When looking forward to the coming year in anime, it may be helpful to jump in the time machine and hop back to 2016. That's the year Japan was hit with a flood of smash original anime films, including the sleeper hit "In This Corner of the World" and Makoto Shinkai's "Your Name." By the time 2016 was over, the latter had become the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time worldwide.
Jump back to the present and Shinkai is preparing to repeat the feat — or at least give it a try. The director's recently announced "Weathering With You" is set to hit theaters July 19. Centering on a high school boy who runs away from home to live in Tokyo and a mysterious girl who can control the weather, the film will no doubt generate massive buzz, though whether it can reach of heights of Shinkai's previous film is another question.
"In This Corner of the World," which depicted the everyday life of a woman in Hiroshima Prefecture before and during World War II, is also set to reappear in 2019. After the film became a word-of-mouth hit, playing for well over a year in some theaters, director Sunao Katabuchi went to work on an extended version. That version, which will feature 30 minutes of new footage, was originally set for release in 2018, but was delayed until this year.