Forum - View topicBuried Treasure - Ocean Waves
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here-and-faraway
 Posts: 1528 Location: Sunny California |
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Sounds interesting. I really appreciate this column. It helps me discover a lot of great titles. Thanks!
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Anime World Order
 Posts: 389 Location: Florida |
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I Can Hear the Sea probably does deserve its reputation. The thing about it isn't that it's "bad," necessarily. The problem is that it's so paint by numbers AVERAGE, and fans had by then grown to expect far more from Studio Ghibli. When your track record is generally "excellent," when you do something "good" it can be considered a disappointment. But hazy though my memory may be, I don't even recall I Can Hear the Sea as being even "good."
Throughout its entire runtime, I can remember exactly ONE piece of music repeating itself over and over throughout the total running time during the parts where music played. The characters are the definition of 80s/90s love triangle archetypes: the hapless wishy-washy guy that's completely average and unremarkable, the obnoxiously jerky girl who's good at EVERYTHING, and the best friend/rival. Between the characters, the situations, and how everything plays out, I didn't really get an arthouse vibe out of this; I got Kimagure Orange Road minus the psychics and the "jokes" (quotes used in the event we're counting "girl gets mad at guy for something he wasn't really at fault for and slaps him" as a joke). And I really hate Kimagure Orange Road. Oh hey, as I check the ANN encyclopedia, this was in fact directed by the guy who directed a few parts of Kimagure Orange Road. Bless your heart, ANN encyclopedia! Now my circle of hatred is complete. Of course, my memory could be completely off the mark as it's been at least 7 years since I last saw the thing. Maybe I just need to watch it again. The only scene I truly remember is spoiler[she slaps him in front of everybody because he called her out for being stupid, and then he totally clocks her one right back. Unfortunately, he gets a punch in the face and a verbal drubbing for this later on, and then he feels bad afterwards for no good reason. Still, when it happened I was like "FINALLY!"] Last edited by Anime World Order on Wed Jul 30, 2008 11:37 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Kenotic
 Posts: 167 |
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Finally a Buried movie I've seen (barring the "bad dub songs" one awhile back)!!
When NicheFlix.com was up and running (does anyone else rent foreign/other region DVDs?), I rented this and the other missing Ghibli movie Only Yesterday. It's good, although hearing that a director for Kimagure Orange Road was involved makes things fall into place. Rikako seemed like a brasher version of Madoka. |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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I was wondering how quickly someone would bring up KOR, thanks for not letting me down. :p
I'm not a big KOR fan either, and I can take or leave most 80s/90s romance anime. That said, Ocean Waves connects with me on a level KOR might have eventually had it not wasted so much time being silly. |
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Basroil
 Posts: 69 Location: North Carolina |
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I love this film too. I never knew the Japanese DVD had English subs on it. It doesn't happen to be region free does it?
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Ggultra2764
 Subscriber Posts: 3872 Location: New York state. |
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I remember seeing this movie about three years ago. While I do like the effort Ghibli made of targeting an older audience with this movie, I didn't take a deep attachment to it since I'm more used to the coming-of-age, fantasy, and moral awareness themes present in many of their other films. This is a film I could consider an acquired taste.
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Veoryn87
 Posts: 808 |
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It has the great artwork and appealing character designs that I expect from Ghibli. I really want to check it out now.
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GATSU
Posts: 15298 |
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What about Gedo Senki? 
What about Pom Poko?
AWO: I was told KOR only sucks in the OVAs, so if they ever re-release it, I'll know for sure. But I will say that since I consider the vastly overrated Whisper of the Heart to be the mediocre film at the company[No offense to poor Kondo-san, rest his soul.], I'll take your comments with a grain of salt. |
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halo
Posts: 356 |
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The Korean DVD is also English subtitled and about $20 cheaper.
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Teriyaki Terrier
 Posts: 5689 |
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Generally speaking, I enjoy most Slice of Life anime titles. Although I most likely will never see this movie, what Justin described did sound interesting.
Ironcially enough though, I have read Kimagure Orange Road but found the series a bit too dramatic for my taste. Thank you for the great article Justin, as usual, I enjoyed the article. |
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Kenotic
Posts: 167 |
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The funny things is I can put up with Madoka (even if Hikaru is incredibly annoying), but I wanted little to do with Rikako at the end of this film.
Last edited by Kenotic on Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:50 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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This is my favorite Ghibli movie. Their fancy theatrical stuff doesn’t grab me in proportion to the effort it took to make them. They’re always pretty, but…so what?
I love Ocean Waves for avoiding the usual kinds of exaggeration you see in fiction. Even though Rikako is really pretty annoying in some ways, the specifics of each situation always make things more complicated, and I can never quite think “what a terrible girl!”. I’ve become sick of fiction that sets up an annoying personality just so we can see them be chewed out for it, so I really appreciated this. The only thing I find slightly off about it is that Taku and Rikako spoiler[seem to get together at the end]. I find it a little hard to believe given their experiences together in the film…it really seems more like a tale of spoiler[an awkward, failed, first love] and having that at the end felt a bit like a crowd-pleaser. Hey, Justin! Do Princess Arete! |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14758 |
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Hey! KOR was one of the first two long roma-dram-edy series I collected!
Strangely I don't remember Ocean Waves much, though I recall watching it a few times and liking it. 
Disney didn't pick this up probably because, instead of just Tokuma, they don't think it's worth the trouble negotiating with the TV network and production sponsors. Last edited by enurtsol on Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:03 am; edited 1 time in total |
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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Thank you Justin for bringing this title into light, more Ghibli that we get to discover for sure. I am so far behind on Ghibli titles though
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Okina
Posts: 20 Location: Toronto |
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The funny part for me is that this was the first Ghibli work I ever saw (stumbled upon a fansub of it more than a decade ago), and I really liked it. Even though I've since seen more Ghibli works and do think they're better, this one sticks because it was the first one.
However, I do agree with the idea that this will never see the light of day in North America. I think the stigma of this being tied to a failed experiment would dog it, which I don't think is necessarily right. The pace, ambiguity, and general "art house" feel as Justin noted, likely makes this hard to watch for more recent fans. Kind of helps if you actually remembered shows like Wonder Years or Max Glick. Points for those who could remember the latter. Also to AWO, I showed this to a bunch of friends not to long after I got the DVD. You aren't kidding on the spoiler, that scene got a bunch of cheers. And I know I've used your words in talking about how Gedo Senki was received. The timing of this article seems appropriate considering that Saeko Himuro, the woman who wrote this story, passed away almost two months ago. Maybe that's stating the obvious, but I haven't seen that mentioned yet. I honestly wouldn't mind reading the book one day if it's ever translated. I'll file this under Buried Treasure myself. It isn't much of an investment in time so watch it if you could. |
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