Review of Whisper of the Heart
It's not always "what" they do, it's how they do it. There's a scene where Shizuku and her sister are talking but they're in a bunk bed with her sister on top and her on bottom. So Shizuku is just looking up at the top of a moving bunk bed as the voice of her sister. I know it sounds like a small thing but the angles in this movie are really nice, nice cinematography, it makes this world feel lived in. Not to mention they nail the slice of life stuff, they make it feel so real by adding these little details that youwouldn't normally see in a movie, and it makes sure to account for the empty space as well.
Normally that's a bad thing for a movie but this uses it to its advantage. She runs down the street and a dog barks "Can you bark a little louder?" they give a peek at the old man's life before the movie, Yuko says she's not speaking to her father, the mom taking college classes, stuff like that, that isn't essential or contributing to the plot but the world building, the character building. I always hear that kind of stuff about Spirited Away and how the world feels like an actual world you would want to go live in, I just must not have caught it back then so I might need to see it again.
To expand upon that, the shading in this thing is gorgeous, the animation is so nice, it doesn't have that bubbly crying like more recent Ghibli movies have but I consider that a good thing, this is definitely one of my favorite Ghibli movies so far, right under Spirited Away. Also, is it a norm for Ghibli movies to have so many references? I caught quite a few, Porco Rosso, Kiki, Castle in the Sky, a scene very reminiscent of Howl, that's cool that they allude to them, not to mention The Cat Returns is a spinoff of this based on a sequence. I hate seeing that cat, he's not really a full character in this but seeing who he is actually made me reconsider whether I want to see more of him.
One minute they're fighting and the next minute they're buddy-buddy, that's one thing I know about Ghibli, they do that with their characters quite a few times and in a way it's funny.
Only slight spoilers but the bike scene is easily the best, it takes up the visual representation that he's trying to learn to make violins in order to support them both so he's climbing up this hill with her on the back of his bike and Shizuku isn't having any of that, she doesn't want to be a burden. That's another thing about Ghibli, they normally have strong female characters, Shizuku is no exception, she gets off and starts pushing the bike, helping, she wants to support too by writing to her heart's content.
Speaking of, some of the stuff she says about writing (though little) seems pretty accurate, when her parents are sitting her down, I know exactly what she's going through and how she feels, I'm a writer, I know she is itching to go back and that she feels like her parents are just dragging her away from her goal but that's not even the best of it. So during that sit down conversation, the unexpected happened, they basically say they trust her. I had to pause the movie and look in awe "Did I hear that right? They're letting her go on about it? No contest? No obstacle?" Especially after they introduce the idea that they don't push her to study hard enough towards the beginning, I was shocked they didn't try to play the "We're going to be more authoritative." card. I love it, I really love it, they support her, even though she doesn't want to even tell her parents that she's writing (I get that feeling, I literally do that, I don't show my parents my current projects) that's part of the whole reason I started watching this movie in the first place, the concept sounded really cool, kind of creepy in American standards but still very relatable and the character's drives are inspiring.