Whispers of the Heart |
Rating: |  out of  |
Credits: | See IMDB. They are all in Japanese and I would just be copying from there anyway. |
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DVD: | From The Archive of Studio Ghibli |
Zone: | All |
Video Signal: | NTSC |
Screen Shots: | Introducing the Deus Ex Feline (~165K for 4 pics) |
| Shizuku has set herself the task of reading 20 books during vacation even though she is supposed to be studying for the high school entrance exams. She likes fairy tales and notices that all her current library books have been checked out just a few days previously by the same boy, Seiji. |
| Meanwhile, one of her cram school assignments was to translate some English language poetry to Japanese. She has chosen, or been assigned, "Country Roads" by John Denver. Shizuku leaves a library book with her variation "Concrete Roads" on a park bench and when she goes back to fetch it, there is a boy reading her poem and making snide remarks about it. |
| Another day, Shizuku takes her dad his lunch and gets sidetracked following a cat she met on the train. The cat leads her to a fascinating antiques store. Unfortunately, she goes off without her Dad's lunch but the same boy shows up on his bike with the lunch and more annoying quips. |
| If you guessed that the annoying boy is Seiji, the book boy, you would be absolutely correct. As Shizuku gets to know Seiji she finds that she likes him a lot and he likes her. The fly in the ointment is he has his future as a master violin maker all planned out and she doesn't have the slightest idea what she wants to do with her life. |
| Whispers of the Heart doesn't have the fantastical elements most Americans associate with anime from watching Sailor Moon and even the Miyazaki movies like My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Princess Mononoke. It's just a story about an everyday girl finding her place in an everyday world. |
| I found it a little slowpaced, but not in an unenjoyable way. The movie opens with Olivia Newton-John singing "Country Roads" (why her?) and periodically the characters will sing Shizuku's current variation which is always interesting. |
| The DVD is out of the Chinese edition of the Archive of Studio Ghibli and also has Princess Mononoke on it. The picture is not anamorphic but perfectly acceptable. However, every so often, a bug for the DVD company (I think) appears on top of the picture. On our TV it wasn't very distracting. The sound is fine. The subtitles are legible with few, if any, typos. |
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