Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
At Kichijōji Station, Tokyo, Taku Morisaki glimpses a familiar woman on the platform opposite boarding a train. Later, her photo falls from a shelf as he exits his apartment before flying to Kōchi Prefecture. Picking it up, he looks at it briefly before leaving. As the aeroplane takes off, he narrates the events that brought her into his life...
Ocean Waves is a modest, introspective Ghibli TV film that handles teenage friendship and unrequited love with quiet naturalism. The plot is episodic and occasionally meandering, relying on flashback structure that works but doesn't fully cohere. The voice acting is competent but lacks the expressiveness of major Ghibli productions. Cinematography is restrained and understated — functional rather than striking, with little of the visual ambition of Miyazaki or Takahata. Its novelty lies in its grounded, slice-of-life tone, unusual for Ghibli, though the love triangle setup is familiar. The ending feels inconclusive and undercooked, leaving emotional threads unresolved in a way that frustrates rather than intrigues.