Besides being a blockbuster hit in Japan and other countries, Makoto Shinkai’s latest work Weathering With You is also raking in awards! This Thursday, the film won the Best Animated Feature Film award at the 13th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) held in Brisbane, Australia. It competed against four films: Hiroyasu Ishida’s Penguin Highway, Kirby Atkins’ Mosley, Oh Sung Yoon’s Underdog, and Behzad Nalbandi’s The Unseen.
This was not Shinkai’s first time to win in APSA, as his romantic drama 5 Centimeters Per Second had won the same award in 2007, APSA’s inaugural year. Two other films of Shinkai, 2011’s Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Below and his 2017 smash hit your name were also nominated in the same category.
Anime News Network describes the movie’s story as such:
In the film’s story, high school student Hodaka leaves his home on an isolated island and moves to Tokyo, but he immediately becomes broke. He lives his days in isolation, but finally finds a job as a writer for a shady occult magazine. After he starts his job, the weather has been rainy day after day. In a corner of the crowded and busy city, Hodaka meets a young woman named Hina. Due to certain circumstances, Hina and her younger brother live together, but have a cheerful and sturdy life. Hina also has a certain power: the power to stop the rain and clear the sky.
The last Japanese animated film to have won the prestigious award is Keiichi Hara’s Miss Hokusai, which was released in 2015 and won in APSA that same year. Other anime films that have won the Best Animated Feature Film award are Hiroyuki Okiura’s A Letter to Momo in 2011, and Isao Takahata’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013).
Source: Anime News Network