![]() It runs up a hill and falls on a cliff, which is what it feels like. If only it ran for longer then it wouldn’t have felt unfinished, with a clear coherence in the end. One feels like if this movie only has another 30 minutes of screentime then the film would’ve been much better. It may be that this scene is supposed to be nostalgic of the good old days of wonderful high school life, but one asks how can that be nostalgic if nothing strikes of any importance at all? All that we know about their high school classmates is from a 5-minute sequence at the back of the school where the girls gang up on Rikako? Highschool Reunion scene In the ending where they have a reunion with everyone to celebrate them growing up. This anxiety grew even further towards the end of the film when the film has run out of places to go and decides to go headfirst into a wall. Throughout the film, I’ve always been anxious about where the story could go since it has a very promising concept and provides a lot of room for character development but there’s only so much you can do with a one-and-a-half-hour screen time. As they say, if you make a good movie with good visuals but a soulless story then why bother making a movie at all? This is especially true in the case of Ocean Waves. It’s refreshing to see Ghibli take on a new approach to their style and this style has been present in modern works as well like the Monogatari series where it usually pans out with a colored border with some text in it to give more focus on a specific line of dialogue, something that is very prevalent throughout the movie as it emphasizes the memory part of the story.īut where this film has made up in the aspects of visual storytelling and it has lacked in the area of its story. ![]() The visual storytelling is brilliant and it has been for the rest of the film. The beauty of Ocean Waves is in the details, something that rewards those who have a keen eye. There are no over-the-top animation sequences that will sink into your very soul, but it is there. This one frame told so much about the story compared to any line of dialogue. Like a fly on the wall, a person of insignificance. In the early moments of the film where Taku first talked to Rikako outside of the school gate we see that the frame only has Rikako’s face in it even if Yutaka is also present in the scene, it’s as if he was never really there. The narrative itself strays far from the previous focuses of Ghibli films which have been about fantasy, folklore, or World War 2-centered storylines like The Grave Of The Fireflies instead it takes you to Tokyo and introduces you to the imperfections of a perfect girl-Rikako Muto. It’s a story of friendship, maturity, and the idealism of your romantic interest but it never settles on one thing. This might be because it was a TV movie, which might be the reason for the awfully short run time compared to other Ghibli films before it.Īfter watching the film, one can make an argument that if it wasn’t a Studio Ghibli production then it would’ve been gone in the endless annals of bad anime movies and although there is some truth to that statement, Ocean Waves isn’t necessarily a bad movie, it’s just very… shallow. It tries to become both and in the end, it fails at being either. It is dancing on the border of being made for kids, and for young adults which is a shame because Ocean Waves is a lot of things but if that is the case, then you might as well be nothing at all. There’s a scene where out of pure hatred and contempt for Rikako after her being so ungrateful to him, he decides to slap her in the school hallway which is one of, if not, the best things about the entire movie. There’s a school trip to Hawaii that led to an important trip to Tokyo where Rikako tries to find her father and eventually, Taku decides to tag along, something that will be of bigger relevance later on in the plot. ![]() It’s a slow, drama that tells the tale of a love triangle between Rikako, Taku, and Yutaka. It feels like the movie is very restrained. The story of a tragic infatuation for love that ruined friendship, and the movie would’ve been in the halls of Ghibli classics if it was about that. But the childhood innocence and the multi-referential subtlety of a deeper, more mature narrative worked brilliantly ever since Castle in the Sky, but will they ever move on? Will they ever work on something that tackles the problems of life straight on? The previous success of My Neighbor Totoro (both released in 1988) and Kiki’s Delivery Service in 1989 became the face of 80’s anime.
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