Conflict With You Repeats: the anime is great for the physical pleasure

Virtual reality in an anime feature film by Makoto Shinkai Meeting the Weather nothing short of amazing. Shinkai's follow-up to his international calling Your name it keeps the visuals warm and bright, but adds a lot of detail, to the point where it gets richer with Studio Ghibli films. This is the kind of movie where keen-eyed viewers can pick up individual signs on the edge of soft toilets, or tiny spots of moss that provide an old-fashioned road to its fullness. The metal symbols have rust on the pictures. The hotel rating card on the uneven rear wall is carefully drawn, you can read the price structure of the services. You can count individual leaves on trees as the characters pass. The setting feels almost entirely real, like a definite kind of real-life.

It is also a movie about a magical girl who creates sunshine through prayer.

A good compromise between a world that is genuinely translated but familiar with something less well-known means more conflict in Meeting the Weather. There is no villain in this movie, and there is nothing like an enemy to fight or fight. There is simply the notion that any of the absolute dissenters is the end of such a world. Shinkai's version of Tokyo is too good to feel normal, but it is still widely known to be robust and organized, in a way that the characters have never been. And to some extent, the world knows it's not ready for this setting, and responds to it as strangely as nature always does.

Picture: Toho

The middle story is slowly growing. Sixteen-year-old Hodaka Morishima (16-year-old Kotaro Daigo in the original Japanese version; Brandon Engman in GKIDS & # 39; English dub) escapes her remote island home to Tokyo with a pale face and a carefully calculated budget. On the way, he is almost in great danger, but he is rescued by a short boat man named Supa (Shun Oguri / Lee Pace). Trying to live on his own in Tokyo, Hodaka finds himself unable to find a legitimate job without a student ID. When his money runs dry, he redefines his relationship with Suga, enters his office, and becomes the manager of his small freelance writing business, along with Suga's lifelong friend, Natsumi Suga (Tsubasa Honda / Alison Brie).

Assigned to an urban fantasy writing project, Natsumi and Hodaka run through Tokyo, chasing the elaborate fantasy myths that Hodaka dismisses as "bizarre fantasy." rain girls, headed by the gods and can change the weather by their presence. To a seemingly mythical story, the story sounds just as apt: Tokyo is hit by a splash of rain, inaccessible rain, and its citizens eager to experience the sun. When Hodaka meets a teenage orphan named Hina (Nana Mori / Ashley Boettcher), who seems to have the ability to escape clouds and end the rain in a small area for a short period of time, she suggests they go into business. Joined by Hina's younger brother, they set up a website and started selling Hina's power online, bringing instant sunlight to people trying to enjoy their beauty or their exterior weddings.

In the case of more American, the idea of ​​receiving a spiritual blessing for money might have been a horrible commotion, and it could add up to bad prices. However Meeting the Weather it is a very warm, fun story, and one that is very suited to Japanese culture. There is a familiar metaphor that applies to the power of the "sun girl" of Hina, which draws on Japan's decline in youthful energy and happiness. It's hard to make the leap from Hina's lofty personality to spread the light and warmth around her to the actual rays of the sun that follow her around.

Picture: Toho

That warmth applies especially to Hodaka. Like Your name, Meeting the Weather is a sad love story about two teenagers who gradually find their need for each other under strange, passionate circumstances. Meeting the Weather focused on Hodaka's vision; for all her independence of leaving home, she is still shy and worried, and Shinkai finds humor in Hodaka's sweet chance of entering the girl's apartment for the first time, or trying to figure out how to express her love.

And when Hodaka seems to desperately need Hina, without everything else, Hina's needs are more complicated, since she has a brother to take care of her, a job and a house to manage on her own, and an ever-increasing amount of money she pays for her power. Where Meeting the Weather most of the lies lie to Shinkai's failure to make Hina over the right figure. She is the center of Hodaka's world, and is a gift to the Tokyo dwellers, but she is not a personality in her own right. The way she bears all the stress and tension, while her focus is still longing for Hodaka, she can feel uncomfortable.

Meeting the Weather and introduces a few elements of some intriguing elements that will never be fully explored, at least in the title genre. Hodaka first appears on her face covered with sticky bandages, as if she were injured. The natural thought, given that he has escaped, is that he escapes domestic abuse, after some serious incident. But when asked about his choice to leave home, he responds in a nutshell with the statement that he finds himself depressed, and never will. At the beginning of the film, Hodaka receives a spoonful of luggage, looking like it was left on a dead drop to someone you didn't choose. The film has never spoken to who he is, and Hodaka's idea of ​​being hanged on it, even though it caused so much adversity, has never been fully explained.

And Shinkai goes out of his way to establish Hodaka's tendency for rain – that accidental accident at the beginning of the film happens because when he warns of a dangerous dangerous rain, he runs into it, rather than running away from it. Later, he crosses the city behind Natsumi on his motorbike, lifts his face in the rain as if it were a pleasure. And yet he never really talked about that part of himself, even before the story focused on the destructive and destructive nature of the rain, and the misery that brought so many people.

But none of these are the most important threads between the movie's theme, the romantic flashes, which focus on the romantic feelings of teenage love. Hodaka and Hina have a ready-made scene by Romeo and Juliet, because they are both under suspicion, and most adults who notice them try to make a living for themselves whether they try to exploit or capture them. Shinka does not agree that these children may not be prepared to live on their own; he gives this story completely from their perspective, when they have everything they need for each other, and they want to be left alone. The winning music of the Japanese band Radwimps, also stabbed Your name

Picture: Toho

And there is nothing Meeting the WeatherThe slight flaw disrupts the beauty of the film's origin, which is especially touching when Hina uses her powers. The film's near-constant rainfall is just as good as its city center or its cozy rooms, very crowded, but well-organized. Every drop of water falling has its brightness and shadows, and the clouds look like they are coming in from the Maxfield Parrish painting. But the times when the rain breaks down are magical, not just in reality, within the story, but in their best work. There is a recurring image throughout the film, as someone raises their hand toward the sun, looks at how light shines their skin and makes it shine. In those moments, the audience almost felt the weight and heat of the sunbeams.

Meeting the Weather He clearly conveys concerns about climate change, even though Shinkai maintains the image is symbolic and spiritual rather than focusing on the real-world causes. Nature is out of money Meeting the Weather, and while it threatens Tokyo with gray, poor days and eventually storms and floods, it threatens Hodaka and Hina in a very personal way. In a film that is obsessed with the fine line between childhood and adulthood, and the ways in which adults grow up to oppress and dominate people on the wrong side of that line, the message for the next generation that pays a number of this generation's decisions about absolute evil is clear. That does The weatherSurprisingly, with the courage of a symbolic end.

But while that alone seems to be ready for debate and discussion, and while it may be possible to separate the story from other unpleasant realities, true happiness Meeting the Weather It is a real pleasure to enter this world with Hodaka and Hina, and to reunite both in their own personal happiness, and in the ordinary worlds around them. This is the kind of film where viewers can let it flow with the feel of the film, or completely ignore the action, and lose the beauty of the imagination. Either way, it's a logical journey you can take.

Meeting the Weather it's in theaters now.