Director: Tomomi Mochizuki
Screenplay: Kaori Nakamura, based on the novel I Can Hear the Sea by Saeko Himuro
Starring: Nobuo Tobita, Toshihiko Seki, Yoko Sakamoto
Running Time: 72 minutes
Genre: Anime, drama, slice-of-life, romance
This film was produced by the legendary animation company Studio Ghibli and premiered on Japanese television on May 5 1993.
It opens with a young man, Taku Morisaki (voiced by Tobita) waiting at a train station in Tokyo, where he glimpses a familiar woman. This takes him back two years to when he was a high school student in the small town of Kochi, and a love triangle that springs up between him, his best friend, Yutaka Matsuno (voiced by Seki) and a transfer student from Tokyo, Rikako Muto (voiced by Sakamoto). Yutaka is immediately infatuated with the beautiful Rikako, while Taku, despite being very attracted to her, is put off by her difficult personality. However, Taku grows increasingly close to Rikako during a class trip to Hawaii, and an impromptu trip to Tokyo. However, as we all know very well, these things are rarely simple.
This was originally intended as a way for Studio Ghibli to allow their younger staff members to make a quick, low budget film, even though it ran over schedule and over budget. It's a lesser Ghibli work, and the animation is not as impressive as usual, however it is still a good movie, with some beautiful visuals. This is a straightforward contemporary romantic drama with no fantasy elements whatsoever, in fact it is interesting that it was done as an animation and not live action. However the animation does work well for the material. It's a quiet, graceful film that should appeal to fans of more "realistic" slice-of-life anime.
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