A beautiful tale of love, loss, and grief. The film manages to excel in every area and is definitely worth your time. · Waifora

Ride Your Wave Review

Name: A beautiful tale of love, loss, and grief. The film manages to excel in every area and is definitely worth your time.
Item: Ride Your Wave
Rating: 100
Author: dommywommy

Summary Ride Your Wave is a beautiful tale of love, loss, and managing grief. It tells an important story. More importantly, it tells it very well. Surprisingly, I had no complaints about any aspect of the film and very much enjoyed my time watching it. As is also very unusual for me, I will definitely be rewatching it. This movie is going down as one of my favourites. I think the story is important, the characters were well developed, and the visual style is second-to-none. Finally, the soundtrack was killer and I love how the main song is integrated as a large part of the story and a very important plot device. This movie is well worth your time. Please consider watching it. SCORE: 10/10Story If you’ve read any of my other reviews, you may get the sense that I’m slightly addicted to sad movies. Okay, maybe I’m very addicted. Ride Your Wave is a beautiful story that deals with love, loss, and grief. Without spoiling the premise of the movie, the main character goes on an arduous journey and has to learn to cope with the loss of a loved one. It really is a beautiful story, and it felt very real and relevant. Everyone grieves in their own ways, and this story is a very creative expression of grief and individual experience. Honestly, I loved it. The first 30 or so minutes are great, but once the movie really takes off it becomes even greater. I honestly thought this was a romcom when I downloaded it so I wasn’t expecting such a gripping story, but boy am I happy I was wrong. This movie was amazing. Honestly, I have no complaints about the story, which is quite strange and unusual for me. I was captured from the very first moment until the very last. Ride Your Wave is definitely worth your time. SCORE: 10/10Characters Again, I really have no complaints about the characters in this story. As is normal for a movie, there isn’t as much character development as in, say, a full series, though this isn’t a problem because the characters are written well right out of the gate. I don’t even have any complaints about the main character! She wasn’t cringe at all! The characterization in this film was superb, and I really enjoyed how every character dealt with their mutual grief in very different ways, which I feel reflects reality quite well. No complaints at all. SCORE: 10/10Visuals When I first watched the trailer for Ride Your Wave, I wasn’t sold on the visual style. I thought it was going to be poorly animated. WOW, was I wrong. This movie had beautiful animation, and a beautiful colour palette. I’m a huge fan of vibrant colours, which this movie made use of. I would definitely say from an animation/design standpoint, this movie belongs right up there with something like Violet Evergarden. Though, not the same style, it still manages to pull of its own style with a very high level of mastery. I was very impressed, and I will have to check out the studio’s other work. SCORE: 10/10Music

Music plays an incredibly integral part to the overall atmosphere of the film, and the main song actually plays a very large part in the story. The beauty of the main song is that it actually becomes more and more relevant as the movie goes on, and by the end of the film it really takes on its full meaning and can be enjoyed to the fullest extent. I really liked it. It’s on my “Japanese Music” spotify playlist now. I really, really, really liked it. Both the version with the main characters singing and the soundtrack version. They are both great. Here’s a link to the song, which I think you should listen to even if you don’t plan on watching the movie. SCORE: 10/10Enjoyment

It’s no secret… I enjoyed this film. I’m giving it a perfect score for a reason. It’s strange for me to give a movie a perfect score and to have zero complaints about any of the aspects of the film. Typically, films excel in one area while trailing in another, or they experience some type of Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none type of problem where they are just meh at everything but not great at anything. This movie does not suffer that problem. Ride Your Wave manages to tell an important, timeless, and inspirational tale about managing grief, and I think it stands above any other animated film I’ve watched in recent memory. It is going on my favourites-of-all-time list for sure. Please, do yourself a favour and watch this film and allow yourself to be fully immersed for the short 1.5 hour watch-time. You won’t regret it. SCORE: 10/10

P.S
If you enjoyed this review, please feel free to check out my other reviews. They’re all not nearly as good as this one, though.  Also, feel free to start a conversation with me about this film or any other great anime films! I’m new to anime films so I’m always looking for recommendations. I appreciate you reading until the end! Thanks!