Studio Ghibli: A Retrospective, Part Nine - Ocean Waves

I think the early 90s were an odd time for Studio Ghibli. With Miyazaki in semi-hiatus, while he prepared his magnum opus, and Takahata pursuing a project that was maybe slightly below him (which explored in the next article), it was time to start thinking legacy. At this point, the producers knew they had a very special film company with some of the greatest filmmakers of all time making stunning works that were rich and subtle yet with enough broad appeal to reach a wide audience. So the question became what was going to happen when these filmmakers either moved on, retired or .. passed away? Arguably, this was and still is Studio Ghibli's biggest problem - how do you replace Miyazaki and Takahata? And this isn't a question that has been hovering in recent years - this goes right back to the early 90s. This question has never really been answered and is why the studio is now all but closed (save on final Miyazaki film). There were two concerted elements in the early 1990s that actually share some common themes - Whisper of the Heart and Ocean Waves. Both films were from new directors to the studio, so both projects were big risks, and wanted to tell contemporary stories. One turned out to be a minor masterpiece and the other remained an under-welcoming oddity for years...we're looking at the latter...

On my epic binge of Studio Ghibli's back catalogue, I wasn't too enthused about re-watching Ocean Waves. There's certainly worse Ghibli films (not many though) but this one is arguably the studio at its most ... middle of the road (well maybe except for the next one). In all honesty, it's hard to get too angry at the film since it came from a genuinely sincere place. The young staff of Ghibli were given a chance to make their own film and wanted to make something contemporary- something that spoke to them. From the perspective of the heads of the studio, this was a challenge given to the young staff to produce a film quickly, cheaply and efficintly whilst maintaining a high standard of quality. This, ironically, led the film to go over budget and over schedule. Ghibli hired young filmmaker Tomomi Mochizuki to helm the project. This would be the first time Ghibli film not directed by Miyazaki or Takahata, so I imagine the pressure was on for young Mochizuki. The film was based on a novel by Saeko Himuro, which was serialized in the Ghibli-affiliated magazine Animage. The serial was complete with illustrations by Katsuya Kondo, who also served as the film's characters designer and animation director. This was also going to Ghibli's first, and currently only, feature-length TV film - the film never screened in cinemas which might explain its obscurity in the West.

Our two protagonists (l:r) Taku and Rikako

The film is set in the small town of Kochi on the Japanese island of Shikoku (off the main island of Honshu). The film follows two friends, Taku and Yutaka, in high school, who seem to have an unbreakable bond. That is until a mysterious transfer student named Rikako enters their lives. Rikako is hot-headed, rude, stand-offish, intelligent, beautiful and attracts the eyes of all the boys in school, much to the ire of the girls. And of course Taku and Yutaka fall for her which ends up splitting them apart. Whilst on a school trip to Hawaii, Rikako asks to borrow some money from Taku as she "lost her own". As it turns out, she's actually saving up for a trip to fly back out to Tokyo to see her estranged father (Rikako's parents have split up and she lives with her mother in their new home in Kochi). Taku, through a series of circumstances, eventually gets pulled into Rikako's mad trip to Tokyo, as he begins to learn to grow up into an adult. 

Ocean Waves, for me, is a little bit of a dud. This is definitely the work of a group of young filmmakers, so it's kind of hard to completely hate on it, but it suffers from an unfocused script, under-written characters and a slightly sexist under-layer. The animation is great for a TV special, though maybe slightly under the quality of a standard Ghibli film (understandable though). The background art though is gorgeous. Ghibli had not rendered never rendered modern-day Japan before and in such realistic detail. The animator's experiences of growing up the country and moving to a metropolitan city really shines through. Miyazaki himself said truly great animation can only be achieved by drawing upon experience, which is evident in the design of Ocean Waves. However, outside of the technical elements, I can't really find much to recommend about Ocean Waves. Slice-of-life stories are fine, of course, but Ocean Waves' biggest problem is its unfocused script which veers from sentimental to kind of mean. It passes by 70 minutes but the pace is fairly slow and the construction of the scenes are uninteresting. This makes it feel like a much longer film than it actually is. There's plenty of scenes that could have worked with a better structure - all the students coming back to Kochi as adults and going out for drinks as part of their school reunion is a cute sequence. The problem is that all of a sudden they are transplanted with newly found personalities and secret crushes that don't even come up in the first part of the film. As a protagonist, Taku is also fairly flat. There could have been a charming personality in there - a young man in way over his head - but there's just not a lot there to latch onto. Things start out promisingly enough, with the film exploring the friendship between Taku and Yutaka. We learn how they both protested to the school cancelling the trip but go about it in different ways - a clever way of indicating that these two are very similar but quite different to each other. However, the film seems to forget about these earlier scenes and shifts focus to Taku and Rikako hanging out together; then we're dealing with Rikako's family problems before skipping forward a few years to the old friends reconciling with each other again. There's little rhythm to get to know these people as characters and it severely hurts the film. 

There is some gorgeous art design in the film but the script is unfocused

Mostly because I don't have a lot to say about the film at a whole, I want to use this opportunity to explore some feminist critique of character tropes that cropped up while I was watching the film. I think my big issue with the film is the way the central character of Rikako is written. She is moody and angry towards the world, shunning all those around and changing her emotions on a whim but this is all really just a mask to hide her inner pain. However, I think there is something vaguely insidious to this that reinforces incredibly negative stereotypes of women that the film tries to sweep under the rug at the end. The plot of the film is essentially Taku, the dominant male character, trying to untangle the central mystery of who this complex girl is and failing - only to get her as prize at the end anyway.

