Weathering With You by Makoto Shinkai (Book Review)

Weathering With You 
By Makoto Shinkai 
Translated by Taylor Engel 
Published by Yen On, 2019
Ebook Price: $9.99

18 year old Hodaka Morishima is on a ferry bound for Tokyo as the novel opens. He's making the same journey he did two and a half years ago. During that interval of time Tokyo has faced an unremitting rain that has covered 1/3 of the city in flood waters. Hodoka is coming to the city to get work and a place to live and one more very important thing. He's come to be reunited with a girl. Hina. He hasn't seen or talked to her since leaving. He's excited and scared about seeing her again and nervous about what he will say to her. Hodaka three flashes back to what happened during the summer almost three years ago.

At that time he had run away from his island home because of his abusive father and a stifling small town mindset that was killing him. He came to Tokyo to escape with some meager savings and no ID. He fell in with a small publisher of weird and paranormal news articles named Suga and is able to live at the office and write, edit, and seek out stories. One of the stories that Hodoka works on with Suga's niece, Natsumi, is about the urban legend of "Sunshine Girls", girls that can make skies clear in a limited area for a limited time by praying to the gods. Hodoka soon meets a real life Sunshine Girl named Hina. Both of them are at a loss for money, so they decide to open a Sunshine Girl website where they take requests for clearing up weather in return for payments. Unfortunately, there is a payment due from the gods for the use of Hina's powers.

I saw the anime movie this novel was based on about two weeks ago and absolutely loved it. I was so taken with it I next had to read the book. I will say this, that this is a rare instance where the movie is better than the book. Makoto Shinkai is a serviceable novelist but his talent is really more in anime. I thought the book was ok, but it didn't add a lot to the movie. You do get some insight into the thoughts of Suga, Natsumi, and other characters like Nagi.

The movie is really from Hodoka's point of view, but here in the novel we get some short bits written from the point of view of the supporting characters. I liked that. Learning more about Natsumi and Suga was great. It helps you understand the film better because we didn't get a lot of their background info.

One difference is that the book starts with the ending of the movie and then flashes back to the main story, so its basically a reversal of starting points. Something that didn't suffer in translation were the characters. They would be the same whether in print or film form. They're that strong. The thing I like about Makoto Shinkai is that he comes up with interesting concepts and then is able to convert them into interesting characters and beautiful visuals. I always look forward to his films.

The movie itself is in wide release at your local theater but if it's not on in your neck of the woods, reading this book is the next best thing. If the movie is on near you, seek it out before the book.

There aren't any illustrations in the book besides the cover so you're not really missing anything if you read it on Kindle like I did.

My Grade: B