Hacker Cinema
Whisper of the Heart
耳をすませば
1995 · Film · 111 min
Directed by Yoshifumi Kondo
Shizuku lives a simple life, dominated by her love for stories and writing. One day she notices that all the library books she has have been previously checked out by the same person: "Seiji Amasawa."
8 positive6 neutralfrom 14 commenters
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16 comments on Hacker News
Another film she did the colors on is Whisper of the Heart. It's a Ghibli film that was written by Miyazaki, but directed by Yoshifumi Kondō. The colors are truly outstanding. Scenes at dawn, lamplit rooms, overcast school days, and fantasy sequences all look just wonderful.
Example: https://www.sakugabooru.com/post/show/46202
Yes, indeed, both are Ghibli movies. Whisper of the Heart is by all accounts a very successful movie and a critic darling. The cat return while not a masterpiece is an overall ok movie - I think pretty bad is harsh.
Anyway the key point is that there is more to Ghibli that Miyazaki and even Takahata in the same way there is more to Miyazaki than Ghibli.
> The studio also coproduced an interesting movie of Dudok de Wit and produced an awesome one by Kondo, a correct one by Morita and some unequal ones by Goro Miyazaki.
Can you elaborate here? Is Kondo, Yoshifumo Kondo's Whisper of the Heart? Is Morita, Hiroyuki Morita's Cat return? I thought Cat return was a pretty bad movie by any account, but I'm also not sure what you mean by it being "a correct one".
No better way to do it than release-order. Start with The Castle of Cagliostro and make your way to The Wind Rises. I'd recommend watching the films he wrote but didn't direct as well, which are Whisper of the Heart, The Secret World of Arrietty, and From Up on Poppy Hill.
Princess Mononoke is my favorite film of all time. Whisper of the Heart is a close second.
Howl's Moving Castle really falls apart at the end, and it's a shame.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky are the most similar in feeling to Princess Mononoke. High fantasy, adventure, against all odds. (This is my favorite batch of Ghibli / Miyazaki / Takahata films.)
Spirited Away is an otherworldly coming of age treasure that cannot be missed. Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service feel similar. Whisper of the Heart is this too, just aimed a little older. (And if you like that, check out Your Name by Shinkai or Wolf Children by Hosoda - not Ghibli films, but very deserving of a watch if you like this sort of film.)
Grave of the Fireflies is a very poignant anti-war film.
FWIW, I bought the old Miramax domain name for Princess Mononoke and kept the website online [1]. It's one of my favorite films. I wish Miyazaki made more films like Mononoke and Nausicaa - they're sublime.
[1] http://princess-mononoke.com
From memory, the original image/clip was taken directly from a Ghibli movie, "Whisper of the Heart", but following a copyright complaint, it was replaced with an original work that was the same style and subject matter (a girl with her cat studying in her room, with a nice view out the window).
Some of the captcha photos remind me of Studio Ghibli's animation films, in a positive way. The films linger on random objects in landscapes, from a variety of perspectives, for longer than feels "natural". Something about the effect is mesmerizing.
When I finished Whisper of the Heart, I remembered thinking that Kondo had made the suburbs of Tokyo look beautiful. It seemed that he'd done so simply by depicting them, by showing them as worth looking at.
Wikipedia has an article on lofi_girl/chilledcow channels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lofi_Girl
> Dimitri chose the character of Shizuku Tsukishima from the Studio Ghibli film Whisper of the Heart as the face of the channel, with footage of her studying or writing used in the streams. When the popularity of the streams ultimately led to some getting taken down for copyright violations, Dimitri decided to maintain the Ghibli-esque aesthetic but with an original character and put out a call for artists.
> a screencap from the "Whisper of the Heart" movie. I doubt it's licensed.
Studio Ghibli did release a lot of screenshots from many of their movies about 6 months ago¹, but this movie is not among those included.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24564775
Can't have contributions when the images likely aren't even under a license that would allow use like this. I guess it's better not to say where they are from and hope people don't notice...
The image of the girl lying on the floor is a screencap from the "Whisper of the Heart" movie. I doubt it's licensed. Various "lo-fi" YouTube channels used to do that as well, but got copyright strikes and changed to original artwork.
https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/anime-790045/is-studio-ghibli-behind-the-chilledcow-youtube-cha-1891305/
I think this movie is a really good take on the relationship between the Japanese education system and "creativity":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_of_the_Heart
A 14 year old girl struggles between doing the socially expected thing and study to do well on her exams and get into a good university someday, or do what she really wants, which is to write. She is inspired by other creative people, outside the Japanese mainstream, and eventually receives her parents' blessing to take a different path.
Porco Rosso, Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, and Princess Mononoke are good. In fact, they're arguably some of his best.
But my favorites will always be Kiki's Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky, and Whisper of the Heart. They may not be Miyzaki at his best, but they were the films that I loved the most.
The Wind Rises may also join the latter category. Either way, it's a really good film.
Finally, it should be noted that Kaze Ni Naru from The Cat Returns is possibly one of my favorite songs from any anime, ever. And I watch a lot of anime.
Suffice to say it's up on the list with A Cruel Angel's Thesis, and Tank. For you anime fans who know what that means, yes, it's that good, IMHO. YMMV.
The studio ghibli movie, Whisper of the Heart has a plot point that revolves around this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_of_the_Heart
I disagree that Ghibli films are not as pretty as Pixar or Disney. In my (arguably subjective) eyes Ghibli animation seems much more aesthetically pleasing and "warmer-feeling" than CGI. And on a second notice, although I have huge respect for the artists that are involved in the production of Pixar films, it deeply saddens me to see that traditional animation seems like a second-class citizen in modern-day Hollywood. It's been years since I've last watched a high-profile traditionally animated film from western studios. And it's not just the style, I think that thematically and character-wise Pixar et al. films feel so generic when compared to eg. Nausicaa or Spirited Away or even Whisper of the Heart. And it's not only studio Ghibli, it always seemed to me that Japanese animators try to innovate a bit more thematically than their western counterparts. See for example the movies of Sathoshi Kon (like Paprika, or Millenium Actress). They have such a unique adult-oriented perspective on animated storytelling that is unlike anything Pixar has put out.
An outstanding anime on the topic of overcoming the culture of risk aversion in Japan is Whisper of the Heart. (耳をすませば is the Japanese title.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_of_the_Heart
A teenage girl spends much of her time reading books that interest her and is drawn toward writing fantasy fiction on her own. This runs against the grain of the cultural norm of devoting herself to studying for university entrance exams.
She is inspired by a boy her age devoted to making and playing violins, who goes to Italy for a year to pursue this dream. His family supports and encourages him in this endeavor.
Her parents are understandably worried about her choice to pursue this risky dream, but decide to support her choice in the end.
The movie really drew me in emotionally to what it must be like to choose a more creative path in a society with a strong norm of conformity. It made me think of how the animators must have felt telling this story, as it must have mirrored their own past.
It also makes me wonder how so many creative people have managed to flourish in Japan, and what path they took to arrive there. There is so much creativity in manga, anime, video games, and all the other cultural artifacts of Japan so popular throughout the world.
And what about the Japanese who do manage to successfully start new businesses? How do they manage it?