Kimi to, Nami ni Noretara

I picked up this film for no other reason than the fact that it was directed by Masaaki Yuasa. This is a very different type of story than he would typically adapt. It's a story about love, coming of age and learning to move on from loss. Colorful, vibrant and fairly easygoing, it does away with most of Yuasa's hallmarks of frantic and wild fever dreams.

Nothing wrong with that, however I don't think the movie is very successful at giving its lead much of anything to do besides being an absolutely hopeless blubbering mess who comes off as a dysfunctional klutz who needs her hand ... held by her knight in shining armor.

The film starts off showing Hinako - the female lead - as an elusive, glowing trophy. Two friends, Minato and Wasabi, admire her surfing in the distance. They don't know her name, and accept that her existence in their lives could be as fleeting. Yet fate has her cross paths with both of them, and in fact Minato ends up saving her from a fire, and the two of them start dating.

It's then that you learn that Hinako is basically only good at surfing and doesn't have her life together in any way. She can't take care of herself, her house is a mess, she can't cook, she doesn't have a job - in fact, it's never quite made clear what exactly she's doing with her life. Minato, on the other hand, does everything for her and is basically the perfect cookie-cutter boyfriend. She becomes quite reliant on him. The only thing he can't do is surf, which Hinako teaches him.

After a series of tragic events, Hinako spends the rest of the film acting like a lunatic when she learns she can sing a song to make an apparition appear in water whenever she needs its advice - which is basically all the time. The problem is, no one else can see this except her. So naturally, everyone around her finds her behavior strange. I can't tell if these portions of the film are supposed to be funny, or sad, or perhaps even both. It's a bizarre mix of emotions and it lacks any kind of magic or chemistry. The romantic chemistry only exists because of dependency issues, and Minato is such a flat and uninteresting character that it's hard to be anywhere near as infatuated with him much as Hinako is.

The supporting cast is .. there. The only voice of reason is the stone cold Youko, Minato's sister. Minato's friend Wasabi doesn't do much of note besides live in the shadow of his buddy. And there's really not much more to it.

As the title suggests, the film is supposed to be about Hinako learning how to "ride the wave" of her life. But constantly throughout the film she howls and begs for others help. It's only at the very tail end of the story that Hinako learns to grow, and only because of Minato's help. She never once accomplishes anything on her own accord.

It's an unsatisfying story because of this abrupt end to Hinako's arc. The ending is bittersweet, as one might imagine, but it lacks any emotional punch. Hinako is hard to care about because she doesn't grow or change much, and when she does it feels unearned. Minato is hard to care about because he's basically an ideal and not much of a character. I, personally, only really enjoyed Youko's brief time on screen, a minor character by all means.

Should you watch "Ride Your Wave"? I'm not sure who I would answer "yes" to. If you like the works of Masaaki Yuasa, you probably are looking in the wrong place. If you like romantic stories, the relationships aren't fleshed out enough here to give a satisfying romance. Everything that "Ride Your Wave" represents falls flat. Perhaps it could offer some catharsis for those going through loss, but I think there are many other stories out there that do it better. If you are looking for anime in that vein, I might recommend something like "The Wind Rises", "Shinsekai Yori" or "Katanagatari" instead.

*Spoilers ahead, though I try to be vague.*

I made the mistake of renting this movie, and I don't know what I miss more: my money, my time, or my sanity.

This movie is a mess from the start. Within the first twenty minutes, they establish a romance between the main characters, Hinako and Minato. It's cliche, predictable, and I found myself cringing. I can't understand how we, as the viewers, are supposed to feel emotionally invested, or even care about the characters when the movie speeds through their relationship, just to get it out of the way.

The viewer must sit through a terrible song, sung ... by Hinako and Minato, as they go on dates to establish that, 'look, these two are in love'. After that's over, tragedy strikes. I felt nothing but annoyance at this point, but I continued to watch.

Hinako soon realizes that she can summon her beloved by singing the song from the relationship montage. I close my eyes and take a breath. I know where this is going. Sure enough, that terrible song is sung, repeatedly, over the entire course of the movie.

Does anyone remember that meme of Mr. Incredible where he's on the ground, clearly in pain, with the caption "I can't...not again. I'm not...strong enough" -- because this is how I felt every time Hinako sang that @#%! song. The singing was like nails on chalkboard. It made me grit my teeth. I felt my blood pressure rise with each broken note.

