Review of Ride Your Wave

The most common method anime has of telling romance stories is the narrative of people falling in love in high school. What happens next, whether it’s the actual relationship or the fact that there is a life after high school is very often overlooked. Fortunately for us, Yuasa saw this opportunity to create a genuinely engaging summer romance. The story starts when some knackers start using fireworks like a group of idiots, which accidentally sets fire to our heroine, Hinako’s, house. The fireman that saves her, Minato, recognises her as that one cool surfer chick, she offers to teach him how to surf and the twofall in love, through a genuinely adorable musical sequence. I don’t want to spoil what happens, but the way that the song is used here really helps to sell the fact that this couple is genuinely in love, which is difficult to do when the characters themselves aren’t speaking to each other.

If the whole film was just this one romance, I would have loved it, and said that it was probably the best anime romance of the decade. Instead, a genuinely shocking plot twist completely changes the movie. I would strongly advise that you go into this movie blind, and just trust me when I say that around half an hour in, the emotional weight of the movie heightens to a new extreme. It can be a little bit clumsy at times with the melodrama but considering the reason for said melodrama, I’d say the film get’s a pass.

The only real criticism I have is that the knackers were really generic, and while I get that fleshing them out would have definitely dragged the pacing a bit, come on, there was nothing else he could do? Also, one of the biggest emotional revelations for Hinako wasn’t really foreshadowed as opposed to spoiled by the opening scene of the movie. It’s like they didn’t want it to come out of nowhere but couldn’t think of a better way of divulging the information than the method they chose, which while vague, is specific enough that I got why the event was important even if I didn’t know what exactly the event was.

These are more nitpicks than anything else though, and if you’re looking for what I would consider to be up there with Ping Pong in terms of Yuasa’s best work, then I urge you to watch this film.

9/10

This Review is actually the script to this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuiQyCshoog

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