Filmmaker Makoto Shinkai has followed up Your Name with another smash hit, Weathering With You, which has already earned nine figures in Japan and will be the country’s pick for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards. In this new subtitled trailer, it’s easy to see why it’s made such a splash.
Weathering With You is about a young man named Hodoka who runs away from his island home to Tokyo, where he’s greeted by days of rain that seem to never end. That is, until his work for an occult magazine brings him face-to-face with Hina, a “hare-onna” (or “clear-weather woman”) who has the ability to stop the rain and clear the skies. Much like Your Name, it’s a story that blends Shinto with modern Japanese life, in this case focusing on Shintoism’s relationship to the weather and praying for sunny days.
The film was already released in Japan and has gone on to earn about $120 million at the Japanese box office—according to Entertainment Weekly, it’s now one of the country’s highest-grossing movies of all time, right alongside Your Name.
Weathering With You will be released in the United States on January 17, 2020.
For more, make sure you’re following us on our Instagram @io9dotcom.