And yet, therein lies its poignancy, its subtlety, and its sublimity. Ocean Waves is, in many ways, a quiet film, a still film, a gentle film. And whatever growing tenderness exists between Taku and Rikako is thwarted by insecurities and friendship loyalties and the follies of youth and inexperience. All the little dramas and melodramas accompanying growing up.
Jealous and intimidated, the girls at school dislike her.Īnd the vignettes unfold – a class trip to Hawaii, a disastrous unplanned tour to Tokyo to track down Rikako’s dad, and on it goes. Her parents are divorced, and she blames her mother. She longs for Tokyo and her life there and her father. She is disdainful of the hicks in Kōchi with their strange dialect. Rikako is beautiful, intelligent, gifted, athletic, manipulative and a major snob. Taku recognizes his friend’s interest so holds his own in check and keeps his distance. He becomes her main contact at the school. Immediately, Taku’s best friend, Yutaka Matsuno, undertakes the responsibility of showing her around. Rikako transfers to Taku’s high school midway through their junior year.
#Ocean waves film series#
The film is a series of vignettes, flashbacks, and snapshots of encounters with Rikako during their high school years, with Taku’s voiceover narration. She – the near glimpse across the tracks – is Rikako Muto, the girl who shook up his life in high school. He is Taku Morisaki, now studying in Tokyo, but originally from Kōchi. RELATED: 16 Strong Heroines of Studio Ghibli But just the near sight of her sets off a nostalgic narrative. The face and its person disappear before he can confirm the identity. The film opens with a young man standing on a train platform, gazing across the tracks, and suddenly seeing a face on another platform that looks familiar. Yes, Studio Ghibli made a film based around that well-used and much-abused teenage trope of the love triangle. A girl from Tokyo lands in this smaller pond, and her arrival sends lasting ripples through the local high school and its student body, especially two best friends, who both find themselves infatuated with the same girl. Here be just life and the ups and downs and ebbs and flows of being a teenager in the city of Kōchi on the island of Shikoku in Japan in the 1990s. Here be no dragons, no magic, no spirits, no fantastical realms, no grand apocalyptic narratives, no numinous encounters.
#Ocean waves film full#
The film is a social realistic snapshot of everyday life, full of its many mundane dramas. Reins were handed over to Tomomi Mochizuki, a young, up-and-coming animator, and the whole film/project was thought of as an avenue for the younger generation of animators at Studio Ghibli – apprentices to the masters – to do their own work. Ocean Waves was the first Studio Ghibli film not to be directed by one of the studio’s co-founders, namely Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata. It was only recently released on the international market in late 2016/early 2017, so it has been something of a Studio Ghibli “secret” for many years, unavailable to international viewers.
#Ocean waves film tv#
Originally made as an animated TV movie, Ocean Waves first aired on the little screen in Japan over two decades ago and made no significant international waves, as many other of Studio Ghibli’s films have since done. Ocean Waves is something of a footnote in the canon of Studio Ghibli works.
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