Earlier this year, GKIDS released a restored version of Studio Ghibli’s rarely-seen và masterful “Only Yesterday,” and they end the year in a similar fashion, digging into the vaults to present U.S. Viewers with an animated drama from one of the most important film companies in history (now in limited release in NY).
“Ocean Waves” was broadcast on Japanese television in the early ‘90s, but has been hard lớn find in the United States since then. Reportedly sprung khổng lồ life as an opportunity for some of the younger animators at Ghibli khổng lồ spread their wings, “Ocean Waves” is the first Ghibli film not directed by Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata, although one can see the fingerprints of both gentlemen on the final product. With an incredibly short running time (72 minutes) & deceptively simple story, “Ocean Waves” could feel lượt thích a footnote in the Ghibli story but it features qualities of its own as well. It’s a delicate, well-told drama that may lack the depth of something lượt thích “Only Yesterday” but proves that Miyazaki và Takahata’s students were listening khổng lồ their teachers.
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Directed by Tomomi Mochizuki and written by Kaori Nakamura (from a novel by Saeko Himuro), “Ocean Waves” is a story of memory và love. Taku is a young man at a train station in Tokyo when he spots a familiar face on another platform. Could it be Rikako, the young woman who changed his life in school just a few years prior? The film then flashes back to Taku’s time in school, focusing on the new girl who shakes everyone up. Taku first spots Rikako through the eyes of his friend Yutaka, who spotted the alluring young woman through a window. Her back is khổng lồ the window now & so Taku has lớn take his friend’s opinion of her as fact. He’s immediately seeing this person through the eyes of his friend, which makes it even harder for him to lớn later admit he has feelings for Rikako, for fear that it will break his friendship with Yutaka.
Yes, the people known for masterful fantasies lượt thích “Princess Mononoke” và “Spirited Away” made a love triangle drama. It’s an even more gentle và often uneventful film than its mô tả tìm kiếm might lead you to believe. It’s an episodic tale of encounters between Rikako and Taku. There’s a school trip khổng lồ Hawaii during which Rikako loses her money & asks to borrow some. There’s a fateful trip to lớn Tokyo in which Rikako tries to lớn find her father, and Taku ends up tagging along. There’s a lot of slapping. An argument could be made that if “Ocean Waves” weren’t animated and starred three CW stars it would be a dull mess.
But it’s not. And “Ocean Waves” is worth watching to see just how much a company like Ghibli can bring khổng lồ a relatively simple tale. Music is often key in their films—it sets a tone & helps guide the audience. Shigeru Nagata’s score is constant, sometimes to lớn a distracting degree in the first half, but it becomes a part of the fabric of the piece overall, & the film wouldn’t work without it. Of course, the Ghibli team also brings a gentle, graceful visual sense lớn the film that others wouldn’t even consider. It’s incredibly subtle here—there’s no fantastical creature design or world creation khổng lồ make it obvious—but it’s still there. It’s in the character detail, the cuts to shots of nature to liên kết episodic memories, the màu sắc choices, & more.
In 1993, Studio Ghibli was still a relatively young company. Sure, Miyazaki & Takahata had already dropped a few masterpieces, but the company had several more ahead of them, along with the international fame they would get over the next quarter-century. “Ocean Waves” may not be a fantastic film on its own (“Only Yesterday” is, for the record) but it’s never dull and helps flesh out the story of a company talented enough to eventually change the world of animation forever.
Having aired on Japanese television in 1993, this footnote from the Studio Ghibli filmography finally washes ashore in the United States.The most modest and least celebrated of the films produced by Japan’s peerless Studio Ghibli, “Ocean Waves” was conceived as an opportunity for the company’s younger talent lớn make something on the cheap. In spite of those simple aspirations, the project came in late & over budget, eventually airing on local television in 1993 and failing to make much of a splash. Since then, the sentimental high school drama has existed just outside the Ghibli legend, more of a curiosity than part of the canon, unseen to all but the studio’s most dedicated completists.
