YMMV / Weathering With You

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Hodaka really going through a rebellious phase, or does he just see his parents in a rather negative light because he was abused or refused to conform to society's expectations? Near the end of the novelization, he tells the reader: "When I trudged dejectedly back home, my parents and my school had welcomed me awkwardly, but warmly." This would imply that Hodaka's parents were tough on him at first, but eventually took a Heel–Face Turn after he ran away. Even so, did this stick for long after Hodaka improved on his life for the next three years and how will they react once they're introduced to Hina and find out that their son sank an entire city for declaring his love for a girl he knew for only three months?
  • Is Hina a Stepford Smiler or is she really just that happy?
  • If you really think about it, Nagi could be a G-rated version of a gigolo, considering his and Hina's poor conditions and their needs for jobs and money.
  • Keisuke may have been an asshole, but do you really feel sorry for him for his on-and-off mistreatment of Hodaka, or do you think he deserved it? Moreover, with his backstory taken into consideration, he's basically an older Hodaka who lost his own Hina and has to live a depressing life trying to deal with the harsh reality of the world and becomes a much more jaded man as a result. Him switching between being kind and harsh to Hodaka could be easily interpreted as him trying to teach the boy not to repeat the same mistakes that he did.
• Award Snub: Despite being submitted for both Best International Feature Film (by Japan) and for Best Animated Feature (by GKIDS, which has a good track record of successfully campaigning for nominations in the category), the film failed to be nominated in either Oscar category.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Hodaka, full stop, largely because of what he did in the climax of the film: saving Hina at the cost of dooming Tokyo to an eternal rainfall. Many detractors thought that he's too immature and self-centered to be likable, while supporters sympathize with him for those same reasons — reasoning that his rash decisions throughout the film are understandable due to being a confused young teenager who didn't know any better who's involved in something way over his head — and appreciate Shinkai's boldness in depicting a character who blatantly goes against the traditional The Needs of the Many thinking of Japanese culture.
  • The old priest and the old woman customer who is also Taki's grandmother. Their words about mankind's shortsighted perspective on time and changes in the weather has split viewers between those who see them as Shinkai unnecessarily giving a voice to skeptics of manmade climate change and those who find them a needed reminder that, even without supernatural entities explicitly muddying the waters, mankind still doesn't know that much about climate systems.^note This is also a case of Viewers Are Geniuses. Tokyo, like many urban settlements around the world, originally had much more water than it does now, with pre-1700 Edo resembling Venice. Urbanization steadily paved over the city's waterways, causing lasting damage to the ecosystem as the rivers and canals became polluted. This is why they claim the flooded Tokyo is returning back to the way it once was. Indeed, letting certain areas flood to give the water more space to support itself is a common point of discussion in modern ecosystem restoration. (That and the school of thought that they're intentionally supposed to bring climate skeptics to mind, particularly as both Taki's grandmother and Suga can easily be viewed as knowing full well that Hodaka caused the flood, and he tells them so too, but ignoring that because they sympathize with him.)
• Broken Base:
  • For some, this is a worthy successor to Your Name. For others, it tries too hard to imitate the beats of the previous film and is the weaker for it.
  • The film's ending where Hodaka saves Hina and condemns Tokyo to be flooded by eternal rainfall has left audiences deeply divided. One half considers this a genuine heartwarming conclusion to the romance between both characters and appreciate the moral that no one should be sacrificed for the many, especially coming from a society as collectivist as Japan. The other half cannot overlook how the lives of countless millions of innocents were permanently disrupted and irrevocably harmed by the flood through no fault of their own, which subsequently tarnished the entire experience for them.
• Cliché Storm: The biggest criticism of the film. For its detractors, the central love story is just one melodramatic romance cliché after another.
• Designated Hero: Many of the film's detractors view Hodaka this way, mostly because the ending has him doom Tokyo to eternal rainfall for no reason other than to save the girl he has a crush on. Even Shinkai himself acknowledges this.
  — “If the definition of a hero is a person who would save both his significant other and the world, the protagonist of this film, Hodaka, is not a hero..."