Music aside, Hinako is obnoxious and unlikable. She sulks, pouts, and makes everything all about her, despite the fact that others are suffering too. She acts erratically and obsessively. She comes across as unintelligent and klutzy, without any redeeming qualities. She's nothing without her man. I haven't disliked a character so much in a long time.

In contrast, Minato is the 'cool guy'. He's laidback, intelligent (I guess), seems to have his life together, and is completely enamored with Hinako, which is frustrating to watch. I failed to see where the attraction stemmed from, but they touch on that later, and...well. I've seen better plot twists on the Neopets RP boards.

But I digress. Hinako just can't seem to move on, so she brings Minato with her wherever she goes, except he's carried around in a water bottle and in a blowup porpoise, because he can only exist in water. Oh, and she's the only one that can see him, so her friends think she's crazy. Rightfully so.

Minato's character offers nothing. He throws up the shaka (surfs up) sign in every scene, offering little tidbits of encouragement while Hinako goes off the deep end. She acts giddy and seems to think that their relationship can persevere despite the fact that her man is literally in a water bottle.

All the while, the "goal" of the movie is for Hinako to 'ride her own wave', aka move on without Minato.

And...that's the movie. What you expect to happens, happens. It's predictable, it's boring, it's cringeworthy and frustrating. I enjoyed Lu Over the Wall, so I thought I'd like this one, but it's a hard pass. If anything, watch it to see how bad it is, but don't spend your money like I did. My review may come across as harsh, but I don't care. I haven't disliked a movie this much in a long time.

Let me start by saying I learned how to write a review on MAL just to write this review. This movie really had some promise, the premise is alright and what it more or less wanted to do could be a good story, but it fails on so many crucial parts. To be fair I'll start with what I liked.

First I actually quite liked the music, and by that I mean musically they were not bad songs. I also did enjoy the two main characters singing together as it added some nice wholesomeness to the montage. Secondly I did like the ... art, backgrounds and still objects were very beautiful and things were vibrant when it needed to be and muted where they weren't. I also enjoyed the couple of action/fire sequences as they were fairly well done and quite engaging. And finally the core story is good, dealing with a person having to handle the loss of a loved one and the toll it can take on them.

Those were the few pros that bumped it up to a 3, but here are the things that it really does poorly. First minor problem is the animation and character design, Im all for unique art styles and character design but these designs often make the characters look down right stupid and often took away from deep moments in the movie as they made silly and exaggerated looking faces, also their animations were often distracting and really took away from the tone being set at times.

Second is the characters, these might be minor spoilers but I will try to remain vague. Our two main characters are pretty underwhelming but not inherently bad. Hinako can be a little stupid at times but overall she was probably the best, Minato was simply bland and so overly romantic at times I almost felt like Hinako was being set up or lured into a trap, see the sudden heart card and lock in the tower. Wasabi was a very nothing character as well, providing very little to the plot except for some very forced feeling conflict with him trying to date his dead friends GF. Finally Youko was by far the worst character, she was a rotten human being and the only explanation for this was she had a sharp tongue as she spews insults and practically mock a girl whose BF just died. Her "redemption arc" also consisted of nothing more than "she has a crush now so she cant be bad." Id also like to bring up the fact that Youko and Wasabi did practically nothing to help Hinako who was, as far as they knew, having a mental breakdown.

Next is pacing. Im a fairly decent reader of subtitles and yet the characters talked so fast throughout the entire film, I found my self constantly pausing and rewinding to read what was said. And yet despite this it seemed like very little was actually being said, towards the end I could gloss over about 60% of the dialog and still understand what was happening. It seemed like the film was constantly racing to get to its two big climaxes, the ending and the other one.

Sound design was also a big problem, while the music used was quite good musically, the way the sound designers used it a lot of the time ruined it. I often found myself getting interested in some very dramatic and sad scenes only to quickly get snapped out of it by the borderline happy music being played. They also did a couple cuts from loud music to sudden silenced, this worked once to create tension but the others times just made me thing my audio cut out.

Finally the story, as I said before the premise isn't bad, however the lightning fast pacing and pointless and/or unlikeable characters caused me to not care about the issues occurring through almost the whole film. The set up to Minato and Hinako's relationship was done in about 5 minutes of montage and then the audience is supposed to feel a connection. For me this connection was never made and any investment I might have had in these characters was quickly swept away by their unlikeable personalities and terrible character design.

Overall I was incredibly disappointed, the art and synopsis looked very interesting and what clips I had seen before hand tuned out to be by far the best the movie had to offer. Its obvious that the background artists and the musicians were not included in some meetings as they are the only reason this film gets a 3 over a 1.

