Weathering With You

On his way to Tokyo, Hodaka, a 16-year-old runaway has his life saved by a stranger, Keisuke. Now interested in the kid, he offers him a job. Hodaka has no intention of taking it, since his instincts tell him that Keisuke’s not all above board. However, desperate for a job, but with no one else willing to hire someone so young, Hodaka eventually takes the job.

It turns out to be the best decision he ever made, as he finds it fun doing various errands for a newspaper that reports on angels or alien abductions or whatever will sell. After he follows a story on ‘sun girls’, like the weather maidens of mythology who have the power to control the weather, he discovers that he already knows one! In rainy Tokyo, this seems like a highly profitable ability and the work soon starts pouring in. The only problem is, the more she uses her power, the more she starts to disappear…

This is another beautiful anime from Makoto Shinkai, writer-director of Your Name (Japan’s highest grossing film last year), that’s touching, unpredictable and magical.

Natalie Tyldesley-Marshall