Weathering with You

You know the old saying: if you’re going to make a romcom, you might as well make it about a girl who has the supernatural ability to change the weather. Makoto Shinkai’s anime follow-up to 2016’s body-swapping ‘Your Name’ doesn’t scrimp on whimsy. Penniless 16-year-old runaway Hodaka flees to Tokyo, where he gets involved with a cat, a tabloid journalist and aforementioned weather-botherer Hina. This is an enchanting little story, to a point – it’s thin stuff, but while it never fully gets the emotions jangling, there’s charm to spare and the action is dynamic and occasionally thrilling. The sense of space, of place, is extraordinary. You wish the world looked like this. It’s a film to bathe in.