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Rikako is damaged by the experience of her parents’ divorce but that doesn’t excuse her often appalling behaviour and it’s often hard to see what it is that Taku and Yutaka see in her – certainly it’s hard to see how she could have come between their friendship. How much you’ll get from the film depends entirely on how much you invest in the characters but as written by Kaori Nakamura (based on the 1990 novel by Saeko Himuro) they’re a hard lot to warm to. It’s not terribly by any stretch of the imagination, just a bit ordinary and that’s not something we expect from Ghibli.
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Ocean Waves is one of Studio Ghibli’s least remarkable films. Though Rikako is often manipulative and self-absorbed, the boys find their friendship put to the test as they vie for her affections. She was a transfer student from Tokyo, arrived in mysterious circumstances (it’s later revealed that her parents have gone through a divorce which has brought shame on the family) and his attraction to her was shared by his best friend Yutaka Matsuno (Toshihiko Seki). On a subsequent flight to Kochi Prefecture to attend a university reunion, he reminisces about how he first met her at school. At Kichijoji Station in Tokyo, Taku Morisaki (Nobuo Tobita) spots an old friend Rikako Muto (Yoko Sakamoto) on the opposite platform. The plot has some echoes of Takahata’s much better Only Yesterday (1991) in that it’s a story about memories and love told entirely in flashback. It’s an experiment that has never been repeated since.
STUDIO GHIBLI OCEAN WAVES TV
Intended for television (it was broadcast on Nippon TV on ) it was an experiment that nearly backfired when production ran over time and over budget. Instead production was turned over to the company’s younger personnel, headed by director Tomomi Mochizuki, as an experiment to see if Ghibli could make good quality films cheaply and quickly.
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It features none of the charming fantasy of Hayao Miyazaki’s works or the emotional heft of Isao Takahata’s and indeed was the first of the company’s films not to have been directed by either of its founders. Ocean Waves is an oddity in the Studio Ghibli filmography for several reasons. Original title: Umi ga Kikoeru, aka I Can Hear the Sea