Ocean Waves

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Ghibli Reviews

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If I was to say I was expecting a whole lot of awesome from this particular Ghibli title, that'd be a bold-faced lie. I had never heard of it, no one ever talks about it. It's pretty much in the exact same vein as 'Only Yesterday'. It just kinda exists among the other more famous Ghibli titles as a stepping stone, so to speak. It's a little slice of life film again, and actually incredibly similar to 'Only Yesterday' in it's subject matter.

This time around we have the first one that I couldn't find at all in an English dub as well, which leads me to believe that it's just that "little" of a movie. Well-reviewed enough, but I get the impression it's the first title I've come across in this collection that almost no one seems to care much about. And you know, that's reasonable.

Taku Morisaki (Nobuo Tobita) sees the likes of a familiar woman at a train station. As he arrives at the airport and boards his plane, we're told the story of what influences this girl had on his life in his senior year of high school. The whole thing sort of ends up being a take on a kind of love triangle story, and winds up being even more forgettable than 'Only Yesterday', if only because the concept is just as dull to wade through, but it's more or less repeated here.

I'd almost have to say that for me, this is thus far the bottom of my list as far as the Ghibli films are concerned. Other than some more beautiful animation that allows our eyes to delve further into the overall breathtaking landscape that is Japan, there's just nothing for me here, unfortunately. And I've said it before and I'll say it again, you'd be VERY hard pressed to find BAD Ghibli animation.

Upon doing a bit of homework on this one, I've also come to realize that this was Ghibli's attempt at making a relatively cheap film brought to us by some of Ghibli's younger staff members. Evidently, that was never repeated after the fact. Again, it wasn't horribly reviewed, but it does end up being perhaps the biggest throw-away for the collection (at least so far) based on it's sot of redundant subject matter - especially when we know that Ghibli is an incredible studio for overall originality.

I'm glad I'm able to say that I saw it, but it's not even close to being a contender for my final Top 10 Ghibli films list (spoiler alert) at the end of all this. If you want a love triangle story, it can be found in about a million other films. I'd probably recommend 'Only Yesterday' a bit more than this one, if only because its concept came along first. It was bound to happen, but here we have my first Ghibli film that I just plain didn't like.

2/5 

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