TV Tropes files Rikako under the Alpha Bitch type - a category shared by characters such as Pacifica Northwest from Gravity Falls, Regina from Mean Girls and Cordelia Chase from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. While these are great examples of characters where the writers undermine the trope, they start out as representative of the Alpha Bitch trope. She is usually at the centre of attention at high school, leader of her clique, generally a rich Daddy's girl (where the family usually have some kind of massive influence), probably a cheerleader and generally acts awful to everyone around her, complete with a group of mindless friends who follow her around everywhere. Rikako certainly displays elements of this trope but it doesn't quite fill the whole picture. In fact, elements of this trope are arguably combined with another in the film - the Broken Bird. These character usually have some kind of "cynicism catalyst' i.e. something bad that happened in her past that destroyed her faith in just about everything. Lapis Lazuli from Steven Universe and Jessica Jones from her self-titled series are both examples of this trope done right - both suffer from a form of PTSD and are slowly beginning to overcome it in their own way. This trope is massively popular in anime and manga (the list is endless on the TV Topes site). Every major series you can think of has a female character that displays this trope - Evangelion, One Piece, Naruto, the list goes on. TV Tropes defines this archetype further as seemingly being emotionally experienced and her detachment gives the impression of competency but she often can't live up to this hype - which is an important aspect of Rikako's character. She's great at sport, is book smart, beautiful and stands out but struggles emotionally to connect. Basically, the film is trying to say that Rikako is "different from other girls".

Whilst Ghibli has a great reputation for writing great females characters, something when seriously wrong in the fleshing out of Rikako - a character who ends up drawing upon several tropes that are utilised to create a shallow and ultimately unengaging character 



Rikako has a mixture of both the tropes I have discussed in the way she is written. Certainly, Rikako displays elements of the Alpha Bitch - the entitlement, the disdain for everyone around here, seemingly being good at everything and all the boys wanting her however she's not exactly popular with other girls, which is crucial to the Alpha Bitch type. Truly memorable characters who fall into this trope work to overcome their issues as part of their character development. Cordelia and Pacifica break the mould of the Alpha Bitch type to become active members of their respective groups. They overcome how the world sees them to reveal intelligent and independent women, making up for her past "bitchiness" whilst not undermining who they are (until Angel ruined it all for Cordelia ... but that's another discussion for another time). Rikako in no way redeems herself from her actions in the film. She essentially steals money from two people, lies to a friend about the trip they are going on and essentially kidnaps her (Rikako convinces a friend to go away together for a couple of days though this is just a pretense to go on a last minute trip to Tokyo to see her dad) and intentionally antagonises all those around her. Then, after a particularly heated argument with Taku, she slips away and reappears right at the end of the world as a mature adult - not terribly inspiring. Then there's the Broken Bird side. She has a cynicism catalyst in that her parent's have split up and she's had to move from Tokyo. She is angry towards the world and stand-offish with everyone but is using it as a front to hide her inner turmoil. Lapis suffers from a traumatic past that helped to shape her outlook on the world and the universe however, after nearly flooding Earth, she is working on improving herself, but doesn't always succeed. Jessica Jones turns surviving her metaphorical rape into a crusade to ensure no woman suffers again at the hands of Kilgrave. What I want to make clear is that these characters start off in a certain depressed place that shape their world view but go on an arc to get work through the problem in their past. Rikako doesn't go on any kind of arc. She starts the film in one place, storms out of the characters' lives and re-appears years later as a mature woman - leaving her development up to the mind of the viewer. By robbing her of a character arc, the film ends up drawing upon two tropes that require some kind of development but just leaves the character as shallow and unengaging. Ultimately, Rikako is puzzle that the male character Taku must unravel, robbing her of any agency in what is essentially her own story and reinforces negative stereotypes about women being unreasonable, manipulative and difficult to deal with.

So there you have it - Ocean Waves. It's an interesting experiment that tried to show off what the young staff could do. Normally, I would be an apologist for this kind of creative springboard. It's great that the studio gave a chance to show the old guard what youthful talent could do and this really could the staff's time to shine. Instead, Ocean Waves aims low and doesn't sustain the landing. If you have to see every Ghibli film, Ocean Waves is certainly not terrible or anything. It's just very middle of the road with loads of untapped potential that passes by an inoffensive 70 minutes (unless you're a feminist, like me). However, then you stop and think that this is Studio Ghibli. Not all their films need to be like Miyazaki's, of course, but there needs to be something. A spark of creativity. There's no shame in producing a smaller scale story. Heck, in comparison to the works of Miyazaki and Takahata, a delicate, well-crafted coming of age tale set in modern-day Japan with a cute romance at the centre could have made for a unique, smart, subtle, moving and charming film that represented a change of pace for the studio... oh, wait...they made that one ... it's called Whisper of the Heart. That one is a couple of articles away though - basically, it's Ocean Waves done right ... Anyway - final thoughts on Ocean Waves. If you have to see it, then it's fine but there's a dozen or so better Ghibli films you could be watching instead. 

With Ghibli's new mission to find a way to continue the legacy of Miyazaki and Takahata seemingly limping out of the gate, it would be a case of returning back to the tried-and-tested formula of the old masters. Takahata's new project was finally on the horizon and hopes were high it could match the immense quality of Only Yesterday and Grave of the Fireflies...more on that next time...

No comments on an English dub this time since one is not available in the UK.