Ocean Waves

Ocean Waves (海がきこえる) is slice of life romance film based on the novel of the same name by Himuro Saeko.  The film was produced by Studio Ghibli and directed by Mochizuki Tomomi.

    Morisaki Taku's middle school class was deprived of their school trip for questionable reasons.  His protest of the situation strengthened his friendship with Matsuno Yutaka, who also protested the cancellation.  The school promised the students a trip to Hawaii during high school to make up for it.  In high school a girl from Tokyo transfers to their school, her arrival threatens the bond the two friends have.

    Muta Rikako moves to Kochi from Tokyo due to her parents separating.  Her beauty, athletic prowess and scholarly aptitude makes her classmates both admire and despise her.  Due to this and her personality traits she ends up alone.  While many of the boys are attracted to her, Yutaka is the only one that ends up talking with her.  He stealthily brags to Taku about spending time with her outside of school and eludes to some of her familial difficulties.  During the trip to Hawaii Rikako approaches Taku for the first time, to borrow money from him.  Months later, still unpaid, Taku ends up accompanying her to Tokyo as she tries to reconnect with her father.  The results of the trip and Taku's general oblivious nature, cause severe strains on his relationship with Yutaka.  Rumors of the trip at school also cause problems between Taku and Rikako.  As Taku returns to Kochi for a school reunion, a number of years later, will the passage of time heal the damage done?

    Ocean Waves is a relatively straight forward drama about human interactions and the inevitable change of childhood.  The series does a good job of filling in background details through character dialogue, especially for things that become more relevant later on.  Visually the movie is not as striking as other Ghibli films, very close to the character design and animation style of Only Yesterday.  The film also reminded me a lot of the OAV series Here is Greenwood, in its tone and story progression.  The fact that the same director directed that series makes this more than understandable.  While not the best Ghibli film by a long shot it is worth the time for those who enjoy human drama's.  I was expecting one of the main characters to meet an untimely death at some point, to push the film into serious drama mode.  Instead it coasted along on its projected course, not wavering much from the pace that it established in the beginning of the film.

    To be honest this one slipped well under my radar and I didn't even know it existed until I saw it at a local library and immediately checked it out.  I went in with out any expectations and am not sure what I feel about it.  The story is far from what people expect out of Ghibli films if they are only familiar with Miyazaki's grand fantasies.  This is the only film that Mochizuki directed under Ghibli, being more well known for working on Ranma 1/2 and Kimagure Orange Road.  It was originally made for TV and comes in at under an hour and a half.  Even if you are just watching it to see every film that came out of Ghibli you won't have wasted too much time if you were disappointed with it.

    The film was released in 2017 by GKids in North America.

ReLIFE - manga

ReLIFE is a web comic created by Yayoiso.  The manga was published online from Fall of 2013 until Spring of 2018 and encompassed 222 issues.

    Kaizaki Arata is essentially a 27 year old NEET.  He quit his fist real job over the treatment of the woman who was training him.  Due to the negative connotation that has left on his resume he has struggled to return to the 'proper' workforce, instead working part time jobs and hiding his lack of 'real' employment from his friends.  One night he is approached by a man named Yoake Ryo who presents him with an interesting opportunity to turn his life around.  Yoake works for a company called ReLIFE that has developed a drug which transforms someones physical appearance tothat of a different age.  Yoake tells Kaizaki that if he chooses he will be transformed to look like a high school student and redo his Senior year as a way of recapturing his youthful spirit in hopes of changing his viewpoint on life.  When he has successfully completed the year, ReLIFE will help him to enter the workforce again.

    With little choice left Kaizaki agree's to the experiment and becomes a high school student again.  While he is pretending to be a 17 year old version of himself he has to obey a few rules.  He can't tell anyone what is actually going on, if he does the experiment is over and his memory is erased of all events.  In order for him to have a successful ReLIFE he has to participate in his student life and show effort to grow and learn.  Yoake will be posing as a student to help monitor and guide him through the experiment.  Once the year has completed everyone's memory of Kaizaki will be erased and he will return to his adult form.

    Kaizaki enjoys his ReLIFE at first and quickly becomes friends with a group of classmates, even working to help them overcome their own personal struggles and encouraging their relationships with each other to blossom.  But as the year progresses he begins to have feelings for one of the girls in his class.  Part of the problem is that she is a minor and he is an adult, so he fights hard to not cross that line.  But as she becomes more important to him on an emotional level he struggles with the hole he will leave in her when the experiment is done and he is erased from her memories.

    ReLIFE was a fantastically enjoyable read with a strong cast of characters through out its span.  While Kaizaki is the main character, a large portion of the story revolves around everyone working to foster the relationship between two of the other characters.  At times Kaizaki himself becomes a background character for a number of story arcs.  In reality the best approach would be to watch the first 13 episodes of the anime and then pick up the manga at about issue 100 and read it till the end.  The original TV anime covers that first half of the manga pretty well so you can cut out some unneeded reading and jump into the second half.

    A 4 part OAV series was produced and released to coincide with the end of the manga.  The OAV's cover a some of the major plot arcs in the last 120 issues of the manga but gloss over a few things entirely.  While some parts of the manga do drag a bit too much in my mind, it is worth the read in the end.  A lot of attention is put into developing the main group of characters personalities and their interactions with each other.  The struggles, the hang ups and the challenges they face in becoming adults.  All while Kaizaki, who has already gone through these experiences, sits on the sidelines, trying to become a better adult while also offering advice to his classmates.

    A major benefit of ReLIFE being released digitally is that all of the pages or every issue are in color.  While the backgrounds can many times be non-existent, the character designs are well done, particularly when they take on comical features.

The Gods Lie

The Gods Lie (神様がうそをつく) is single volume slice of life drama manga by Ozaki Kaori.  The series was originally published in 2013.

    Sixth grader Nanao Natsuru moved to a new town at the beginning of the school year but quickly made himself an enemy of the girls in his class by rejecting the class princess.  Relegated to his fate he decides to focus all of his energy on soccer.  As the summer break approaches the teams elderly coach becomes hospitalized and Natsuru disagrees with the new coaches style.  Instead of going to his overnight soccer camp, and being stuck with the new coach, he decides to stay in town, without his mother knowing.

    He is saved from having to live on the streets for the duration of the camp by his strange classmate Suzumura Rio.  Natsuru learns that Rio and her young brother live all alone in their families dilapidated house, hiding the fact that their father is absent from everyone around them.  He ends up staying with them for the duration of his soccer camp, growing close to the misfit classmate and pretending that they are a family.  Unfortunately his fantasy has to come to an end when both the summer camp concludes and the reality of his classmates existence becomes apparent to him and why she and her brother are hiding the fact they are two minors on their own.


    This is a short coming of age story that does a pretty good job of developing its main character personalities and motivations.  The artwork is pretty fantastic, including realistic character designs.  Over all the story was enjoyable and well made.  But of course, there are a few exceptions.  Overall the realism in the story is well done but when it comes to Natsuru's mother it becomes overtaken by juvienal fantasy.  His mother works as a light novel author, which already makes her abnormal in the sense of her employment and personality.  But the thing that its really out of place and doesn't serve any purpose to the story is that she allows her son to fondle her breasts...like when she's washing dishes or cooking.  Its really strange and doesn't serve any purpose to the story...at all.  Beyond that, fantastic story and well worth the time.

The manga was published in English by Vertical and is currently available.