ANI-MOVIES, *Whisper Of The Heart

The late Yoshifumi Kondo had been a veteran in the anime biz for decades before taking up director duties on the only project he oversaw for Studio Ghibli, Whister Of The Heart was the first film done by the studio not to be directed by either Haoyo Miyazaki or Isao Takahata(more noted for Grave Of The Fireflies), and became a great note for Kondo's legacy just a few years before he passed away. The movie was based on the manga by Aoi Hiiragi, who hasn't had many other her other titles released in English, so the anime is one of the few exposures Western audiences have to her work. This anime was the first theatrical film not directed by Ghibli's Big Two, and unlike their former titles wasn't a fantasy/adventure, but a modern day coming of age story.

Middle schooler Shizuku is struggling with schoolwork while constantly reading fairy tales and other fantasy fiction, while spending most of her time reading books from the public library her father works at. She notices most of the books she gets were previously checked out by another boy named Seiji. One day she follows a roaming cat to a hidden away antiques shop run by a kind old man whose grandson happens to be Seiji, which at first she can't believe because Shizuku's first encounters the fellow schoolmate with him teasing her, despite the fact that his original attempts to gain her attention were met with failure as she was lost in her own world. Seiji informs Shizuku that he'll be in Italy for two months to become a violin crafter, and might not be joining her as they move onto high school. Shizuku dedicates the intervening tkime proving to herself that she can work towards a goal by creating a story based on the mysterious cat statue she amazes over in Seiji's grandfather's shop. She completes her self-appointed task just as Seiji returns early to declare his love for her.

Aside from the slice-of-life nature of a theatrical Studio Ghibli project, its real life setting makes it slightly hard to sell to younger viewers hoping to see something more whimsical like My Neighbor Totoro. This makes Whisper Of The Heart somewhat of a cult hit among Ghibli titles. The original Disney dub has a great cast to it, which was eventually re-released through GKids, and the different versions of Take Me Home played in both the English and Japanese editions througout the film make for an interesting piece of American nostalgia. This movie was followed up by a spinoff of sorts titled The Cat Returns based on Shizuku's story she wrote in itself was more of a fantasy adventure, even though Whisper Of The Heart is a heartwarming and purely charming feature on its own.