• Designated Villain:
  • The police are portrayed as overly intrusive Jerkasses who have zero empathy for the struggles the protagonists are going through, especially when they try to stop Hodaka from going after Hina when she disappears. As such, the audience is supposed to cheer Natsumi, Keisuke, and Nagi fighting them off to help Hodaka go to her, but while the lead detective is a pretty big jerk, the rest of the police are just doing their job trying to catch a fugitive who has committed several felonies by that point.
  • A debate could be raised about how abusive Mr. and Mrs. Morishima were and how much of their actions resulted in Hodaka running away from home, or if it's just Hodaka going through a rebellious phrase as noted above. The movie didn't really delve much into Hodaka's parents at all and there is only the bandage on Hodaka's face (which the light novel implied that it was caused by his father punching him for unknown reasons) and some comments from him to indicate what Hodaka has gone through. Also, they did ask Tokyo police to help them search for him ever since he ran away, so a case could be made that they still cared for him enough to find him and bring him back home. The fact that we don't even see them in the movie, what little we know about them are only told from Hodaka's perspective, and their only appearance at the end of the manga showed them treating Hodaka fairly decently, only serve to muddy the waters further.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: As sweet as the ending is, there are some viewers who saw that Hodaka's desperate attempt to save Hina from her fate basically doomed Tokyo (if not the entire world) to the neverending rainfall. That means despite both of them being happily back together, a lot of people have suffered from their actions after Tokyo got flooded. Sure, people have come to live with it and at least Hodaka realizes that he was responsible for all this mess, but if the rain continues to fall, then it's not far-fetched to assume that the future isn't looking too bright for Tokyo right now. It's only slightly mitigated by the implication from several characters that Tokyo will eventually get flooded by the constant rainfall regardless of Hodaka and Hina's involvements, but, then again, their actions certainly sped up the process considerably.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Two months after the film's Japanese release, Japan was hit by Typhoon Faxai, and just another month after that, Typhoon Hagibis hit, bringing record-breaking rainfall and winds and captured footage of flooding and stormcloud patterns that are uncomfortably Life Imitates Art.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Of a Black Comedy sort-of way. Mitsuha's cameo in this film means that despite going through all the trouble to avoid falling victim to the asteroid Tiamat that destroyed her hometown of Itomori, she ends up having to go through yet another disaster in Tokyo when it gets flooded by the never-ending rainfall. Bad luck Mitsuha is a common joke among Thai fanbase.
  • In a similar black comedy case, Brandon Engman voicing Hodaka in the dub can fall under this, as his previous role had his character working with the rest of the cast to help prevent a flood in that film, and in a full 180 here ends up inadvertently causing one.
  • A Silent Voice is a recipient of Fandom Rivalry with the previous film. Shinkai later revealed that he took inspiration from Silent Voice for animating tears in this film.
• Memetic Mutation: Dammit, Aqua. ^{Explanation (SPOILERS)} One of the blink-and-you-miss scenes has a cosplayer dressed up as Aqua from Konosuba. One of her spells, Sacred Create Water, creates a massive flood of biblical proportions. Since the ending of the film involves a flooded Tokyo, some Konosuba fans found this amusing and made some theories that Aqua actually caused most of the major events in the film.
• Narm:
  • Taki's introduction. It's unforeshadowed and just happens, but the way it happens, with him stepping out of the shadows into the light that is functionally being a spotlight is just weirdly over-the-top for a character who is not important to this movie and comes off more like shameless fanservice. Instead of being a dramatic surprise, it can come off kind of hilarious because of how much emphasis the appearance is given.
  • Nagi showing up to tackle the old detective out of Hodaka's way in the derelict building while disguised as his girlfriend, even if foreshadowed and nobly intended, can end up evoking awkward chuckles.
• One-Scene Wonder: Taki and Mitsuha's short appearances in the movie are bound to give everyone warm and fuzzy feelings.
• Signature Scene:
  • Hina bringing the sunlight back on top of Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, with the triumphant strains of "Fireworks Festival" playing as the sunset breaks through the clouds.
