Weathering with You (PG-13)
ANN; CoMix Wave Films; GKIDS; IMDb; Makoto Shinkai Wiki; Rotten Tomatoes; Shout! Studios; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; iTunes; Max; Vudu; YouTube

Written and directed by Makoto Shinkai. For reasons that don't feel adequately explained, a 16-year-old boy named Hodaka Morishima runs away from the island he lives on to go to Tokyo, where it has been raining nonstop for months, and shows no signs of stopping. During the ferry ride from the island, Hodaka nearly gets swept overboard by a giant wave, but his life is saved by a man named Keisuke Suga (voiced by Lee Pace in the English dub). Hodaka spends some time living on the streets of Tokyo, unsuccessfully looking for work, until finally he gets a job working for Keisuke, who provides room and board. Keisuke has another employee, a woman named Natsumi (Alison Brie). They write freelance articles for magazines, about unusual subjects. Hodaka also meets a girl named Hina Amano (Ashley Boettcher), who turns out to be a "sunshine girl". This means she can pray for the rain to stop and the sun to come out, which only works in small areas for a limited time. She and her little brother Nagi have been living alone since the death of their mother about a year ago. After she loses her job, and nearly gets into a much worse one, Hodaka sets up a website to advertise Hina's services as a sunshine girl, and soon gets lots of work. While researching an article, Keisuke and Natsumi learn from an old Shinto priest that "weather maidens" like Hina used to be quite common, but the job comes with a terrible price. Meanwhile, Hodaka's parents have put out a missing person report on him, so the police are constantly trying to catch him throughout the film. They finally do, just after Hina has disappeared. So Hodaka becomes desperate to find her.

Well, that's all I want to say about the plot, but it's definitely an interesting film with good characters and some good emotional beats. And good music. I'm very glad to have seen it, even if I didn't love it as I'd hoped I might. Also it's a directorial follow-up to the movie "Your Name", which I haven't seen yet and probably should have seen before this. I don't think this is really a sequel to that movie, but there may be some minor ties between the movies.