The first Ghibli film that wasn’t directed by either Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata, “Ocean Waves” is glaringly absent the former’s flair for fantasy or the latter’s gift for minimalist heartbreak. In both scale and subject, it cleaves closer to lớn the delicate wistfulness of a Haruki Murakami novel — one of his earlier, more earthbound books — than it does the enchanted wistfulness of “My Neighbor Totoro” or the crushing melodrama of “Grave of the Fireflies.” Although it was broadcast before Ghibli had fully solidified its standing as the Disney of the East, a breezy slice-of-life story already seemed lượt thích an anomaly for the animation giant.
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These days, however, as Ghibli has downshifted towards dormancy and largely abandoned Western audiences khổng lồ the likes of “Sing” & “Cars 3,” it’s easier than ever to lớn appreciate the delicate beauty of the studio’s work, và lament how there may not be much more of it to lớn come. That’s true of their masterpieces (e.g. “Spirited Away”), và it’s doubly true of “Ocean Waves,” a relative misfire about perspective, regret, & all the ways in which the world can seem too small for people lớn recognize the immensity of the things in front of them. Newly restored & set lớn wash ashore for a limited theatrical run in advance of a Blu-ray release in the spring, hindsight has revealed the quiet resonance that’s been humming inside this tiny film ever since it first set out to sea.
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Nostalgic even in its own time, this sweet little story begins with a young man named Taku standing on a Tokyo train platform & glimpsing a familiar face across the tracks. She’s swallowed by the crowd almost as soon he sees her, the girl blinking in and out of sight so fast that our dumbstruck hero can’t tell if he’s actually crossed paths with his teenage crush, or if he’s just been a victim of his own wishful thinking. Her name is Rikaku, và Taku met her when he was growing up in the beachside city of Kōchi. Alas, Taku’s best friend, Yutaka, met her first. Và so the stage is phối for a classic love triangle, told in flashback, governed by the emotional stupidity of adolescence, and paced with the unevenness of memory. Nothing much really happens, but the film uses its framing device well, và it isn’t afraid lớn be governed by the irrational impulses of teenage logic.
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“Ocean Waves” spreads its paper-thin story across a stodgy 72 minutes, but there’s a warmth khổng lồ it that prevents the film from ever feeling as two-dimensional as it appears. The hyper-real environments have a lot more personality than any of the generic characters who inhabit them — Taku is the insecure protagonist, Yutaka is the steely and mature classmate, & Rikaku is the erratic girl who turns their lives upside down with the wild indifference of a typhoon — but director Tomomi Mochizuki ekes out real signs of life from this overly familiar plot.
Look at the way Taku curls himself into a khách sạn bathtub when Rikaku uses him as a prop on a harebrained trip to lớn Tokyo, or how a bird perches on the railing of a boat as it bobs in the water. There’s poetry here, và that bleeds directly into the people; and this is a film about people, how they think & how they change. Even if these people aren’t particularly interesting, they feel alive. You can hear them thinking their uninteresting thoughts. Sure, “Ocean Waves” feels slight if you hold it up to lớn much of Ghibli’s other work, but compare it to lớn contemporary American animation and it feels lượt thích an entirely different medium, attuned to nuance rather than spectacle. Watching the soft precision with which Mochizuki renders Taku’s memories is enough to lớn make a viewer question why it is that so many of the best animated films seem as though they could have been shot as live-action.
Dramatically undernourished though it is, “Ocean Waves” is a charming & effective illustration of a how a little bit of distance can go a long way. Just as Taku’s understanding of Rikaku undergoes a radical change in the span of two years’ time, it’s impossible khổng lồ watch this film about them through the same lens that audiences might have seen it when it aired on Japanese TV more than two decades ago. Things change with the tides, và yesterday’s throwaways become today’s treasures. Not because we’ve lowered our standards, but because we’re standing on different shores.
Grade: B-
“Ocean Waves” opens on December 28th at the IFC Center, and will also play that night at the Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles.
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