Reviewed by Veronica Horwell
Stars the voices of Nobuo Tobita, Toshihiko Seki, Yoko Sakamoto, Yuri Amano,
Kae Araki, Jun'ichi Kanemaru, Ai Satô, Aya Hisakawa, Tomokazu Seki | Written by Saeko Himuro
UK certification U | UK RRP £19.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 72 minutes | Directed by Tomomi Mochizuki
Studio Ghibli has a second style surprisingly different from the dreamworlds of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata; it's a heightened, yet calm, reality, as in Only Yesterday (about a woman inspired by the ghosts of an unhappy childhood to make a radical change to her future), and Ocean Waves, directed by Tomomi Mochizuki, which is at last available outside Japan.
The original story was a novel by Saeko Himuro, set in a provincial high school, about the difficult relationship between a teen student, his best friend, and a tense, unknowable girl in flight from her native Tokyo after her parents' socially unacceptable divorce. Nothing larger than life happens – a school outing is cancelled, another goes ahead, the girl pressures the boy into an uncomfortably wrong trip to Tokyo, teens get falldown drunk together – high school as we all remember it, wherever it was. It plays as a sentimental education with the potential for a happy ending (although not a romcom in any way – everybody is reticent and embarassed throughout).
What charmed me though was, as in Only Yesterday, the Ghibli desire to make the most commonplace detail of Japan into magic by working through the patient process of love that is cell animation, looking hard at the letters and numbers on a destination board in motion, staring with affection at the typical texture of steps up into a house, and then drawing them over and over until they ascend far beyond reproduction. Bliss. Oh, and the insect buzz is the best evocation of the sound of summer Japan I've heard since the late films of Ozu. (Warning: this film contains absolutely no action of any kind, but guys will quite like it because they'll all have gone through similar misery.
EXTRAS * Just the trailer