Whisper of the Heart: The Least Anime Anime

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Yoshifumi Kondo's Whisper of the Heart, and it has to be the least "anime" anime I have seen. I mean this in the sense that little of this movie needed to be done in animation. What makes it jarring: its screenplay was penned by Hayao Miyazaki, auteur of the fantastical (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso), but it's an humble, earth-bound story. It's not like the box (or Netflix envelope summary) or any description elsewhere ever promised me another exemplary tale of strange creatures and worlds that can only be done in an animated medium; I apparently have a Pavlov dog-like effect whenever Miyazaki's Studio Gibli logo shows up in front of me: Yes! Ghosts and myths and imaginative creations! Wonder!

So imagine my surprise when the movie unfolded and spent almost all of its time focusing on a simple story of first love before shifting into a tale of maturation-via-writing. This approach isn't refreshing, or novel; for much of the first half I found it slow (the second half was probably the same pace, but my head adjusted). "Pleasant," I think, is the most apt word to describe Whisper of the Heart. There aren't any antagonists, per se, nor is its central conflict presented in a grandly dramatic way. It's never cutesy, nor funny, like a romantic comedy. Despite all the things it doesn't have or do, thought, it's still incredibly warm. So... "pleasant."

The movie concerns Shizuku Tsukishima, a girl in middle school taking exams to get into a good high school. She's an avid reader and lyricist who one day notices that one guy has checked out all of her library books immediately before her. Based on this, she develops a crush on him, and of course, they meet. There's also subplot about her friend receiving an anonymous love letter while having a crush on a school athlete. The movie sits in its place and plays with these elements for its first two acts. Along the way, there's a small shop run by a grandfather, a bossy older sister, busy loving parents and teasing voyeuristic classmates. All of these characters populate the world without adding any conflict; just a warm supporting cast.

It takes a dramatic shift late in development, though. The boy leaves to take up a two-week apprenticeship in Italy, making Shizuku feels inadequate and unprepared for her future. During his absence, she focuses her energy on writing her first story to prove herself to herself. When all this happens (somewhat rapidly), it feels like things just started. In reality, it only has twenty minutes to go. It's a testament that the film breezes by so effortlessly up to that point, but it creates a strange momentum. The emotional crescendo is only a high relative to what came before it. At this point, too, it stops being an observational story about schoolkid crushes and sets its sights wholly on Shizuku developing as a story writer.

This shift is sudden and unnatural, and it brings with it the movie's only fantasy elements. Shizuku's story concerns a cat baron who's lost his love and a young girl he brings to his world. We see some of this story - with floating planetoids, caves that glow, people with cat ears - as she's writing, but it's a tease. According to Wikipedia (master of all knowledge for unpaid bloggers), these fantasy elements were the seeds that eventually became The Cat Returns. In Whisper of the Heart, though, these segments are seconds long. Structurally, it feels like this cat world will parallel Shizuku's real life, and both stories will come to a parallel resolution. Except that doesn't happen. Instead, the story-within-the-story winds up being yet a distraction, albeit a fun one.

So little happens - the struggles and victories are so internal - it almost seems incomplete, somehow, but it's not. Despite this, there are a subtleties here in its emotional tone and relationships that make its protagonist worth watching as she develop in tiny ways. The movie is genial; it's fun to watch. Pleasant.