I’m just going to go ahead and say it – Weathering With You (天気の子) is Makoto Shinkai’s most visually stunning film he has made to date. This is certainly no easy feat to accomplish considering his fantastic track record in creating such beautiful worlds in all his movies, but he has managed to top them all with Weathering.

This sumptuous background art book for the film is a fantastic way to pore over many luscious sets painted by the amazingly talented artists from Comix Wave, with over 200 pages of art work. Just like the other background art books for Makoto Shinkai’s films like Your Name and Garden Of Words, the book comes in landscape format, which allow for each piece of art work to fill the entire page, showcasing the detailed reproductions to great effect.

Many of the paintings, especially those depicting the area around Shinjuku’s JR station’s East exit and Kabukicho area are so realistic I had to do a double take to be sure they were not photographs.

(above) The McDonalds restaurant located just next to the Seibu Shinjuku train station, where I always passed by on my way to work. (below) The open space at the South East exit of Shinjuku JR station, which is popular with buskers and performers.

(above) The train crossing between Shinjuku and Yoyogi station, close to the NTT Docomo building. ( seen in the 2nd picture of this review ).

(above & below) I loooove cloudscapes, so seeing these beautiful renderings really made me happy.

(above) The art book comes with a thin cardboard slipcase as seen on the left.

Weathering With You is quite possibly my new favorite Makoto Shinkai film, which was previously held by Garden Of Words. This most beautiful art book is great way to appreciate and celebrate the amazing background artistry of the film, and gets my highest recommendations ( and incidentally also makes it onto my list of fav art books of the year ).

“Weathering With You Background Art Book Review 新海誠監督作品 天気の子 美術画集” details :

Dimensions – 25.6 x 18.4 x 1.8 cm
Softcover, 224 pages
Full color, In Japanese ( book is mostly images )

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