This week, I went to see Weathering with You in Cinema. My impression was "Wow, they weren't kidding when people said it's Your Name 2.0." It had so many Makoto Shinkai visual trademark all over it, from vibrant colors of urban setting even down to his glorious food porn. I also enjoy different water effects used throughout the movie. The usage of rain in this movie kind of reminds me of a Japanese movie Sweet Rain, where rain is also used as a plot device. The transparency of the water creature kind of reminds me of the mountain god from Princess Mononoke. But what I really enjoy the most is the sweat (kind of weird now to think of it). It was sort of mix between Howl's Moving Castle and Ponyo.
Let's not forget about the soundtrack. RADWIMPS just nails the music department here. Sure, some of them are just different arrangements of Is There Anything Love Can Still Do and Grand Escape but they still managed to convey the tone of the scene very well. There's a progress from somber melancholy to a dash of bright optimism in the music as the film goes.
As for the plot, however, I cannot say I really enjoy it. Like I said earlier, it's Your Name 2.0. It retains the plot structure as the previous movie and I could not overlook that for some reason. I think it tries to tell both a romantic comedy and coming-of-age story but never really quite get there. And it all comes crashing down at the third act, where a subplot with no proper setup suddenly emerges for the climax (or maybe there was a setup and I just missed it, either way it's still lacking.) But I do enjoy the twist ending, despite the slightly lack of resolution in the form of open-ending-ness (the resolution is just too short).
My conclusion is: the movie is visually stunning, but it tries too much to live up to previous movie. I will still wait for the novel adaptation to be localized.
Now back to the manga, a little announcement: The series is coming to an end. Yes, the last chapter of the series will be released on Pixiv Comics sometimes next month. Without giving away any spoiler, I really do hope Toranosuke and Kaoru have a happy ending. And I wish for Miku Morinaga's next work to be just as good as this series.
About this chapter: so this is the extra material taken from volume 1. Shout-out to DASZGFZ for providing me with the raws. So this extra contains character profiles featured in this volume. It was tough to decipher Miku Morinaga's handwriting, which is why I decided to skip the afterword written by her. But I do provide the illustration used for the afterword in the download version for my own announcement: I NEED RAWS FOR VOLUME 2 AND 3!!! I do have some of the Pixiv raws (courtesy of Thebenefactor) including the latest chapters. But when the respective volume is released, Pixiv deletes the last two chapters of said volume. And I cannot skip those chapters because of spoilers. That being said, I will still work on the series up until the missing chapters. So please let me know if you have the raws of volume 2 and 3.
So here are the volume 1 extra of Umakawa. Next week will be a T&T update.
Umakawa Volume 1 Extra
Read Online | Download
Shout out to this month's patrons:
Natalie Steffen
Natsidle
John Thor
Natsidle
John Thor
Aja C.
Tobias Steinbach
Gregory
Vydricka
Tracy Umeda
MrIncognito
First Last
Gregory
Vydricka
Tracy Umeda
MrIncognito
First Last