[image id: a digital drawing of amano hina from weathering with you. she has a hand on her hip and the other holding an umbrella with charms hung on it, a smile as she looks at the camera. there are doodles of the sun around her. end id]
i rewatched weathering with u and i rlly wanted to draw her!
so maybe a year ago I watched the movie weathering with you and I have some conflicting feelings about it. lots of people have been criticising the supposed message of the story as bad because apparently the protagonists let tokyo sink under water for some silly teenage love, and I have a few objections on this reading.
although I have to agree, it is quite silly when you weigh up the costs and benefits. one girl to keep a city from submerging under water. its quite obvious which one someone might logically choose right? yet the film chooses the former. this makes it very easy for someone to brush off weathering with you as a nonsensical feel-good film, but honestly it’s more complex than that. I think that really what Shinkai was aiming for was for the viewer to recognise that hodaka and hina’s motivation was silly, but also for the viewer to question themselves and realise that this practical and profit-orientated perception rather sadistic, similar to how individual people are often forgotten in the grand scheme of the world.
but on the flip side, I also like that Shinkai doesn’t present love as a magical power that fixes everything either, because it doesn't. while hodaka and hina manage to stay together, their choice leaves tokyo to sink under the oceans, but neither does shinkai present this as anything catastrophic. instead, keisuke was shown as much more successful at the close of the film despite the rain, while taki’s grandmother was shown to be quite at peace with the changes.
the film asks the viewer; why must hina be sacrificed? she’d never done anything wrong in her life and except receiving both the blessing and curse of a sunshine girl. it challenges the viewer to question their own mentality, and also kind of criticises the cold and harsh mentality that so many people adopt as they grow older.