What's going on guys? I'm Tyler and to continue my Studio Ghibli series,
I'm here to let you know that "Ocean Waves" is by no means NoPerfectMovie but if you've
heard of the film, that might not surprise you if I say that... if you
haven't seen, it haven't heard of it but you are a Studio Ghibli fan, this might
actually throw you for a little bit of a loop! "Ocean Waves" is about a young man in
high school who finds himself infatuated with the new girl in his class-she gets
good grades, she's athletic but she also has a really complicated home life that
he witnesses firsthand and over the course of the movie, he struggles to
really understand what she's going through and why she can be a destructive,
stubborn person while also acknowledging that his best friend is also in love
with this girl too. Now this was actually made as an 1 hr 12 min TV movie by
younger Studio Ghibli staff members in their 20s-30s to basically show that
they had what it takes to continue the studio's legacy. The main motto was to
make this film cheap, quick but with quality, the 1st film in the studio not
to be made by Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata... it went behind schedule, it went
over-budget, the director allegedly got peptic ulcer disease from the stress
resulting from the production and for all those reasons, I want to be nicer
towards this movie but I got to be honest; I used to think that "Pom Poko" was
the worst Studio Ghibli movie that I've ever seen because it took such a cool
concept and made it boring and so reliant on narration & exposition as
opposed to the characters interacting with each other and interacting with
this world that they're supposedly against. So for a while I thought that
was as bad as you get but with "Ocean Waves", there wasn't really that much
significance towards it to begin with because it's a TV movie, it's incredibly
limited with what kind of story you can tell and how the final
product is gonna reflect on the studio's legacy! It's a standard romance drama
with no fantastical elements, no arthouse elements like "Only Yesterday" where
present-day characters can interact with the past characters and kind of learn
from their mistakes and so-on and so-forth, but I wouldn't really mind with
that, I've seen slice-of-life anime that had no fantastical elements towards that.
"Kids on the Slope" being a prime example! That was a really good show...
for the 1st 10 episodes, the last 2 were kind of stupid if I'm being honest.
But nevertheless, I still tried my best to walk into it with high hopes but
I got to be honest, I've seen TV shows geared towards younger kids that had
higher quality animation than this film does. The animation in "Ocean Waves" isn't
necessarily bad but you do notice the flaws a lot more than the strengths.
There were 2 flaws in particular that I kept noticing where the characters
don't really have a sense of motion so many of them stay in the exact same
position for longer periods of time where their mouths (and once in a while)
their eyes are the only parts of their bodies that actually move-which could be
a way to save on animation, I'm not entirely sure if that was the case.
I have seen shows geared towards younger kids that did that, but did it in a way
that was that still made the characters (even in the background) feel like they
were alive-like they were really part of the scene, not standing around doing
stuff like... that got really distracting, but the big distracting point was there
were some shots where you could tell the animators didn't have time to draw eyes
on certain characters. There's always a couple overhead shots of a location
where there are so many people that you can't draw eyes on every single one of
them-which I get, so they draw irises and pupils but no white scleras which makes
it look like they're squinting or that their eyes are closed the entire time.
It's sort of a Gilbert Gottfried effect, which again-I have no problem with...
if it was just the background shots, but there are medium shots where it's
just one character in the frame talking, and either they're doing the stupid
eyelids thing or you don't see their eyes whatsoever, they're either not drawn
or they drew hair over it to cover over the fact that they didn't have time to
add one small but still key element towards the shot-towards the character!
Little details like that do matter in an animated movie because you're supposed
to make it feel as if this character was alive-as if it were real! It is an
illusion but part of the illusion is making us think that this stuff is
actually happening! I didn't get that vibe and there are so
many other minor things that I can nitpick about like the flashback
transitions; now imagine the screen as you're watching a movie,
so the actual story that's going on is about the size of my phone. In the frame,
the rest of the frame is just a plain white background for no real
reason other than cutting costs! They try to make it look stylistic but because it
doesn't really tie into the story, the stylistic traits don't really make sense
and it becomes incredibly distracting. The nicest thing I can say about the
production value is that the symphonic score actually differentiates itself
from Joe Hisashi's more orchestral musical works and it stands well on its
own and i want to give this composer fair due... Shigeru Nagata-hopefully I set
that right, hopefully I said that a lot better than I could have, I'm not
entirely sure-the majority of people who worked on this movie... I don't think have
worked for Studio Ghibli ever since-the director sure as hell hasn't. But the big
problem for me personally was the story and character development of "Ocean Waves"...
It is all over the place! The official synopsis of the film is that a love
triangle threatens to separate two best friends from each other... maybe for like
1 or 2 scenes in the entire movie, but that's because the best friend
Yukata (the one name I could actually remember from beginning to end) is barely
in the movie of all things! There are so many times where I kept forgetting that
he was actually a character because it spent so much time on the main character
and the girlfriend and whenever there are scenes of just the main
character and the best friend Yukata, you'd swear the two of them had romantic
feelings about each other because there's so much awkward silence as
they're starting to bond & connect with one another, the cinematography
frames them in such a romanticized way like a shot where you only see the
2 of them from their backs as they're watching the sky and birds fly from a
rooftop balcony or from a sea dock overlooking the ocean. This all sounds
romantic and if it were a forbidden romance story, that would at least be
interesting-that would be different from your standard slice-of-life anime
(at least different from the slice-of-life anime that I've seen) but no! We have
this incredibly destructive relationship between this boy & girl that is so
confusing and so underdeveloped that... I have a real hard time even
describing some of the basic flaws-in fact, I'm gonna have to take an edit from
this just to look over my notes because throughout the whole thing, I was just really
confused as to what the 2 of them saw in each other and why they would
keep coming back to each other without without justifying why they were being
such assholes to one another! It's not a "Sid and Nancy" thing where the
codependency actually made sense! Okay, I'm gonna give this a try; for starters,
the 2 of them don't really see each other as a couple but when the girl
introduces the boy as her boyfriend to her father, the boy is not even surprised,
he doesn't even correct anything, he just goes along with it
either way-supposedly maybe not to upset her or anything like that even though
she ignores him after what seems to be a one-night stand when in reality she just
stole his bed from him and goes around saying in school "Yeah I slept with him",
she still doesn't want to acknowledge him whatsoever-she says that
all the guys in this new town that she's forced to live in make her sick
even though you rely on them for emotional support-you go to this 1 boy
complaining about how your father doesn't want you in your life and when
you give some constructive stuff-not to be too judgmental, to try
and make a peaceful solution with the father or say anything
really that this girl doesn't want to hear, she just goes "Oh what do you know,
it's not any of your business"... You make no fucking sense whatsoever!
