Mar 25, 2025
Let me start off by saying that I watched this film because I saw that it was recommended for people who liked Your Name. I love Your Name its one of my favorite movies of all time so I was excited for this.
I'll begin with the Good: the animation quality and the soundtrack to this film are spectacular. Truly incredible in some of the landscape shots of Tokyo. I also feel that the bones of the story are solid and would make for a very interesting film if handled differently. I like the premise that there are "seas" in the sky and that the ancient
...
myths about dragons and gods are just interpretations of creatures that live above the clouds. The part about there being a "Sunshine Girl/Weather Maiden" who can pray for better weather is a bit confusing but not a dealbreaker as you should be prepared to accept some mysticism from a movie like this. Also I'm a huge fan of the Taki/Mitsuha cameos even though I wish they were more involved in the story (I love them what can I say).
OK, that's out of the way so now we can get to the complaints. I will bullet point the main ones here and if you feel like it I've written my thoughts on the story in full below.
- The main two characters are bland
- The love story plot seems to happen because it was supposed to happen and not because we feel any chemistry or bond between the main boy and girl
- The little brother character does not serve any narrative purpose. Why is he there? He seems to exist just to help the MC date his sister
- The plot has no drive to it, partially because the MC has no motivation really. So the story seems to meander around until its time for the final act
- There are almost 0 consequences for anything any of the characters do
- The characters don't seem to grow or change in any respect over the course of the film
- The police let a self-admitted pedophile go when he gives them information about the MC
- The police are the most incompetent group of people at certain points but always seem to know where the MC is when the plot needs to move forward
Firstly, the pacing of this film is awful. It seems to change from a nice sedate crawl to a sprint at the drop of a hat and then becomes frenetic towards the end. This wouldn't in and of itself be terrible if the story and characters supported it, but they don't. The main character is so bland we never get any backstory or motivation for him aside from the "I have to save the girl" trope at the end. Why is he in Tokyo? We hear that he felt like he was suffocating at home, but why? Is he being abused? Bullied? Ostracized? Do his parents pressure him to be perfect? We don't know because it never tells us. The only glimpses we get of his home are the brief flashback when he talks about chasing the light (which is his entire motivation to come to Tokyo apparently), and at the end when he is graduating from high school and tells us he was on probation because of all the crimes he committed. He doesn't complain about having to go back there, or talk about how its awful and he hates it. He just wants to leave so he can go see the girl. His motivation for getting a job is obvious cause he needs money to survive so OK that makes sense, but he then gets a job that provides room/board/meals/phone plan plus a meagre paycheck so survival is no longer an issue. OK so now he wants a second job to make some money. OK no issue with that.
So he finds out that the girl who gave him a free meal is also broke but hey she's magic so they can monetize that. He is briefly warned about abusing her powers for money but that goes absolutely nowhere so not sure why its in there. No one in the city seems to have any thoughts at all about this girl who is either controlling the weather, or so perfectly clairvoyant that she predicts and is present for the only periods of sunshine for the last several months. They catch her on film banishing the rain for a fireworks display and its briefly mentioned that she's famous now but this also never goes anywhere and no one comes to ask her questions like "how the hell are you doing this?".
We find out that the police are searching for the MC because he is a run-away (again its never explained why) and they discover that magic girl is living alone with her little brother (who is a completely pointless character who seems to exist just to help the MC bang his sister?) without adult supervision. So now all of them are on the run. Magic girl reveals her terrible secret to MC and they have a sweet moment where they tell each other that they will fix it so she doesn't have to use her powers again. We are given no time to sit with this info or digest the emotions of the characters as they figure out how to help her because she immediately dies. Not clear if she used her powers to bring back the sun because MC said he'd like to see it again or not.
Now we enter the frantic period of the film where MC and little brother separately escape police custody (for about the 3rd time this film. get it together Japanese cops) and have a hectic chase across Tokyo to the building where magic girl got her powers so that MC can go save her from heaven. During this chase the two people who gave MC a job separately decide to assault police officers and help MC evade capture seemingly just because they like him? Even though they both have strong desires/motivations to not be arrested. MC ends up in the building where the gate is and is cornered by cops at one point but finds a random loaded gun (for the second time this film) conveniently within reach. Apparently some plot considerate person went around Tokyo hiding loaded guns just incase someone needed one. Anyway after pulling a gun on several police officers and starting a fight that sees his boss and little brother arrive with no explanation as to how they knew where to be or how they got there MC finally makes it through the portal to heaven. Again this portal just shoots you thousands of feet into the sky.
So now MC is falling out of the stratosphere (no issues with breathing or temperature or anything but whatever) and wouldn't you know it he happens to fall close enough to magic girl who is lying on top of the cloud slowly dissolving that he can shout to her. As a note he doesn't appear next to her or above her which would make sense if the gate just deposits you there, but he appears way higher up and yards away for some reason. She immediately stops dissolving (apparently she can just do that) and runs over to him, jumping off the cloud and they manage to catch each other and pray their way to safety on the ground (never clear how this happens cause the sky is certainly not happy about it so I don't think it helped them). They all get arrested as the sky starts pouring rain again.
Jump cut to 3 years in the future where Tokyo is almost fully underwater, and the main characters have suffered almost 0 consequences. MC went on probation for 3 years but that is apparently the only negative to illegal possession of a firearm, assaulting police officers, reckless driving, resisting arrest, endangering a minor among a list of charges. Seriously not a single one of them meaningfully suffered any repercussions its crazy. Finally, we see MC and magic girl reunited when he discovers her using the weather powers that literally killed her for no apparent reason. Oh and its shown in an earlier scene that magic girl can fully control the weather not just banish clouds when she summons a lightning bolt to destroy a van in order to distract the police that are attempting to capture them at one point. Never mentioned or talked about again.
So much of this film is just stuff happening and the audience being expected to just accept that this is where we are now and this is what's happening currently so don't think about anything else.
In conclusion: This film is very pretty and would make a great LoFi screensaver but the story needs a major retooling in order to work as a good film
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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