Anime Eiga Review: Ocean Waves

Film Synopsis

Taku Morisaki (voiced by Nobuo Tobita) is heading back to his hometown of Koichi for the summer. While waiting on the train platform, he thinks he sees a familiar face of woman on the other side of the station. The chance encounter gets him thinking about a girl he once knew in high school, Rikako Muto (voiced by Yoko Sakamoto).

Our story jumps back two years when Rikako first transferred to Taku’s school. Almost instantly, Rikako establishes herself as a top student, but is a little standoffish. She has trouble getting along with others in her class, yet she's on good terms with Taku’s best friend Yutaka Matsuno (voiced by Toshihiko Seki).

Taku and Rikako themselves have little to no interaction with each other until their class trip to Hawaii. While there, Rikako asks Taku if he could lend her a considerable about of money. Taku obliges and the two once again have almost no contact for another year; during which time Rikako never returns the money.

Out of the blue, Taku gets a call from one of Rikako’s friends who says Rikako is heading to Tokyo and it was Taku who gave her the money for plane tickets. Quickly rushing to the airport, Taku is unable to stop Rikako from going, but upon seeing her reservations about going alone he decides to join her.

This impromptu trip allows Taku to get a better glimpse into the person Rikako is and more to the point, the person she is trying to hide.

Film Positives

Taku

When starting this month I knew this would be possible, if not likely. There are still quite a few more films to go, so it’s probably going to happen again.

I didn’t like this one.

Ocean Waves isn’t that good. As a Ghibli film it was certainly pretty to look at, but there was also a noticeable lack of me caring. This is a standard, high school love story. I’ve seen many, many times and I’ve seen it done way better.

Rikako

There okay scenes, there are okay moments. For instance, when Taku and Rikako were in Tokyo the film was at its most interesting. It came late in comparison to the short run time, but this was the first breath of character development from anyone.

It was here Rikako became my favorite character of the movie. There was a lot going on in her life and she wasn't entirely sure how to handle it. Therefore she chose to take the path of least resistance and bottle up her problems. This made her come off as arrogant to the people around her because she didn't do a great job of internalizing her frustration.

Taku saw she was clearing hiding something quite unhappy. This, in my eyes, was excuse enough for him to go on a sudden trip with a person he barely knew. Sure enough, Rikako had just seen her parents go through a bitter divorce and it appears she picked the wrong side. There was a lot happening to Rikako and the film effectively portrays this.

Unfortunately, you only end up understanding her, not forgiving her. She's kind of a brat and this is where Ocean Waves really screwed up. Rikako was never given a chance to make amends for her actions because of the amount of other bull crap that happens within the film.

Film Negatives

Ocean Waves expects you to accept a lot of things and I wasn't willing to bite.

There are a lot of why questions to this film. A lot of details were introduced and these should have made for a deep and compelling story, but they don’t go anywhere. Many are actually not need at all.

For example, Yutaka, Taku’s best friend, likes Rikako and this creates a love triangle between the three. First off, love triangle? Rikako doesn’t see Yutaka in that way. Taku makes it a point to insist there's nothing going between him and Rikako; something the story tries to prove false, but I’m more inclined to agree with him.

Yutaka doesn’t add a single thing to the story; he’s barely in it to begin with. Take him out, nothing changes. Taku would still have gone to Tokyo, rumors would have still spread, and every event of the film would have played out exactly as they did with or with Yutaka.

With my toleration of Rikako and my indifference towards Yutaka, I haven’t covered my biggest reason for not liking this movie.

 

Taku

He doesn’t do anything and it’s infuriating.

Taku is our lead, therefore he’s the person in the best position to ask the questions we the audience may be thinking. The problem is he never does. All things considered Taku is very accepting of everything that happens.

He never fully confronts Rikako to ask her what the hell she’s thinking. He’s given her money, gone with her to Tokyo, served as a stand in boyfriend, has seen the aftermath of a bad falling out with her dad (this one might be a debatable), and still he’s pretty quiet; except he’s totally not okay with any of it.

He’s clearly upset he’s being used, intentional or otherwise, and now he has to do damage control with the sheer amount of gossip surrounding the him and Rikako. Yet he never truly tries to fix the situation and keeps letting newer, more annoying developments to take place.

Something finally does set him off and he goes to confront Rikako about. However when he gets there, he starts yelling at her for something completely different. It doesn’t make the situation any better, if anything it makes it ten times worse.

And then the movie just kind of ends.

It’s all okay though since Taku loved Rikako the whole time, but realized it when he saw her after many years. What a cop out resolution that was. These two became a couple because of reasons. Never once did the movie ever show them getting close. They only ever dealt with each other’s nonsense.

Taku never confesses his feelings, never gives indication he saw Rikako romantically, but he still loves all the same.

Final Thoughts

God damn it, I was looking forward to this one. I wanted to see Ghibli attempt a romantic story. Not here.

Ocean Waves, for the lack of a better phrase, is on the boring side of things. There are many small details to the film, but a lot of them can be taken out and the rest were never explored. The story wanted to get these two characters together, except it didn’t know how to do it.

Ocean Waves stumbles quite a bit and if it didn’t have the Ghibli brand, there’s a good chance it would drift into obscurity.

Ghibli Month will continue tomorrow with 1994’s Pom Poko.

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