Ocean Waves: Film Review

Title: Ocean Waves (aka I Can Hear the Sea - Umi ga Kikoeru)

Writer: Saeko Himuro

Director: Tomomi Mochizuki

Year: 1993

It is difficult to review a Ghibli piece, as the very mention of the studio’s name trips the switch on my superlative gland and a slew of unadulterated praise is liable to gush forth. So in reviewing Ocean Waves, I will attempt to exercise some restraint.

Set in, by my estimation, late 80’s/early 90’s Kochi, the story revolves around Taku Morisaki, although it would perhaps be more accurate to say that it focuses on his schooldays, and the relationships he develops therein.

Taku is portrayed as a hard-working boy, and something of an idealist, for example he takes a stand and questions his school’s decision to cancel a school trip due to overall poor grades of the students. It is during this protest that he meets Yutaka Matsuno, the mature and composed class representative-type who, and despite not being in the same class as each other, they form a lasting friendship.

When Yutaka, in his role as class rep, is called upon to give mid-term transfer student Rikako Muto a tour of the school, he later turns to Taku in order to awkwardly fumble around the issue of what I’m sure would be translated to ‘love’.

Rikako Muto is a student from Tokyo, cursed to join the far-flung school in Kochi because of the marital difficulty of her parents. Despite, or perhaps because of, her outstanding abilities both academically and in sports, and her physical beauty, she becomes a distant figure in school, kept apart by suspicion, admiration and awe. It is only Yutaka, partly because he is a genuinely nice guy, and partly because of his feelings, that talks to her. It is through this that she becomes aware of Taku, as Yutaka clams up and tensely leaps on any topic of conversation, and so blathers about his friend.

A process of nervously tiptoeing around the issue and misunderstandings ensue.

That sentence is pretty much all I can manage without explicitly going into the details of how the film pans out, which I want to err away from as the subtlety with which the film plays out is far more tasteful than any words I can currently summon. The film plays heavily upon the obligatory ‘will they? / won’t they?’ dichotomy that forms the base of almost all stories of schooldays romance, or a romance story of any kind, truth be told. I’m actually at a loss to explain quite why this example of it is so gripping, where the vast majority, for me at least, can rapidly become laborious.

It may be that it takes place over such a short time, just over an hour’s worth really, where stories of this kind often play out in a series, which usually has around 26 episodes which are themselves around 20 minutes in length, with the pre-requisite nerve-stretching cliff-hanger at the end of every episode to ensure you watch the next. After around 20 episodes where a contrived peak in the story pits the characters in a quandary, it is fairly easy to become jaded with the process. After all, there’re only so many times you can go wide-eyed and make an ‘ungh!’ noise.

The characters in the piece are older than is usual for Ghibli, which, in my experience at least, tends to opt for young children as their heroes and heroines (or is 'hero' now unisex?). The art is typical Ghibli, which essentially means if you like the way Ghibli looks you’ll like the look of this and vice versa. A notable difference with this piece is its occasional habit of giving its characters quite mean eyes, the usual overblown roundness that is present in Ghibli, and anime in general, can quickly give way to a piercing angry glare that is very effective because of the judiciousness of its use.

Ocean Waves is done as a retrospective, with the main character narrating the story, which allows for the long-term narrative of the piece to feel natural and fluid, as the film covers a time from Junior High (middle school? I’m lost) through Senior High (I went to comp) and into college (I went to Uni). At times the film places a thick white border around the scenes it is portraying, making certain occasions seem like a hugely idealised portrayal of schooldays and childhood in general. That portrayal is a key point of the film. Despite focusing on the stories of two characters specifically, the film does pan out and give us glimpses of other characters’ stories developing, or coming to an end. Rikako doesn’t take part in cultural fairs and other group activities, but we are shown bursts of those who do, similarly Taku and Rikako have an unusual time whilst on holiday with the class in Hawaii (I went to North Wales), but we are shown the rest of the class having a ‘normal’ childhood.

I am using this phrase far too much in this review but here is goes: despite this, the film still portrays their experiences as a ‘normal’ childhood experience, they go to school, they do their work, they have fun with and fall out with their friends, and they ineffectually begin to learn what it is to like someone. They do undergo some fairly strange occurrences during this, but something strange is bound to have happened to most of us when we were children, even if it isn’t specifically flying to Tokyo on a whim.

The music is fairly minimalist, and, by now, fairly old fashioned, but it suits the setting well, and is masterful in setting the scene. The main recurring theme is a soft contemplative piano piece, though chirpy digital pipes and such also feature elsewhere. The film also isn’t afraid to drop the music completely and set the scene with some ambient noise, such as with the noise of children playing baseball, or through Japan’s favourite backing track: the buzzing of cicadas.

Stories about being in school are very popular, perhaps particularly so in Japan, and it is likely due to them tapping into a shared experience. It used to be easier to do this in stories, as when there were fewer television programs and no internet there were a larger number of things in people’s shared consciousness, which you could simply offer up for a Pavlovian “oh yeah, I remember that”. Peter Kay did it with Bullseye, Russell Howard does it with Thundercats, and Ocean Waves does it with, arguably, one of the last big bastions of shared experience: going to school. Although there is a flash of a Mazinkaiser parody flashed up on a TV in Ocean Waves, which may be an attempt to situate the film in a place in time, though it may very well cause a stirring of nostalgia for certain, presumably Japanese, viewers. I was just amused that the parody was named 'Gokaizer', as I enjoyed imagining a giant robotic Gok Wan terrorising the countryside in a bolshie, camp way. Probably not what they had in mind, especially bearing in mind this originally aired in 1993.

Nostalgia is the word I’ve tried to keep in check until the end, as if you don’t go for it in a big way, then Ocean Waves may not be for you. I wouldn’t say it is overwhelmingly sentimental in its portrayal, but that diagnosis is merely my opinion, and I sat there thinking “oh yeah, I remember that”. I would argue that it is, by and large, a fairly true, if idealised, representation of schooldays, or at the very least, a type of schooldays. Essentially, if you don’t have very fond memories of school, this film probably wont strike a chord with you.

I really enjoyed it though, but for me Ghibli would have to drop the ball fairly hard for me to have not enjoyed an offering. They did Nausicaa and Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, remember? Oh yeah, I remember that.