'Weathering With You' Trailer: Get Ready To Cry Oceans In Japan's Oscar-Contending Anime

Makoto Shinkai's films have the ability to impart an immense sadness upon its viewers — but the greatest sadness surrounding his newest film Weathering With You is that U.S. audiences have to wait another two months to see it. GKIDS has released yet another trailer for Japan's Oscar contender, but it's only a cruel reminder that Shinkai's highly anticipated follow-up to his sublime 2016 hit Your Name is not hitting U.S. theaters until January. Watch the official new Weathering With You trailer and prepare yourself to cry an ocean's worth of tears.

The past few trailers for Weathering With You have been mostly tone poems — brief glimpses at the melancholic mood and weather-centric whimsy of the sci-fi anime film. But this official new trailer reveals more of the plot: Hodoka is a high school teenager who has moved to Tokyo, where he finds himself out of his depth, until he meets the curious Hina, a girl who possesses the ability to control the weather. But their happiness is cut short when other parties become aware of Hina's powers, which may take a greater toll on the young girl than any of them realize. Chase scenes and beatdowns ensue, all done in Shinkai's signature breathtakingly beautiful animation.

It's a movie that I already anticipate crying rivers over, but even more so because we have to wait so long to see it in theaters. The film was already a big hit in Japan, but expands internationally next year, with a U.S. release date set for January 17, 2020. The film will receive an awards-qualifying limited run this year to compete for next year's Oscars, with Japan eying the Best International Film category — the country's first submission of an anime film in that category since 1997's Princess Mononoke.

Here is the synopsis for Weathering With You:

GKIDS proudly presents the highly-anticipated new film from director Makoto Shinkai and producer Genki Kawamura, the creative team behind the critically-acclaimed, global smash hit Your Name. The summer of his high school freshman year, Hodaka runs away from his remote island home to Tokyo, and quickly finds himself pushed to his financial and personal limits. The weather is unusually gloomy and rainy every day, as if to suggest his future. He lives his days in isolation, but finally finds work as a writer for a mysterious occult magazine. Then one day, Hodaka meets Hina on a busy street corner. This bright and strong-willed girl possesses a strange and wonderful ability: the power to stop the rain and clear the sky...

Weathering With You will open in select theaters for an awards-qualifying run in 2019 before opening wide on January 17, 2020.