Spoilers for Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name and Weathering With You ahead!
When you’re Makoto Shinkai and your previous film, Your Name, is the biggest anime flick of all time, there’s simply no way to not have that movie loom over your next project.
So rather than shy away, Shinkai decided to lean into it with his latest film, Weathering With You, by including a subtle hint to the fate of the star-crossed couple from Your Name, Taki and Mitsuha.
Here’s a quick refresher on what happened to Taki and Mitsuha in Your Name: After two hours of body swaps, emotional exchanges, important magical ribbons and the loss of their respective memories of each other, the pair meet again and feel an instant connection. They ask each for each other’s name (geddit?) and the film ends.
Got it? Okay, here’s how they fit into the story of Shinkai’s new film.
Weathering With You follows Hodaka Morishima, a high school student who runs away to Tokyo and soon finds himself employed as a writer for an amateur occult magazine. Hey, a poor boy’s got to eat.
One day when Hodaka’s chasing down a story about Tokyo’s never-ending rainy weather, he sees a ray of sunshine on the roof of a building. After investigating, he meets Hina Amano, a teenage girl who has the power to stop the rain and bring literal sunshine into everyone’s lives.
Since they’re both poor, the duo start an online service where Tokyo residents pay them money in exchange Hina using her powers to clear the sky.
One paying customer happens to be a now 20-something Taki and his grandmother, who ends up befriending Hina and Hodaka.
Later in the film, we see Hodaka shopping for a gift for Hina’s birthday. Lo and behold, the assistant who ends up helping him is none other than Mitsuha, who is still wearing the magical ribbon that played a huge part in Your Name.
While we don’t see Taki and Mitsuha in the same scene in Weathering With You, we can safely confirm that the pair are living in Tokyo. Whether they’re a couple is up in the air – not unlike the ending of Your Name – but the romantic in all of us want to say yes.
Was Taki and Mitsuha’s cameos worth the three-year wait between Your Name and Weathering With You? Well your mileage may vary but it was great seeing their faces again. Plus the new film is also pretty damn good so that’s a bonus.
Here’s hoping we’ll see what happens to Hodaka and Hina in Makoto Shinaki’s next film.
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