Whisper of the Heart Review
Studio Ghibli has always excelled at one thing in particular: understanding young people. No one — and I mean no one — does it better than them. Whisper of The Heart is one of their best demonstrations of it, perfectly demonstrating that the pursuit of your own path is not a rebellion against social norms.
This film excels in tackling subjects that many young people can relate to and I firmly believe that that's why Studio Ghibli works always seem to appeal to a younger audience. Ghibli's directors are true geniuses at what they do. The big three of Kondo, Miyazaki, Takahata understand human emotion better than most people do, or ever will. They understand how people really feel on the inside about things and it's what makes their films feel real. It helps you connect to them relating to Shizuku is really easy to relate to as I'm sure many of us have slacked off on schoolwork to pursue our goals and aspirations.
As always, this movie is both visually and audibly appealing from great sound work to great animation whilst being phenomenally written. There's very little to bash it on; however, it falls just short of being perfect. It's not the fact it does something poorly because, truly it doesn't; however, it's the fact that it doesn't showcase anything amazing. It's a great film, phenomenal even but it's not perfect.
WoTH shows Shizuku swept up in a storm of emotions of love and mainly determination. The determination to prove to herself — no, prove to the world — that she can achieve her goals even if not for her, for her prince of books: Seiji.
Sometimes doing what you want is best rather than doing what society tells you to, and this film portrays that wonderfully. Shizuku striving relentlessly for her idea of success: writing her first novel no matter the consequences to show herself that she can also be successful like her soon-betrothed Seiji who seeks to be a violin maker.
Even if these two don't stick together through it all, even if they don't end up marrying each other down the line like they agreed to, even if they become strangers, they would have both encouraged each other to shoot for their goals and chase them, and that's good enough.
If you enjoyed this review please do give it an upvote! I'm an aspiring film director/media critic. If you'd like to read more of these, I write a lot on anime that I really enjoy that you can be sure to see more of as I start to watch more shows I get really passionate about. Thank you for reading nevertheless and I will be sure to write more of these on animes and films I truly love, :]