11/13/2023 0 Comments Ocean waves anime theme songI don't know the exact story with Ocean Waves, but Miyazaki and Takahata were trying out directors at the time who would carry on Ghibli's work. It was only recently released on Blu-ray in the US. Note: that in order to watch this film one had to pirate a fan-subbed DVD. I feel like Miyazaki recognized some of these shortcoming in Ocean Waves which is why it got placed into a special Ghibli "B movie" category and the guest director Tomomi Mochizuki placed into the Ghibli penalty box. I would say the same about the screenwriter Keiko Niwa's subsequent Ghibli projects. Ocean Waves is a relatively normal story animated by Studio Ghibli. Ocean Waves does not have any of this, though it may not be fair to compare. The storyboard has a crazy number of different shots, mimicking film but doing what film cannot do. Porco Rosso gives the audience plenty of time and space to appreciate the art and ambiance without introducing any boredom. With Whisper of the Heart, the story *is* the vehicle for deeper themes. slice of life, yet treated dramatically, yet lacking the deeper themes that Whisper of the Heart contains through its entire film. Not to mention that Ocean Waves's story is comparatively mundane. There is almost a spirituality to the silence in Ghibli films. This pulls the audience away from what I feel are this film's and Ghibli's strengths. So anyway, I felt that compared to other Ghibli films Ocean Waves's story becomes too dialogue-heavy. Digital tools are around but they do not dominate the production, etc. night time scenes have their own vibrant color palettes with nice blues and purples. This is why I like Ocean Waves's soundtrack, it is a mishmash of jazz, several music genres, combined with cheesy synths, the combination of which you would never hear anywhere else except maybe a video game. This is combined with this unique early-90's art style. Porco Rosso (1992), Ocean Waves (1993), Whisper of the Heart (1995) IMO represent Ghibli's mastery of cell animation. I think it is a solid 7/10 and worth watching just for the style. The soundtrack is one of my favorites and the art style is IMO at the studio's peak. Has anyone else here seen it? What did you think? What are some other good realistic takes on teenage melodrama? For me, Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi are two other films that capture the teenage experience quite well. Ocean Waves captures the true nature of highschool drama better than anything else I've seen: immature, melodramatic and ultimately not as important as the teenagers involved think. To quote the film, when you reflect on your teenage years, "you realize your world was too small". Looking back on high school I can see that we (myself included) acted like a bunch of self-obsessed sociopaths, and that any drama was ultimately meaningless in the long run. Taku doesn't even really understand why or if he liked Rikako until after the fact. The central "love triangle" barely exists because it is clear that none of these characters are ready for love or proper relationships yet. They like her for completely arbitrary reasons and project their idealized fantasies onto her. None of them know much about who she actually is as a person - besides the main two guys none of them have even spoken to her. The boys obsess over Rikako despite the fact that she has never said a nice word to them. In this movie the teenagers are hormonal. She has moved to a new town where she doesn't know anyone and doesn't fit in, and she is seemingly being ostracized by the other girls at school. But to put her life into perspective, she is a teenager going through puberty while coping with the divorce of her parents. She has little empathy or self-awareness and has little regard for how her action will affect those around her. She is immature and selfish, making decision purely driven by emotion. Yes, Rikako acts like a pretty terrible person. They complain that Rikako is a "bitch" and that Taku is spineless for putting up with her shenanigans. Most of the negative reviews I've seen for the film mention that they dislike the characters. This film is like the antithesis of the typical teen film - it clearly draws attention to the fact that the drama was all overblown and unimportant. Watching teen movies, I've always felt like I was watching a cartoonish exaggeration of reality and I usually find myself thinking "all of this drama is completely unimportant in the grand scheme of these characters' lives". I have always disliked the teen romance genre, because it has never reflected my own experiences. I was very surprised to find that the film is really good. Opinions I had read of the film online ranged from mostly ambivalent to negative, so I never felt that compelled to watch it despite being one of the very few Ghibli film's I'd never seen. I just watched Ghibli's Ocean Waves, after years of ignoring it.
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