The message of the film is great and the two secondary characters were pretty well executed. They both had their own life and issues related towards the male lead and showcasing that added a lot towards the detail on his death. Despite there being one scene that leaned towards the friend becoming the main female's second lover, it didn't bear any fruits. Michiru Oshima is great as always. It's a shame that half of the soundtrack is just the vocal track.

However that is the only praise for it's story writing that I can give. The pacing is a mess. It poorly built up the ... romance and that greatly impacts the entire second half of the movie. A decent chunk of the scenes only exist just to showcase how good at animation the studio is, which is unnecessary wasted time in a film where every second counts.

The second half is the meat of the story, however there it seems to have conflicting messages. It seemed like they couldn't decide whether the delusions were a positive thing or unhealthy. For a movie that's whole message is about moving on, the climax wholeheartedly acts as if her delusions worked. It's a smack in the face of the message and frankly ruins what should've been a decent film. How does justifying her deluded reality give any closure? And how exactly does him having a non-subtle effect on the world add to the clear message? The is easily one of Masaaki Yasua's weakest works. I enjoyed it, however I can't say that it's a good film with the major blunder that is the climax.

I recommend seeing his previous works if you liked this one. They do a better job exploring their themes.

I was disappointed with this movie. I'm seriously sick to death of these SOL anime drama films with a magic/sci-fi element that use gooey, flashy animation to make you feel like you're watching something well written. i feel like they're being mass produced since Your Name came out, which I thought was alright, but nothing worth heralding it as on par with something put out by Ghibli. Masaaki Yuasa is hit or miss for me, but this one felt especially soulless.

writing is usually never his strong suit imo. the characters in this film weren't fleshed out beyond each of them getting one or two defining ... character tropes and that's about it. character development is not shown, instead his idea of character development is someone says "Falling in love is for idiots!" for most of the movie and then in the last 5 minutes says "NOT falling in love is for idiots!". masaaki yuasa needs to stop seeing his characters as devices to move his plot forward to the next flashy animated sequence. the themes are not carefully conveyed so much as they are beaten into your skull and then in case that wasn't enough they just explain it to you. and usually he has interesting animation to back up his films at least, but this film wasn't even all that visually memorable. sometimes the characters' movements are animated in awkward ways, the character designs are as forgettable as it gets, and the palette is just brightly colored with nothing all that stand out about it. you'd think that the animation would look better at the very least considering that this had a film budget.

i've seen 9 of Masaaki Yuasa's works at this point and this is the worst one i've watched by far.

La película me gusto, dicho eso me pareció una película poco profunda en pos de ser más accesible.

El amor está en el agua (Ride Your Wave) presenta varias recursos fáciles de entender y los mezcla para transmitir todo lo que se propone. Principalmente consiste en presentar uno de los opuestos: Minato/Hinako, y mostrar como influye el uno el otro. Hinako representa el descontrol, la euforia, caos etc que engancha el desorden de su casa, su convivencia con el fuego, perderse por la ciudad o derramar bebidas. Minato es lo contrario, representa el orden y serenidad podemos apreciarlo en como hace sus ejercicios de bombero, hace ... café o como haces comentarios más reflexivos.

Cuando Hinako y Minato interactúan ambos salen reforzados. Él ante la euforia de ella, se pone las pilas, pensamiento que ilustra con las tortugas en la playa pero que se descubre que está motivado por Hinako. Ella ve fin al caos de su vida no podía controlar. A falta de un mejor ejemplo diré que el la película empieza con ella intentando comer, hablar, por teléfono y sostener una cajas, en cuanto más interacciona con Minato menos la vemos en está tesitura.

La película presenta varias ideas interesantes pero se estropea en cuanto deciden explicar por diálogo contenido que ya entendiamos por el subtexto. Por poner un ejemplo de varios: en el primer incendio Wasabi va a rescatar a Hinako pero ve llegar desde una grua a su compañero Minato, con está escena ya queda claro que Wasabi se siente inferior a Minato, muy bien personaje bien definido. Sin embargo en la 2ª mitrad este explica esta mismo con palabras y encima poniendo el recuerdo en pantalla, mal. No me teneis que explicar lo que pasa en la película, los espectadores no somos tontos, dejadnos sacar nuestras propias conclusiones.

Para un análisis más profundo necesitaría verla otra vez, poner pausa y eso. A falta de un blu ray tendréis que conformaros con esto.