The rain aesthetic in Shinkai films

As someone who loves the rain aesthetic an insane amount which could actually be unhealthy, I have even more reasons to love anime movies, especially those by Shinkai. In most Shinkai movies you will find rain as either a central or a subtle motif. But it’s always there in some form. Like in his movies 5cms Per Second, it’s more snowfall than rainfall, which then turns into a meteor shower gone wrong in Your Name. So, obviously not directly connected but there are these curious little anomalies outside of season, in his movies. In Weathering With You, the plot entirely focuses on the phenomenon of rain and how it slowly changes the face of Tokyo. In Garden of Words, rainfall moves the entire story forward.

I watched Garden of Words two weeks back and it’s now my second favourite Shinkai movie after Your Name. The plot isn’t all that much and the story is pretty slow paced. The movie is only around 45 minutes long so for that the story has got quite a nice build-up. Rain, as I said, moves the story forward and it made me realize how often Shinkai uses rain in his films, sometimes as the biggest catalyst to the pacing of the film, other times as just a mere passer-by. I love these small symbolic meanings that you can almost always assign to rainfall in Makoto Shinkai films. Maybe that’s why his films mean a lot to me.