Weathering with You

天気の子 (Tenki no Ko)

8.9(7)

OtakuDen

8.3(684,568)

MAL Score

Ranked #369

Popularity #155

Award Winning
Drama
Romance
Supernatural

Episodes: 1
Duration: 1 hr 52 min
Aired: Jul 19, 2019
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Relentless rain has settled over Tokyo, throwing daily life off balance. Into the downpour comes Hodaka Morishima, a runaway high schooler trying to scrape by on his own until he lands work at a small publishing outfit. Elsewhere, Hina Amano—an orphan caring for her younger brother—searches for ways to make ends meet in the same soaked city.

Their paths cross when Hodaka steps in to help Hina out of trouble, and the two decide to stick together. Hodaka soon learns Hina carries an extraordinary gift: when she prays, the clouds part and sunlight breaks through. Seeing what that could mean for a city starved of clear skies, he encourages her to take on work as a “sunshine girl,” bringing brief, brilliant weather to those who need it. But as their days brighten, the reality sets in that such power doesn’t come without consequences.

Otaku Consensus

Weathering with You confirms Makoto Shinkai’s post-Garden of Words command of luminous urban melodrama, with CoMix Wave Films’ rain-soaked Tokyo, RADWIMPS’ music, and a brisk two-hour structure doing the heaviest emotional lifting. Its admirers praise the pacing, sensory direction, and the way romance, work, family pressure, and urban fantasy are fused into a contemporary Tokyo fable; the recurring criticism is that the film’s grand presentation can make its more convenient or undercooked story logic feel exposed, especially for viewers expecting the clean impact of Your Name.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Weathering with You if you want Shinkai’s cinematic romance without the puzzle-box mechanics of Your Name, or if The Garden of Words left you wanting a larger, messier Tokyo canvas. It is built for viewers who care about atmosphere as much as confession: convenience-store fluorescent light, cramped publishing offices, rooftop spaces, rain on glass, and pop-rock crescendos all become part of the emotional grammar. The film also has a sharper social texture than its reputation suggests, folding teenage precarity, informal labor, found family, and climate anxiety into a supernatural romance rather than treating them as background decoration. If you like urban fantasy where the city feels lived-in rather than mythic, this is one of CoMix Wave Films’ most polished showcases.

Key Characters

H
Hodaka Morishima
Hodaka is one of Shinkai’s more divisive romantic leads because the film treats his teenage certainty as emotionally pure, socially reckless, and narratively consequential all at once.
H
Hina Amano
Hina stands out less as a fantasy heroine than as a young caretaker whose warmth is inseparable from the pressure to monetize kindness, labor, and hope.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
CoMix Wave Films turns Tokyo weather into a production centerpiece, with Hiroshi Takiguchi’s art direction emphasizing wet pavement, layered clouds, reflected signage, and cramped interiors rather than postcard scenery.
2
RADWIMPS handle both the score and theme song performance, making the film feel like a direct continuation of the Shinkai-RADWIMPS pop-cinema language that many viewers associate with Your Name.
3
The film is an original Makoto Shinkai work rather than an adaptation, with Shinkai credited as both original creator and director, so its structure is shaped around cinematic escalation instead of serialized source material beats.
4
AniList’s strongest tags frame the movie as Urban Fantasy, Urban, and Environmental, which matches how the film uses modern Tokyo systems, public mood, and ecological unease as active dramatic forces.
5
Its reception profile is unusually split for a high-scoring hit: MAL lists it at 8.27 from more than 684,000 votes, while user reviews range from 9/10 praise for enjoyment and audiovisual craft to 4/10 frustration with the writing beneath the spectacle.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Weathering with You premiered in Japan on July 19, 2019, as a single theatrical film rather than a series, which is why its database episode count is listed as one.
Fun fact 2: Makoto Shinkai holds both the original creator and director credits, while Youko Miki is credited as assistant director, placing the film firmly within Shinkai’s auteur-driven production model.
Fun fact 3: The character design credit is shared by Masayoshi Tanaka and Atsushi Tamura, reflecting a production split between Shinkai’s familiar polished youth designs and the film’s broader range of supporting urban character types.
Fun fact 4: Haru Yamada served as sound director and Eiko Morikawa handled sound effects, an important pairing for a film where rain, traffic, footsteps, interiors, and sudden quiet are as structurally important as the music.
Fun fact 5: Across major anime databases, the film remains both popular and heavily favorited: MAL ranks its popularity at #155, while AniList records 13,510 favorites and an 81/100 score.