Taku himself, of course, is quite bland - he merely serves as Rikako’s umbrella stand throughout the entire movie. And this is frustrating because there is literally nothing to recommend her to him besides her good looks and her sob story. Rikako’s character is frustrating because for some goddamn reason, Taku still falls in love with her. And that is why my favorite part of the entire movie - all 72 minutes - is when Taku bitch-slaps her right on the face. Worst of all, not ONCE does she apologize, show remorse, or grow as a character. She uses Taku to make her ex-boyfriend jealous and lies about their dating. She gets drunk in a hotel room and whines about how she hates green. She tells her friend Yumi that they’re going to see a concert, when in reality she plans on flying back to Tokyo to tell her dad. She exploits her good looks to wheedle hundreds of dollars out of Taku and lies to him about why she needs it (“I lost all my money!!!”). Sure, her family problems are consistently rubbed into our faces, but these issues don’t excuse her from all the shit she puts Taku through. Now if you weren’t such a bitch, maybe you wouldn’t be crying.īut in The Ocean Waves, Rikako isn’t a girl who we feel inclined to sympathize with.

And as we see Chihiro mature throughout the film, we find ourselves surprisingly attached to her. Likewise, Spirited Away’s Chihiro begins as a spoiled, narrowminded child - yet we can commiserate with her confusion and fear of being thrown into a world where she needs to grow up real fast. When she struggles, you want to cheer her on and see her overcome her obstacles, no matter how small they are - from boy troubles to bad delivery experiences to catching colds. Studio Ghibli does a fantastic job of portraying a young girl so full of life, charm, and determination that you can’t help but fall in love with her. Think, for example, of Kiki from Kiki’s Delivery Service. In Studio Ghibli’s masterpieces, the characters are always two things: endearing and charismatic. What makes The Ocean Waves so weak is its utter lack of Studio Ghibli’s trademark strengths: good characters, and great animation. But to tell the truth, some of Studio Ghibli’s greatest films don’t have a whole ton of plot behind them - Only Yesterday, for example, comes to mind. Now you’re probably thinking, “With a plot so thin and diluted, no wonder Sunny hates this movie.” And sure, that’s part of it.

It is literally 72 minutes of Taku displaying just how whipped Rikako has him. The entire movie is just a string of incidents when the main character whose name I can’t even recall gets screwed over by a girl. The Ocean Waves is about a boy who lets himself get played by a bratty little girl over and over again, simply because she’s pretty. But before we get into particulars, we should probably talk about the plot - or rather, what little plot there is. In fact, not only is it the worst Studio Ghibli film I’ve ever watched, but it’s also one of the worst movies I’ve watched in general. The problem is that The Ocean Waves didn’t even meet those very-much-lowered standards. Knowing that, it’d be hardly be fair to walk in with the same set of expectations that I’d carried to later films like The Wind Rises, Howl’s Moving Castle, or Spirited Away. Now to be fair, The Ocean Waves was one of Studio Ghibli’s earlier films, released in 1993. For a very, very long time, I thought Studio Ghibli was invincible.

Ocean waves anime style