Review of Whisper of the Heart

Generally speaking, I love Ghibli movies, but this one was kind of dull. Very heavy on the teen romance, very light on the magical elements. (And the theme song being a play on "Country Roads" was a little... odd.) Visually, it was beautiful. I just kept waiting for the story to go somewhere, and it didn't really. Not to mention it has one of the most abrupt endings I've ever seen in any story. Which might sound a little harsh, because I did like the characters well enough. Seiji got off to a rough start, but I really liked him once they started developing his character.I'm a big fan of stories about people who are really passionate about their craft. Shizuku felt very relatable too. I loved how that passion for writing took over her life by the mid-point. And I really felt that pressure-- how she's not even in high school yet but feels like if she doesn't have her life figured out by now, she's doomed for failure. (And the romance is very sweet, but a love story is never enough to stand alone for me.)

It felt like a very slice-of-life, glimpse into one tiny moment in a person's life, coming of age sort of story. I just wish it went somewhere. I would have even settled for it switching a bit more between Shizuku's real life and Shizuku mentally living out the story about the Baron she was writing. Neither of those stories really felt like they had enough substance to them. I kept waiting for some kind of concrete life lesson to be communicated. The credits started rolling, and I just had to stare for a few seconds like, "Really? That's it?"