Ride Your Wave - Movie Review

Ride Your Wave is directed by Masaaki Yuasa, the man behind Mind Game, The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl, Loo Over The Wall. I love this guy. I adore his animations. I think he's extremely original and a really fresh voice. And here a young and naive surfer falls in love with a firefighter. They have a whirlwind romance that leads to something supernatural occurring that could bring them closer together at the expense of a normal life for her. And this showed at Fantastic Fest amongst a bunch of other horror and sci-fi films and so naturally as an anime lover I flocked to it. I wanted to support it and I'm really glad I did. Once again a Masaaki Yuasa film looks gorgeous. His character designs, his action sequences, and his use of color is wholly unique to him. But it is difficult for me to pinpoint what exactly it is about his films that I love so much. I think it's character based because all of his characters are very quirky and weird and they're all okay with that. And they live in worlds that are pretty acceptive of how weird they are. And this film is no different. Our lead character is this surfer who's really great at it but she doesn't do it for admiration. She doesn't take part in competitions. She doesn't take part in a sporting event. She just loves it. She's basically Patrick Swayze without the bank robbing. And in turn her new boyfriend is a firefighter who also does not do it for the admiration despite the fact that he continuously makes these really noble choices in his life and everyone respects him for that. He does it because he loves it. He actually loves giving back to people. So naturally these people flock to one another. The film definitely asks you to take some leaps of faith and hopes that you will go on the ride with them. Accepting this movie's plotline and running with it is very much like surfing. The film is asking you to jump on that wave and hope that you'll keep your balance basically. Because some really absurd things happen. And what I loved about the movie is that it doesn't 100% tell you if what you're seeing is really happening, if it's in her head, if she's imagining it, or if it's reality. Unfortunately the film does decide to make things a little clear at some point which I didn't love. But what I got because of that was a very heartfelt ending and conclusion to this story which of course I won't ruin. But it made me think. It made me think about my relationships with my family and friends and I didn't expect that going in because most of his films are very fun and sometimes a little lightweight even when they're at their most absurd like Mind Game. But this animation is one of his more emotional films because it actually did leave me with a lot to think about and that can be a little rare in anime nowadays. Sometimes anime can be very on the nose, tell you exactly what everyone's feeling and thinking at all times and there's voiceover to explain it and everyone's just making sure you know exactly what they're feeling. Subtlety is not exactly one of anime's strong suits and strangely enough even for a Yuasa film this movie does hold things back and lets its characters breathe when they need to. I just wish that it didn't expressly tell us a few things towards the end. I wish it was a little more ambiguous. If he had left it a little more open like that I think that this would be something really special. Even so I had a great time watching this movie and it was one of my favorites of Fantastic Fest. I'm gonna give Ride Your Wave an A-. I have a ton more videos to do for many films I saw there so look forward to those very soon. I also want to give a big thank you to the sponsor for this video and that is Skillshare. Skillshare is an online community where you can learn just about anything. They have classes and everything from directing, writing, acting, animation. It's incredibly comprehensive and it's a great way for people who have expertise to share that with people who want to learn from home. I think it's very helpful for people who are trying to learn more about the entertainment industry, specifically film, animation, editing, because there are just so many classes relating to that. As I mentioned in a previous video, short stories were how I started writing when I was in elementary school, and Skillshare has a class called Writing Character-Driven Short Stories that's extremely helpful for learning how to do that, as well as a class called Creative Personal Writing Write the Real You, which is great for learning how to write stories that are personally impactful to yourself. Skillshare is also very affordable. Their annual subscription is less than $10 a month, but since you're watching this video you can click the link in the description below and you can get two months completely free. So once again, please do check out that link in the description for a two-month free trial of Skillshare. Thank you so much to them for sponsoring this video, and thank you guys for watching. Look forward to many more Fantastic Fest reviews coming very soon. I saw a lot of things and I'm excited to share those movies with you. Some of them will probably be grouped into a QMR quick movie review segment because there's just too many to cover in separate videos, but there are definitely some that I want to talk about more long form. Guys, you're the best. Thank you so much as always for watching. Look forward to more reviews very soon. If you like this, you can click right here and get Stuckmanized.