Ocean Waves (1993)

Original title: Umi ga Kikoeru, aka I Can Hear the Sea

Ocean Waves is an oddity in the Studio Ghibli filmography for several reasons. 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. 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. Intended for television (it was broadcast on Nippon TV on 5 May 1993) it was an experiment that nearly backfired when production ran over time and over budget. It’s an experiment that has never been repeated since.

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. At Kichijoji Station in Tokyo, Taku Morisaki (Nobuo Tobita) spots an old friend Rikako Muto (Yoko Sakamoto) on the opposite platform. On a subsequent flight to Kochi Prefecture to attend a university reunion, he reminisces about how he first met her at school. 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). Though Rikako is often manipulative and self-absorbed, the boys find their friendship put to the test as they vie for her affections.

Ocean Waves is one of Studio Ghibli’s least remarkable films. It’s not terribly by any stretch of the imagination, just a bit ordinary and that’s not something we expect from Ghibli. 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. 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. Taku is a gullible naïf while Yutaka is cold and aloof. The story revolves entirely around the interactions between these three characters (“the whole thing was staring to feel like a bad soap opera” Taku quips) and if you don’t warm t them you’ll find little here to engage with, though the final shot featuring a more mature Rikako and Taku is strangely affecting, suggesting that they’ve both overcome their difficulties and become better people as a result.

Ocean Waves is a coming of age melodrama with a young love triangle, a slice of life drama that fails to charm the way that the similarly down to earth Only Yesterday had done. It’s as beautifully made as ever, with all the gorgeous attention to detail that we’ve come to expect from Ghibli, but it’s slow moving and really not terribly interesting. It took a long time to find its way to the west and though some have argued that this was due to western audiences not wanting the more “real world” based anime like Ocean Waves it may also be down to the fact that the film is far more Japanese than any of the company’s other films. Cultural details are glossed over leaving non-Japanese viewers somewhat non-plussed and it’s relative obscurity may be down t a combination of the two factors.

Adult-oriented, non-fantastical animation has long been a healthy strand in anime but it’s rarely made the transition to the west where such films have been rare until recent years. Ocean Waves would do little to persuade resistant audiences that this kind of animated story-telling was worth their time and although the film was fairly well received by western critics it remains one of Ghibli’s less well known and less remarked upon films.

Though Ghibli wouldn’t try the experiment of letting younger, less experienced film-makers lose on a film again they would return to the sort of teen-oriented film in Yoshifumi Kondo’s Mimi o Sumaseba/Whisper of the Heart (1995) and Goro Miyazaki’s Kokuriko-zaka Kara/From Up on Poppy Hill (2011), the former featuring more fantastical elements, the latter not.

Director Tomomi Mochizuki was no newcomer to directing – he’d started in the industry as a storyboarder but had graduated to direction with the likes of television series Urusei Yatsura (1981-1986), Mahô no star magical Emi/Magic Star Magical Emi (1985-1986), Ranma ½ (1989-1989), Dirty Pair Flash (1995-1996) and many others. But he found the responsibility of leading his merry band in younger animators something of an ordeal, later complaining that the experience had given him a peptic ulcer. So there’s no questioning his dedication to Ocean Waves nor to the technical brilliance of the film. But it remains one of Ghibli’s hardest film to warm to, one that’s destined perhaps to not be as revisited as some of the more famous Miyazaki and Takahata-directed epics.

Which is also something of a worry as even this early it was becoming clear that the company was far too reliant on its two superstar founders and they would continue to find it difficult to nurture talent as extraordinary as Miyazaki and Takahata’s – even Miyazaki’s son Goro didn’t manage to take over the reins as planned, making what is regarded by many as the worst of all of Ghibli’s films, Gedo Senki/Tales from Earthsea (2006), based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series of novels. And indeed in 2014, with Miyazaki on one of his many “retirements”, Ghibli called a halt to production though they returned in 2016 to co-produce The Red Turtle and started up again full time when Miyazaki found it hard to take his well-earned retirement and announced his return to the fray in 2017.