And I get it! I get that people who have very dysfunctional families tend to be
self-destructive towards other people who don't know their pain-supposedly
out of jealousy & envy because those people were a lot more fortunate...
the problem is, this girl never really learns her lesson throughout the entire movie,
and yet the movie makes it seem through the music-through what the other
characters think of her as a person at the end of
the movie it's just like "Ah, she's learned her lesson-it's okay! Let's get back to
dating each other"! NO! You've given us absolutely nothing to
indicate that she has matured or has accepted more responsibility about
herself! And as for this boy, I have absolutely no idea of what he sees in
her other than her grades and her athletics which are the highlight
for 1 or 2 scenes and 1 or 2 scenes only and those skills in grades
and athletics really make you wonder why she is such a hot mess
considering... Oh my God! Wow! Can you see me sweat? This is-I, it's not just cuz it's
hot I was just... I have absolutely no idea where to keep going on this but
I am gonna focus more on... I don't even know what I'm gonna focus on-oh right!
These 2 don't even consider themselves a couple and then they yell
at each other for gossiping about one another and then they smack each other
really hard at school, in front of other students... real complex & intense there,
right? But the biggest moment for me-the biggest one that felt so out of place
was the ending montage where a character sits down ,reflects on the "good times"
that they ha- this boy sits down, looks at the sky and then remembers all the
times that she nagged to him about stuff that wasn't his fault, stuff that he
couldn't help her with because she wouldn't really tell him the bare
essentials of what was going on with her family, why everything was so
dysfunctional... And he just looks at the sky and goes...
What are you reminiscing about?! You 2 were a fucking disaster! I know that this
movie is about about the regrets that you had in your past lives-how the
2 of them didn't communicate to each other and how it ruined their lives,
but this kid doesn't learn his lesson until the last five
minutes in the movie, the rest of the 90% he is an unlikeable, stupid douchebag who...
Look, bottom line is; you spend 90% of the movie not developing as
a character, the audience is gonna give up on you very quickly because the 2 of you are
just gonna go around in circles! Why should I care if this girl keeps making
her problems someone else's who just sucks it up and takes it because he
doesn't want to upset her even though she's making really terrible choices and
when he does try to give her at least some constructive criticism which is
only 1 or 2 scenes, she backs off and says "It's none of your business",
even though she fucking asked for emotional support, for advice, to travel
by plane to Tokyo to visit her father on such short notice even though they're
high school kids and the one dad just says "Oh here's some money for the hotel,
have fun"... this video is not gonna be as organized as I was
hoping it would be but you know what, some people do like a random tangent and
after after the rant I went on with "Funny Girl" where I kept repeating myself,
I don't think this is gonna bother some people. Nevertheless, "Ocean Waves".. it was
bad! it really is the worst Studio Ghibli movie! The animation is fine but you
notice the flaws more than the strengths, the acting is okay for what it is,
the actors do the best with what they can- I watched the Japanese dub, I haven't seen
the GKIDS version and I don't really recommend that you see this movie
anyways because the characters are so unlikeable, so underdeveloped, you really
don't see this girl's home life enough to really understand what kind of
turmoil she's in and because she doesn't explain it to the people in her life
that she wants to trust, it makes it really hard to root for her,
to make us want her to mature as a person-the only reason we want her to
mature as a person is only so she would stop nagging and complaining to everyone
else and you would want this main kid to grow a brain and realize that if she's
not gonna take your advice, if she's going to keep screwing you over for
money so that she can run away to her father, why would you accept it if you
just don't want to make her upset?! Fuck how she feels upset, she's treating you poorly!
"Ocean Waves" sucks! It really sucks and for all those reasons, I am going to give
"Ocean Waves" 1.5/5 just for that! Don't watch it on Netflix, it's
really not worth your time! I fucking hate this movie! Oh my God! well, thank you
for sitting through that nervous breakdown! Let me know in the comments
below if you're one of those fans who thinks that "Ocean Waves" has gotten
better over time because there are people who do feel that way-I haven't
read their reviews in anticipation for this because I want to I want it to go
in as blindly as possible, but if you do like "Ocean Waves", let me know in the
comments below why, I'm sure there's a couple things that I might have missed.
Be sure to let me know what's your least favorite Studio Ghibli movie because
everyone's got to have at least one-like I said before this, mine was "Pom Poko" and
I think that's actually up next on this review list, look forward to that.
Whatever it is, let me know in the comments below, be sure stay tuned for
more Studio Ghibli reviews and be sure to LIKE and subscribe!
Take care!