Ocean Waves - Movie Review

Ocean Waves is a Studio Ghibli film you may never have heard of. This film was originally shown on Japanese television in 1993, and it has taken until now for it to get an official release in the United States of America. Similar to Only Yesterday, which was another Studio Ghibli film that never saw a release in the States until last year, this film is finally getting released thanks to GKids, who also gave me a screener link to watch this film early, and I got to see it officially. I've never watched the bootleg that's been available for years, or the UK Blu-ray. I have waited for an official US release to actually get to see this film, and I did. This film is about a young man who has been in college for a while, and he returns home to recall his past life, his high school years, where he first met a girl who was incredibly stubborn, who really ran him up the wall, and he begins to wonder if he actually has more feelings for this girl than he thought he originally did. And similar to Only Yesterday, it's told through flashbacks, and sometimes goes back to the present, where he's wondering if maybe there was something he missed out on in life, and if he could still have it. Now, Only Yesterday took forever to come to America because it explored the blossoming of womanhood a little bit in a scene, and I think Disney was like, oh, well, we can't show children that, and so it took forever. This film is not one of Studio Ghibli's best efforts. It was made by young animators. It was one of the first Studio Ghibli films that wasn't directed by Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata, and they wanted to give the young animators who worked at Studio Ghibli a chance to show their colors, and so we have this television movie that looks pretty damn good for a television movie from 1993. The story is a little meaningless. The musical score is noticeably more symphonic than some of the grand orchestral arrangements that Studio Ghibli films normally get, and the animation also is of a lower-budget nature than Studio Ghibli's theatrical films, but that's to be expected because this movie was made for Japanese television. This is not a great film. There's some issues that I have with Ocean Waves, and largely they're due to the characters in this movie. This film heavily, heavily relies on nostalgia. It wants us to be able to connect with these characters and look back in our past and remember embarrassing things that we did in high school or how we treated others and if we were treating people properly or improperly, and it's relying on us to connect with the characters and the events in this film and go, oh man, I remember that. Now I have a personal connection with this movie. This film is largely about this boy and this girl and how incredibly rude and mean she is. I mean, she treats this kid awfully. There's a scene where they both slap each other back-to-back, and so they're already abusive physically and verbally, and it's kind of hard to latch onto these kids. And that's one of my biggest issues with Ocean Waves. It's a film that has characters that just, I can't really relate to, and you're trying to because it's well animated and there are some sweet, touching moments, but overall I can see why it's taken this long for this film to be released because when you compare it to Studio Ghibli's other films in their canon, it doesn't even hold a candle to them, and it does feel sort of inconsequential when the film ends because you don't really build up that much investment in their relationship because throughout the entire film, they're arguing. She's incredibly mean. You learn about her past and that she's dealt with a lot of problems with her family and some of these social issues that she has dealt with have caused her to become like this, and so you feel some sympathy for her, but when she's like that for almost the entire film, it's tough to really understand why these two would even work together because before they even officially act like they're dating, they're literally hitting each other, and that's not really that good. But there is still a quality of Ocean Waves that I appreciated beyond the animation and the Studio Ghibli look and the novelty of finally seeing this film after waiting for so many years. That's the fact that some of the nostalgic elements that are meant to make you recall your own past kind of did, and there were moments where I was like, oh man, I really feel that. I remember moments like that in my own personal life, and so there were times in this movie that I connected with its story, but in the end, it's kind of a frustrating experience because it will go from slightly making you a little compelled with these characters to focusing on something else that is just sort of there almost to beef up the runtime for network television. All in all, I think Studio Ghibli purists like myself who want to see the entire filmography But if you're just a casual anime watcher, then this is definitely going to be more towards the bottom of the barrel in regards to anime romances. I'm going to give Ocean Waves a C+. Not a bad film at all, but disappointing in regards to Studio Ghibli's other films. I really appreciate the fact that GKids has finally made it available for us in the United States. It's going to be expanding all throughout the beginning of 2017 into theaters across the U.S. And if you're in New York, I believe December 28th is when you can see it at the IFC Center. Guys, thank you so much as always for watching. Look forward to a lot of reviews. I'm doing a lot of Oscar-qualifying type movie reviews right now. I had a chance to see a lot of screeners that gratefully are helping me out. Thank you so much, guys, for watching, and if you like this, you can click right here and get Stuckmanized.