Chapter 14

AFTERWORD This book, Weathering With You, is the novel version of an animated movie I directed, which is scheduled to open in 2019. —I remember writing the same thing in the afterword for your name., which was published about three years ago. Just like back then, the movie isn’t finished yet. We’re still stressed out about the production work (with no end in sight) and also right in the middle of the voice recording process. (It’s exactly two months before the release.) While all that was going on, I finished writing the novel one step ahead of the movie. Although I tried to make the novel interesting enough that people will be able to enjoy it without seeing the movie, I’d like to borrow this space to talk about how the story of Weathering With You—both the novel and movie versions—came to be. (I’ll talk a little about the last scene as well, so if you’re concerned about spoilers, please read the book first.) I think what triggered the idea for this work was the fact that my previous film, your name., regrettably became a far greater hit than I and the rest of the production staff had assumed it would… Sheesh, what a terrible way to put it: “regrettably became a far greater hit than we’d assumed.” For me, though, it really was in a completely different league. The movie your name. was in theaters for more than half a year, and that period was the first time I’d ever been exposed to so many eyes and so many diverse opinions. While I was eating dinner at home, some celebrity would be on TV, giving their views on the movie (and kind of running it down); while I was drinking at a pub, I’d hear people saying what they’d thought of it (and moderately running it down); and even when I was just walking down the street, I’d hear the movie’s name mentioned (and, again, someone would be running it down). Social media was flooded with comments about it, and of course I’m sure more people enjoyed it than not, but I saw quite a few individuals who were furious with it. I spent that six months wondering what exactly it was that had made those people mad. That was also the time when I drew up the proposal for Weathering With You. I didn’t exactly get a clear answer out of that experience, but I did make up my mind about something for myself. It was that movies aren’t school textbooks. Maybe I should have realized earlier, but I had a renewed awareness that movies (or, more broadly, entertainment) don’t need to be “correct” or set an example. On the contrary, they should talk about the things textbooks can’t discuss, such as our secret wishes that others would frown upon if they knew. I decided I’d say things that textbooks didn’t say, that politicians didn’t say, that critics didn’t say. I’d create stories on a different level from morals and education. That’s my job, after all, and if it gets me in trouble with someone, well, that’s how it goes. All I can do is turn what I actually feel in my own life into stories. As resolutions go, it may have been rather belated, but that’s the mood I was in when I wrote Weathering With You. As a matter of fact, when I reached that determination and wrote this story, it was a lot of fun. It was an adventure I could personally get excited over. I didn’t give a single thought to making something “good enough for a summer blockbuster that would appeal to people of all ages and genders.” My main characters ran themselves ragged without thinking twice, with no reservations or caution or guesses about others’ feelings, until they’d exhausted their batteries. As I turned their story into a script, I felt as though they were spurring me on. Over ten months, I made it into a video storyboard (that’s the blueprint for the movie), and it took four months to turn it into this novel. After a year and a half of work, the film is also finally nearing completion. As far as differences between the film and novel versions go, they’re fundamentally the same. However, there are quite a few things I show in the novel that aren’t in the film. This isn’t because I couldn’t fit everything into the movie (as far as I’m concerned, the movie doesn’t have too little or too much of anything, either), and it wasn’t intended to be bonus material for the novel or anything. I believe it’s due to the differences in the media themselves. For example, for lines in movie dialogue, shorter is generally better (in my opinion). This is because they’re more than just the bare text. In their completed form, a vast amount of information is layered over them: the expressions and colors in the visuals, the emotions and rhythm in the voices, the sound effects and music. If what’s at the core is simple, the ornamentation becomes more effective. However, novels have none of those things. With films, the story is the content, and the visuals and audio and everything that conveys it is the vessel; with novels, the content and vessel are made of the same stuff. For that reason, just writing the story down as words isn’t enough to make it a novel. (That’s a script.) Novels are a medium in which story and expression are indivisible. Because of that, even if it’s the same line from the same character, it needs to be set up differently depending on whether it’s in a film or a novel. To provide a specific example of what I mean—near the climax of the story, Natsumi screams “Run!” at Hodaka. In the film, the sense of speed in the animation, the actress’s voice, the sound of the motorbike’s exhaust up until right before, and the music that plays right afterward all come together, and that alone makes it a scene with definitive impact (or I hope it does). In the novel, though, it’s hard to make that single line of dialogue have the same effect that it does in the film. And so, in the book, I had to use various similes and show a certain amount about Natsumi’s life in the first half of the story. None of that is in the film, but for this moment in the novel to hold its own against its film equivalent, I had to base it on its own process. As a result, some things are shown only in the novel, and they’re part of the joy of writing for me. I hope they become part of the fun of reading for you as well. About the relationship between Weathering With You and music. When I finished writing the script for the film, the first person I thought of to show it to was Yojiro Noda of Radwimps. So I sent the script to him not as an offer for music, but as a friend. I simply wanted to get his thoughts on it, to hear what the script made him feel. Then, three months later, I received demo songs for “Is There Still Anything That Love Can Do?” and “We’ll Be Alright.” Ultimately, they were the very “thoughts” I’d wanted to hear. These songs were bursting with the words I was desperate to know but just couldn’t find on my own. I felt as if I’d stumbled onto a secret treasure trove. And so naturally (but, now that I think about it, pretty selfishly and forcefully), I ended up asking Yojiro to be the music director for Weathering With You. However, at this point, there’s something I have to confess. The truth is, when I first listened to “We’ll Be Alright,” I didn’t think I’d be able to use it as a song in this film, and I told Yojiro as much. I simply couldn’t think of a place for it. Both the lyrics and the melody seemed too powerful to play during the film. However, a full year afterward, the song I’d received right at the beginning ended up saving me. I was having trouble with the direction for the last scene. I’d nailed down the content for everything else in the video storyboard, and the work on the art was moving forward. I’d also drawn the storyboard for the epilogue up to Mr. Suga’s line (“See, the world—it’s always been screwed up”). All that was left was the final three minutes after that point. The story developments were already in the script, but I just couldn’t seem to figure out what Hodaka and Hina were feeling at the end. When I showed the people around me an experimental storyboard I’d finished, the response was lukewarm. I worried about it for more than two months, and then, when I was discussing the music for the last scene with Yojiro, the topic of the unused “We’ll Be Alright” came up. When I listened to that song again, I was stunned. It was all written in there. Yep. What I needed, and the emotions that mattered most, were all there in “We’ll Be Alright,” which I’d been given back at the very beginning. When I drew the storyboard for the last scene, it was as if I were just tracing it from the lyrics, and the song I’d received a year ago found its place. Sure enough, when I did that, I had the last scene of this story, and nothing else would do. One last thing. For your name., I started writing a novel in tandem with my work on the main film grudgingly, on a request from the production committee. This time around, I feel as though this work saved me somehow. The writing was fun, plain and simple, and there were several things I managed to take back to the film from the novel. Best of all, I grew even fonder of the characters who inhabit this world. If I’m not alone in this, and you the readers enjoy this book along with its writer, I couldn’t be happier. In addition, working on the novel meant I had to leave the studio frequently during the production of the film, and I was able to do that without worrying thanks to the mighty efforts of art director Atsushi Tamura and the rest of the Ogikubo Studio animation staff. I really can’t thank them enough. Thank you very much for picking up this book, and for reading it. May 2019, Makoto Shinkai