  • The skydive sequence where Hodaka and Hina fall back to Earth after her rescue is easily one of the film's most iconic, especially given how the chorus of “Grand Escape” is timed to hit with the sequence's climax.
• Strawman Has a Point: The police and social services are portrayed as bad guys for wanting to split Hodaka, Hina and Nagi up, but consider objectively from the outside that Hina was so desperate for money that she was going to work for the shady nightclub owner, which considering that his premises are located in Kabuki-cho would have been sleazy at best and camouflaged prostitution at worst. In light of her difficulty in providing for the family, they do very much have good reason to intervene.
• Tough Act to Follow: Even as early as a mere 2 weeks since the film's release, Your Name already casts a shadow over it. However, this trope was thoroughly averted profit-wise; second only to Your Name, this movie earned over 10 billion Yen at the box office within a few short weeks of its release.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: On account of the aforementioned fact that Hodaka's actions result in Tokyo becoming the victim of unending rainfall and goodness knows how many people losing their homes (if not their lives), as well as committing multiple crimes such as illegally holding onto a gun he found and pointing it at the man who gave him shelter, a number of viewers see the character as overly self-centered.
• Values Dissonance: While American audiences might be used to seeing casual gunplay on the big screen, especially with career criminals like the thug, Japan has far stricter gun regulations. Even a Yakuza-employed thug is unlikely to carry a firearm and seeing a child carrying one would be extremely rare and cause for concern. Moreover, for law enforcement, the threshold for authorization of firearm usage is much more stringent in Japan than in America. Thus, the fact that the police are pointing guns at Hodaka and Keisuke in their operation to arrest them in the abandoned building conveys to a Japanese audience just how serious the situation is in a way it might not necessarily convey as such to an American one.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: A number of reviewers saw the film as an allegory for climate change. Shinkai has gone on record multiple times (like in here) to state that while he was inspired by the topic, he was not deliberately trying to make a political statement.
• The Woobie: You'd really want to give both lead protagonists a big warm hug for everything they went through:
  • Hodaka is heavily implied to have a troubled life in his hometown, with the bandages on his face implying that he's either a bully victim or having Abusive Parents (although the light novel suggests the former), and his comment about a humble Big Mac being the most delicious thing he'd had in his 16 years not saying good things about his nutritional status either. It gets to the point where he runs away from home to Tokyo and vowed to never return. Once he arrives, the big city is not kind to him, with him struggling to find a job without proper identification and couldn't reveal to anyone that he's a runaway, otherwise he'd get sent back home. He gets into trouble with thugs, accidentally comes into possession of a gun and almost shot one of the thugs with it. Then he meets Hina and falls in love with her as the two bond over Hina using her power to bring back the sunny weather to Tokyo, and it's then revealed that Hina will disappear once she uses her power one too many times, which eventually happened. His actions in the film led to him being a wanted man and the police try to arrest him. By the time of the climax, the boy was so desperate to save Hina that he basically throws his life away, something one of the police officers sadly noted. Finally, even though he succeeded in saving Hina, his actions have directly caused Tokyo to be flooded by the never-ending rainfall, a fact that he has to live with for the rest of his life.
  • Hina lost her mother at the beginning of the story, with her father nowhere to be seen, leaving her alone with Nagi and the two have to live their lives entirely on their own. She has to lie about her age just to get accepted for a job at a fast-food restaurant, and she was fired once the truth was out, and had Hodaka not gotten involved in time, she would've been coerced into working as an underage service girl out of desperation. She finally finds some happiness once Hodaka convinces her to use her power to change the weather to make a living, but then she learns that she will end up disappearing once she uses her powers one too many times. By the time she realizes this, she grimly resigns herself to her fate and uses her power one last time to restore summer to Tokyo, which caused her to disappear into the world above the clouds — where she would have stayed alone for the rest of her life until the beings in the clouds are done with her. Even after Hodaka manages to rescue her from her fate, it ends up undoing the sunny weather that her sacrifice has given to Tokyo. In the ending, her last scene first showed her futilely praying for the weather to become sunny again without anything happening, and it's only due to reuniting with Hodaka that makes her smile again.