Weathering with You Review + People Pleasing

I'm going back to Singapore for the first time in like 7 years with my mom, and we're flying through Japan Airlines, stopping in Tokyo for a couple hours (enough for me to do some touristy stuff). But that's irrelevant. The important part is that I'm on the flight right now and they have Weathering with You as part of the in-flight entertainment. It's one of those shows that was really big and popular back then, but I never got the chance to check it out and it's been on the back burner ever since.

I knew beforehand that it was probably sad, but I don't think I fully realized that I would be stifling sobs in the middle aisle of a Boeing 787 two hours later.

Spoilers, obviously.

Yeah this one definitely deserves a 10/10. I give almost any movie that makes me cry a 10/10. I don't fucking care if I'm a crybaby.

It does not have best animation that I've seen, but it was good. I've definitely seen prettier rainy/abandoned/submerged city vibes. I didn't notice anything super interesting in the cinematography or I guess the composition of the scenes either. I mean, it's definitely not bad that it takes away from the experience, but I don't recall ever going "woah that's so pretty." There's a lot of detail in many of the scenes so I definitely have to give kudos to that though. Obviously, the main driver of the movie is its story.

The story follows a structure that I've always been a fan of. It begins with an introduction to the main character, Hadoka, who's going through a rough time. He ran away from his home on some small island of Japan to Tokyo but is struggling to survive there as a 16 year old. He starts to get his life together slowly by working at this guy's journalism business. Then, the inciting incident happens. Hadoka then saves a girl (Hina) that gave him a free borger from a life of prostitution (more probably, working as a hostess, but they never specified). He finds out she has great magical powers, and they go on lovely adventures together, selling her service and quite literally brightening people's days.

These moments feel like a deep celebration of the beauty of the human condition. They're so happy, the kind of happiness that also causes a clench in my heart because I know deep down that it has to end. Boy do I love that feeling. I usually start crying before the bad things even happen. It's a mixture of knowing what's going to come and also an appreciation of the pureness of the happy moments on screen. And then he says the words, "God I never want this to end."

And so I'm crying, absolutely bawling at this point of the movie because guess what happens next? Something bad happens!!! Wow!!! It's not like there was a shit ton of foreshadowing or anything!?!?? Hina, the weather maiden, must sacrifice herself for the weather to be sunny again. The next day, she was gone.

Many stories follow a similar plot line (guy is sad > meet an interesting person > they have a lot of fun together, and there's this constant undertone of "it's going to end soon" > it ends, usually by revealing some big secret that the interesting person has). Some that I've seen are A Silent Voice, Your Lie in April, and if you think hard enough, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (a draft of my review of this movie is sitting somewhere in my Standard Notes. I think the manic pixie fairy girl movie trope generally falls into this category, just not to the extreme as these anime movies) and The Great Gatsby (though the tragedy in this case happens to Gatsby, not the main character). I will live and die by Silent Voice and Gatsby, and I'm a big fan of the other two. You could say that I'm a sucker for this format. I mean, there's something very heartbreaking about taking away the happiness that they deserve to have.

I think how much I cry is dependent on how much I relate to the story. In the case of Weathering with You, I was reminded of my last year of high school. I moved to a different (though neighboring) state after high school graduation, and since I was definitely not going to the same university as my friends, it meant I was never going to see them again. As I watched the movie, I relived my last moments with my bf at the time. I was crying so hard.

At that point, I had expected that the moral of the story was that we all have to move on, because people naturally get separated. It was also probably true that the world was just better with Hina sacrificed. That's just the way things are sometimes. I suppose my view is tainted by my personal experience with my ex. Overall, I had a lot of fun, but it was also not the healthiest of relationships, and I didn't realize fully how bad it was until much later. In the end, I definitely benefitted from breaking up. But I digress. The point is, I had thought that sometimes the best thing for us is to move on and realize that some of the good times were viewed through rose-tinted glasses.

The movie's answer to this is a very loud no. After a really stupid police chase (which is so unrealistic, like how tf is the police this bad at catching a runaway kid), he goes to the shrine and brings Hina back. And the terrible weather comes back with her. It's amazing, that scene. The different friends we encountered throughout the story come together to help Hadoka, and I would talk about the characters more, but that's not the focus of my review.

It's easy to say that Hadoka was selfish for saving Hina, but what Weathering with You wants to tell you is that it's not Hina's duty to sacrifice herself. It's not Hadoka's fault that it's now horribly flooded in Tokyo. It's not a moral obligation to sacrifice one to save a thousand. The blame, fault, anger, should all be placed on and directed to the one that thrust this moral dilemma in our hands.

The story is still about moving on, just on a much larger scale. The people of Tokyo recover in the end. They adapt and they change. "300 years ago, Tokyo was just a bay. I'd like to think this is just things returning to the way things were."

This isn't relevant to the movie, but about my own life. It's my own blog goddammit, so it's time for me to write about my life :)

Fundamentally, I'm a Hedonist and an utilitarian. I believe that pleasure is the ultimate good and that we should work towards maximizing happiness in all. It's hard for me to imagine how the world would work otherwise. However, I've been questioning this belief of mine recently. This film definitely challenges that assumption.

Unhealthily, utilitarianism manifests itself in me in the form of people pleasing. It's easy to say "The pleasure that the other gains is greater than my sacrifice. Besides, I gain pleasure from seeing others happy as well." I don't think there's anything wrong with that statement by itself, but the people pleaser usually makes really bad judgments about the pleasure gained by all parties involved. We grossly underestimate the damage that it does to us, and we might also overestimate the pleasure that others gain, though most of the time, I overestimate the pain (or lack of pleasure) that the alternative offers. In other words, I mean that I think that really bad things would happen if I don't people please, when that's just not true. It's going to be okay if I don't drop everything to help someone, for instance.

It's a lot of short-sightedness. In a lot of these cases, it's true that it doesn't really affect me in the short term, but it does hurt me on aggregate. You pick up all the small grievances over time and it really just gets worse and worse. On the flip side, it also might be true that people get angry or upset when you set boundaries, but over the long term, they really don't care.

And I know that these are words that have been said to me a thousand times, but listening is hard when you think you have counterexamples in mind. I mean, it's also a case of positive and negative reinforcement. There is so much immediate pain and the immediate pleasure that comes from my actions that it's hard to see past that.

Anyways, tying it back to Weathering with You, you also see this being the case. My instinctual response, that Hadoka should let Hina go, is short-sighted. I've already talked about the long-term inconsequentiality of the decision, so I won't beat the nail into the coffin. The thing is, Hadoka isn't making this wise kind of long-term judgment of happiness and lack thereof. It might even be true that he's doing it purely out of personal interest. I'd like to think that Weathering with You is about fighting for certain important values, like the right to life and personal happiness.

You're allowed to be happy regardless of who you are. Other people can be unhappy about that, and it's fine. That's just a right that people have.

Maybe there are virtues higher than pleasure.