Film

Weathering with You

Name: Weathering with You
Genre: Animation, Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Released: 2019
Cast: Kotaro Daigo, Nana Mori, Tsubasa Honda, Sakura Kiryu, Sei Hiraizumi

Makoto Shinkai's follow-up to Your Name trades cosmic time-slip for climate anxiety: a runaway teenager falls for a girl who can part the clouds with a prayer, set against a Tokyo drowning in endless rain. It's gorgeous, melancholic, unabashedly sentimental, and quietly about what you're willing to sacrifice for someone you love when the whole sky is against you.

TMDb rating

8.0

If you liked this

Your Name.2016

Shinkai's previous film, and the one that made him a household name — same aching teenage longing, same jaw-dropping skyscapes, arguably an even tighter, more devastating story.

But If you've somehow already seen it, there's little new tonal ground to cover here — it hits very similar emotional beats.

Suzume2022

Shinkai's next film after Weathering With You, and his most ambitious — a road-trip disaster movie about doors that unleash catastrophe across Japan, wrapped around grief instead of romance.

But The mythology is denser and the emotional register cooler; some miss the simpler boy-meets-girl warmth of the earlier films.

The Garden of Words2013no page yet

A much smaller, quieter Shinkai film — rain as mood rather than apocalypse, a tentative bond between a teenager and an older woman told almost entirely through weather and silence.

But At 45 minutes it's barely a feature, and the pace is glacial by comparison — plot-light, mood-heavy.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Take Shelter2011

Both films ask what it costs a person to feel personally responsible for the weather, and what they're willing to sacrifice — home, sanity, love — to protect someone from a sky they believe is coming for them.

Michael Shannon plays a man convinced an apocalyptic storm is coming, building a shelter while his family and community begin to doubt his sanity — dread instead of wonder, but the same question at its core: what do you owe the people you love when the sky itself seems to be turning against you?

But There's no magic here, no beauty in the rain — it's a slow-building, unglamorous psychological thriller about mental illness and paranoia.

5 Centimeters per Second2007no page yet

The film that established Shinkai's whole aesthetic vocabulary: three linked stories about distance, timing, and love that slips away no matter how badly you want to hold on.

But Bleaker and more diffuse than his later work — no clean resolution, and the sadness lingers rather than resolves.

A Silent Voice: The Movie2016

Different studio, same emotional intensity — a former bully seeks forgiveness from the deaf classmate he tormented, animated with the same delicate attention to small gestures and light.

But It deals with bullying and guilt far more directly and painfully; expect a heavier, less escapist watch.

Spirited Away2001

If you want the deeper well Shinkai drinks from, go to Miyazaki — a girl navigating a spirit world with the same wide-eyed wonder and visual imagination, just with different stakes.

But It's a folk-tale adventure rather than a romance, and the tone is stranger and less driven by teenage feeling.

Ponyo2008

Miyazaki's own flood-the-world fantasy, with a girl whose magic destabilizes the weather and the sea in ways eerily close to Hina's — but gentler, warmer, made for younger eyes.

But Considerably more childlike in tone; if you wanted Weathering With You's melancholy, this won't scratch that itch.

The Wind Rises2013

Miyazaki's most grown-up film, about a man building beautiful things while history and illness close in around him — gorgeous skies again, but tragedy without fantasy to soften it.

But Slow, historical, and largely dialogue-driven; no magic, no easy catharsis, just a long walk toward loss.

Children of the Sea2019no page yet

A stranger, more oceanic cousin to Shinkai's weather obsession — kids drawn into a cosmic mystery involving marine life and celestial phenomena, animated with similarly overwhelming visual ambition.

But The plot dissolves into abstraction by the end, trading clarity for pure sensory spectacle — frustrating if you want answers.

Ugetsu1953

Decades before Shinkai, Mizoguchi used weather and the supernatural as the language of forbidden love — a reminder that a girl who isn't quite of this world, and the rain that follows her, is an old Japanese idea Shinkai is quietly continuing.

Kenji Mizoguchi's ghost story follows a potter seduced by a beautiful woman who turns out to be a spirit, all shot through drifting mist and rain that feels alive — a much older Japanese film already fusing the supernatural with doomed, tender romance.

But It's slow, formal, black-and-white, and asks patience from an audience used to modern pacing and color.

Chasing Ice2012no page yet

Strip away the girl who can control the rain and you're left with Shinkai's actual anxiety: a climate turning strange and hostile, which this documentary shows happening for real, frame by literal frame.

A documentary about a photographer obsessively tracking melting glaciers, turning climate collapse into images as stunning and mournful as anything animated — the real-world version of a sky that's stopped behaving.

But No romance, no character arc to hold onto — just accumulating, sobering evidence, which can feel bleak rather than cathartic.