MY THOUGHTS ABOUT: Your Name vs Weathering With You
WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Hey, Noah here. So, I’ve recently watched Weathering With You, and I’m sure most of you enjoyed it. The critics gave it a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that means the movie is freaking awesome. To me, it is a fantastic movie. But I’m sure everyone who watched this has the same question I have right now: Is Your Name or Weathering With You better?
First, let me give you an introduction to both of the films. Both are directed by Makoto Shinkai, who has also directed 5 Centimeters Per Second, The Garden Of Words, and The Place Promised In Our Early Days. The music, in the two films, are by RADWIMPS, a Japanese rock band. Never ever heard of them until these two films came out, and the music are great.
Your Name is a Japanese animated fantasy romance film released in 2016. At first, I thought this is going to be quite shitty. After all, I haven’t watched any of Makoto-san’s films yet, so I was quite uncertain of it. Little did I know, I fucking loved it when I watched it for the first time. The plot, the characters, and the music made it great. Your Name has such a special story plot, and it’s so different from anything I’ve seen before. Really. Taki Tachibana switches bodies with Mitsuha Miyamizu after the latter wants to be a handsome boy in her next life. They communicate through writing notes on paper, on their phones, and even sometimes, on their skin. One day, Taki founds out a comet is about to pass Earth on Mitsuha’s town festival date. When Taki returns to normal and Mitsuha disappears, he goes out to find her, but finds his memory slowly fading away. After some help, Taki reaches the shrine and drinks Mitsuha’s kuchikamizake, which translates to a rice-based alcohol with the person’s saliva as a fermentation starter. That’s pretty fucked up, for Taki to drink Mitsuha’s saliva. Taki drinks it to reconnect with her body and warn her of the comet. Through a vision, he saw Mitsuha fall in love with him and they have indeed met in a train. After that, Taki wakes up in Mistuha’s body, and vice versa. Taki also realizes that their timelines are different by three years. They both meet at the shrine and wanted to write names on each other’s hand. But, guess what? Taki wrote ‘I love you’ on Mitsuha’s hand instead of his name. What a fucker. He then wakes up at the shrine, and forgets every single thing about it. Five years pass, and they meet again. At first, they kinda forget each other, but then Taki asks Mitsuha if they had met before, and she said she felt the same way too, which means they recognized each other. They then asked each other, “Your Name?”. It received critical acclaim, and it won some awards. Not just local, but international ones. Oh yeah.
It is really a remarkable movie. Music-wise? I didn’t really like it except for RADWIMPS’s Zen Zen Zen. That song is really catchy, and it reached number one…on the Japan Hot 100. I mean, it is at the top of a chart. Important song chart. That shows how awesome it is.
Weathering With You is also a Japanese animated fantasy romance film released three years after. It starts out with Hodoka Morishima running away from his hometown to a raining Tokyo. He meets Suga, his savior who had save him when he was about to fall off from a ferry. Suga gives Hodoka a name card, in case the latter needs any help. In Tokyo, he lives a hard life as he is seen as a runaway minor, thus disabling him to work. He then finds a gun while being kicked out by this yellow haired prick, he found a gun, and keeps it. Hina Amano, the main girl, met him in a McDonalds outlet, and gives him a Big Mac as she pities him. Hodoka then goes to Suga’s house to apply for a writing job for a small company Suga owns. Hodoka meets Natsumi there, and the trio worked together for quite a while. One day, Hodoka saw Hina being intimidated by the same yellow-haired motherfucker and another guy. He tries to save Hina, but got whacked by the son of a bitch. Hodoka shocks the sucker by firing the gun in the air. Hina pulls Hodoka away and both of them ran to an abandoned building, where she scolds him for interfering before walking away angrily. As he throws the gun away in frustration, she comes back and asks him if he’s okay. She explained that she needed the job to support her sibling and herself. She then brings him to the shrine, and prayed before the sun came out. Hodoka then decided to make the ‘sunshine girl’ a business plan, and discussed it with her before executing it the next day. Their business turned out to be great, making them earn money. Suga and Natsumi visit an old man to tell about the weather maiden, and this is when I was like, ‘Yeah, I know the story from this point onwards.’ Pretty predictable, isn’t it? Hina’s body is slowing turning into water because she did too many ‘sunshine girl’ jobs, and she must be sacrificed in order for Tokyo to stop raining. But, of course, in the end, Hodoka wishes for Hina to be with him, and doesn’t give a shit about the rain. That’s about it. Music-wise? Fucking amazing. I loved the songs that were sung by RADWIMPS and Toko Miura.
So, here’s the hard hitting question: which movie is better? Depends on your opinion, but here’s three things I would find if a movie is good or not, or in this case, which one is done better. Characterization, music, and plot.
Characterization. Your Name has Taki and Mistuha. I find their characterization pretty decent, with some great traits. Weathering With You has Hodoka and Hina. I really like Hina this time, because she is like a better person to me than Mitsuha. Like not in terms of good or bad, but like she has more emotions. I mean, when Mitsuha and Hina fell for their male protagonists each, Hina did it better. It made more sense since she had spent more time with Hodoka than Mitsuha spent with Taki. Mitsuha falling in love with Taki is acceptable, but they didn’t really meet each other in real life until the third quarter of the film, so it’s kinda weird, but still okay. So, this point goes to Weathering With You. By the way, Hina’s adorable!
Music. As I had said earlier, I liked more of WWY’s music than YN’s music. WWY’s music, when fitted with the scenes of the movies, is really terrific, stunning, and outstanding. Undoubtedly, this point goes to Weathering With You.
The plot. This is the most crucial part of any movie. A shitty story plot equals to a bad movie. Your Name has an interesting plot, and is way more unforeseeable than Weathering With You. In the latter, you can already expect what’s going down with Hina. I’ve talked about the plot earlier on, so I won’t go on about it again. Therefore, two points are given to Your Name.
Overall, I’m stuck at which one to choose. Your Name’s plot is a fresh one, and it is really a marvellous one. Weathering With You’s characters are more likeable for me, and their music are great too, but the plot is part-cliché. I love both movies, so I can say this is a tie. It’s really a hard decision for me, and that’s the conclusion. Of course, these are just my opinions. You can have your own opinions. To those reading, go ahead and watch both of the movies if you want to! I really recommend it! Thanks for reading, and have a nice day ahead!
