. I don't want to burn prettily into the night. There is still time.

Time that could be spent not watching this film.