When it was released, the reviews for “Son of Weather” were surprisingly negative. From story, characters, rhythm to values, it was criticized almost everywhere, and some compared it to its predecessor, “Your Name.” Compared with that, it is believed that the level of Xinhua Sincerity has declined significantly. And yet, just as the public responded to Your Name，”Mostly misses the point (it’s actually a third-rate work if interpreted as merely a popular love story), and the criticism of” Children of Weather “misses the bull ‘s-eye entirely, ignoring the film’s radical politics and significance to The Times.
The story structure of the movie is very simple: Tokyo is experiencing a severe weather anomaly, and the heroine of the “Heroine” can get rid of the rain and restore the sunshine if she sacrifices her life. She chose to sacrifice himself at first, but finally under the insistence of men, two people choose to give up to save the world, but live together.
In Japanese anime, one of the most common themes is “recapture the daily” — ordinary students are involved in a huge conspiracy or disaster, and after a series of battles and struggles, finally successfully recapture the initial quiet life, while completing the praise of the preciousness of the daily life (a kind of two-dimensional theory of the school?). . Interestingly, the theme of the film is exactly the opposite, and it’s about the everyday impossible. In normal stories, the heroine is described as a symbol of everyday life and something that needs to be protected together with everyday life, but in The Child of Weather, the heroine becomes a kind of existence that is incompatible with everyday life. Therefore, faced with the classic proposition “The world or she” in the works of “The World”, the protagonist’s answer is unequivocal — I need her more than the world.
What are striking about “A Child of the Weather” are, above all, the strong statements that are everywhere, both in the hero’s final choice, regardless of social ethics, and in the vast number of catchphrases — “Leave us alone!” “, “We’re not going to ask for anything more, so doesn’t take anything away from us”, “The weather, if it’s broken, it’s broken!” This is not those “three and great God” and home squat aspirations? But if we stop at seeing it as a reflection of the state of The Times or as a glorification of oak’s unwillingness to take on social responsibility, we are once again shooting the arrow of deviation. If we look at “Son of Weather” from a leftist perspective, we will find that it is not only a strong zeitgeist, but also a statement film with a radical political stance.
As we can see, none of the main characters in the film has a real job. Male master is a runaway student, she just lost a part-time job, young brother cannot afford to work, there is an open unsustainably broken office uncle, a job search repeatedly failed assistant… Are people who are not even considered worthy of exploitation by society? This arrangement is obviously not purely coincidental, because the refusal to the systematic exploitation of society is first manifested as the refusal to work, and the main line of the film is also about the heroine’s refusal to the hexenbiest this “job”.
The super ability of the heroine, at the beginning, is something like talent – hobby, after meeting the hero, this interest becomes a job, she once seemed to find satisfaction in the contribution to the society, but the result of continuous dedication is naturally its own disappearance (imagine those workers who die of overwork…). . In reality, although the fate of human beings does not rely on superpowers, it is undoubtedly supported by everyone’s labor, and it is often the overdrawn labor at the bottom. Japanese so-called sacrifice oneself for the sunny, in fact, is not every one of us in the experience? Accept your fate to be exploited and support the normal functioning of society.
East Asian values glorify hard work, hardship, dedication and sacrifice. When combined with capitalism, they create a perverse orientation that prides itself on being exploited. Capitalists can present 996 as a blessing, and young people’s resistance to exploitation is seen as irresponsible by society. But Sinai tells us that irresponsibility is not young people’s escape from reality, but their most sober resistance. When we are aware of the many sacrifices that lie behind a stable society, shouldn’t we feel that the real problem is that the system still works? This is why the hero’s attitude is so valuable. He is not deceived by the so-called “great righteousness” — if we need to sacrifice the heroine to save the world (if we accept the fate of exploitation), then let the world fall apart.
There are two conflicts at different levels in the movie at the same time. One is only between the hero and the heroine, about whether to sacrifice the heroine and save the world. In fact, the outside world does not know about this and does not put any moral pressure on them. The other is a clash between the adult world and the male and female protagonists, as the police search for a runaway man and a woman who takes care of her brother alone, in an attempt to bring them back to their daily lives. So the hero in the police car shouted “You don’t understand anything!” “, the audience clearly feels the obvious dislocation between the two conflicts — the adult world’s ignorance of the inner struggle of the young, but also its indifference; In the adult world, the Shouting of young people appears as meaningless noise and never even happens.
To the adult world, the main character’s troubles are childish and absurd (adults don’t care if you save the world, they just want you to go back to school), but to the main character, it is as important as life. So there’s a very striking prop in the movie — a gun, which is a very unusual element for a Sinai movie. However, it is the gun that adds a very strong power to the choice of the protagonist — you don’t think I’m just a kid messing around, this is a matter of life or death, and I can die for it, or kill you. As Baudrillard said “… What really matters is irresponsibility, the resistance of people who have been denied a voice or never had a voice.”
If the film takes “irresponsibility” as its theme, it has constituted a rebellion against the tradition that “ordinary teenagers acquire super powers and choose to save the world no longer to escape fate”, then this “irresponsibility” is not only expressed in a negative and evasive form (although there are some “Let’s run away” sections in the process). Instead, it finally turned into an active, real, life-or-death action, which is “irresponsible” at the cost of my life. Its radicalism has far exceeded our imagination for theatrical animated films.
Sinai’s political radicalism is also reflected in the protagonist’s refusal to reconcile his answers to key questions. When asked to choose between the world and his lover, the hero’s attitude is very much in line with what the left has always said: If the functioning of the world depends on such a cruel sacrifice, I would rather not have it! Even more radical is the protagonist’s second response, when confronted with the cliché and tried and true “Won’t the world be in chaos/Tokyo will be submerged?” he shouts out the film’s most powerful key line, a standard leftist statement: “So be it! / Weather, if it’s bad, it’s good!”
Thus, the final choice for the protagonists is to withdraw completely from the system of exploitation. In the film, the heroine chooses to live, and correspondingly lose her superpowers. Back on the ground, the collar on the neck is broken symbolically, which is not to unlock the hexenbiest curse, but the curse of labor, production, work curse…… The unchained woman can still pray, but her prayer is no longer pragmatic, cannot enter the realm of exchange, and thus returns to its original state — a passionate game.
The final epilogue is equally noteworthy, and its composition fully conforms to Hegel’s “negation of negation”. First, the hero saves the heroine, sacrifice the world (definitely); Later, the adult comforts the hero, the world has not changed because of you, don’t take it to heart (negative); Finally, the hero meets the heroine and makes the final judgment “Not so, the world has really been changed by us” (negation of negation). The hero chooses to recognize the meaning of his choice, rather than accept the adult standpoint to dwarf this value.
