Tenki no Ko - Weathering with You

 After a huge success from Kimi no na wa/Your Name, it is bound for fans to expect another work from Makoto Shinkai. He delivered another work this year called Tenki no Ko but it is up for discussion if this one meet the expectation. Tenki no Ko is another coming of age movie-length anime with the same premise of Boy meet Girl like its predecessor, Kimi no Na Wa. This time the theme focus around the main heroine who had special ability to control the weather but such power comes with a price.

 To be honest, surpassing Kimi no Na Wa is a tall order even though the concept of the series was not original and Tenki no Ko failed this task unfortunately. Animation quality is still superb but it lacks the vision that its predecessor had. The storytelling is quite coherent until near the end after the part of the protagonist overcoming odds to save the heroine. The ending was rather novel but i think it was made mainly for Shock Value. I wonder the Japanese audience think about the ending considering from what i know their society emphasize on sacrifice of the few for the many. Basically if the story is a Fantasy RPG, the main character choose a bad ending route by letting the world burn in order to save the heroine. Was Hyaku Percent Hare no Onna worth the sacrifice? The Protagonist made the decision without much reflection which show his shallowness of the character. He really reminds me of Heaven's Feel Emiya Shirou, but a wussier version of him. One thing i wonder is, if the Tenki no Ko's ending is canon, how the ending of the Kimi no Na Wa could happen in the first place but probably it will get retconned conveniently.

 I think Tenki no Ko initially tried to deal with mix of social issues in Japan from labor migrant from rural Japan who lived in Tokyo with miserable standard of living to exploitation of teen labors. But then the series steered to another direction because the former topic was rather uncomfortable and probably influenced with the Flood Disaster in Japan last year. A sudden change from depressing theme of society issue to Teenagers trying to make their mark in the world will bound to cause complications one way or another. Thus if the series had original vision, it was piled up with another vision possibly from another source which distort the original story that Makoto Shinkai tried to deliver. In the end Tenki no Ko is still entertaining watch but just don't expect the same satisfaction with its predecessor.