A second wind for Ocean Waves, Studio Ghibli’s… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

A sec­ond wind for Ocean Waves, Stu­dio Ghibli’s only TV movie

30 Jan 2020

Words by Zoe Crombie

Anime-style illustration depicting 5 students standing in a classroom setting. The students have black hair and wear school uniforms.
Anime-style illustration depicting 5 students standing in a classroom setting. The students have black hair and wear school uniforms.
Tomo­mi Mochizuki’s teenage love tri­an­gle dra­ma is fas­ci­nat­ing out­lier in the studio’s catalogue.

With many of Stu­dio Ghibli’s most beloved and recog­nis­able films – from My Neigh­bor Totoro to Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice – arriv­ing on Net­flix this week­end, one less­er-known gem has snuck in under the radar. Ocean Waves, Ghibli’s first and only TV movie, doesn’t pos­sess a famous direc­tor or the impres­sive pro­duc­tion val­ues of oth­er films in the studio’s cat­a­logue, but its inclu­sion on the plat­form will hope­ful­ly give it a sec­ond wind in the West.

As the first ever Ghi­b­li project to be helmed by some­one oth­er than co-founders Hayao Miyaza­ki and Isao Taka­ha­ta, Ocean Waves had much to prove and seem­ing­ly lit­tle to work with. Per­haps reflect­ing the inex­pe­ri­ence of many of the cre­ative forces behind it (direc­tor Tomo­mi Mochizu­ki was 34 at the time while much of the crew were in their twen­ties) the ini­tial plan to make some­thing quick­ly, cheap­ly and with qual­i­ty’ did not come to fruition, the team going sig­nif­i­cant­ly over bud­get and over time.

Ocean Waves sits between Miyazaki’s Por­co Rosso and Takahata’s Pom Poko, but Mochizuki’s first and only film for the stu­dio doesn’t fea­ture talk­ing tanu­ki or wars from decades gone by. Instead, the scope of the film match­es its pro­duc­tion; a low-key teenage romance not dis­sim­i­lar to films like A Silent Voice from recent years. If any Ghi­b­li film is being echoed here it is Only Yes­ter­day, right down to the nos­tal­gic pas­tels and frame nar­ra­tive, though Takahata’s mas­ter­piece is a rur­al epic com­pared to the school­yard heart­break of Ocean Waves.

At the film’s cen­tre is a love tri­an­gle: Taku is a high school stu­dent lack­ing in aca­d­e­m­ic rigour who is nonethe­less deter­mined to go on the school Hawaii trip; Yuta­ka is an exem­plary stu­dent and Taku’s best friend; Rikako is the new girl, arro­gant but with the beau­ty and skills to back her­self up. But this is a sto­ry told in ret­ro­spect, from the per­spec­tive of the more lev­el-head­ed, mature Taku on the way to his high school reunion. It’s an inspired struc­tur­al deci­sion, one that con­tex­tu­alis­es the brat­ty and unpleas­ant behav­iour of the some­times-unlik­able cen­tral char­ac­ters – they’re kids, and they’ll learn in time.

Though Ocean Waves is adapt­ed from a nov­el by Saeko Himuro, it remains firm­ly ground­ed in real­ism; none of the teens have a talk­ing cat or friend­ly for­est spir­it to turn to when the going gets tough. Match­ing this approach, the look of the film is under­stat­ed, with char­ac­ter mod­els that – unlike most pop­u­lar ani­mé – have pro­por­tions resem­bling that of real peo­ple. Ghibli’s trade­mark atten­tion to detail is retained too; though these intri­ca­cies may have led the project astray and pre­vent­ed fur­ther low-bud­get fea­tures, the mun­dane beau­ty of a pile of text­books or the shad­ows of leaves on the pave­ment ele­vate it beyond the sim­plic­i­ty of its narrative.

Ocean Waves is bet­ter suit­ed to stream­ing than any oth­er Ghi­b­li film. As a TV movie, it’s designed to be enjoyed at home, and the teen dra­ma plot slots in rather nice­ly along­side var­i­ous Net­flix Orig­i­nals. The visu­als are pre­cise, and their washed-out, lev­elled qual­i­ty ren­ders the film per­fect for the small screen. Every Ghi­b­li film is worth watch­ing, and this gor­geous anom­aly is no exception.

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