Like a warm afternoon slowly ascending into the twilight, the monotonous drawl of the day that feels the longest yet somehow beautiful in the sense of idleness, Whisper of the Heart entails the tale of the protagonist through a myriad of such moods compiled into the life of Shizuku.
The lone student who roams in her endless walk of finding any purpose to her life finds solace in her books and leads a mundane life of scrolling through the pages of her favorite characters and her studies, eventless and eventless uninteresting. With the tiny occurrences of her friend’s failed love story and her finding out something about her classmate, she develops a bitter distaste for everyone she comes in contact with.
The most beautiful aspect of Whisper of the Heart unfolds at the very beginning, with the signature simplicity of the Ghibli franchise, that the most mundane things can be turned into significant stories with the best portrayal of it.
Amasawa and his significance to the story
Through a course of unfortunate rude and snide remarks between Amasawa and Shizuku, they eventually find a common ground for bonding (typical of the enemies to lovers trope that beautifies the relationships). Their encounters are beautiful food for humor to the otherwise slowly drawing plot.
With their shared love for the books they read, Shizuku's appreciation for Amasawa’s violin carving and playing, the beautiful concoction of their jamming session, and the final adieu with the promise of meeting again, the series of happenings take the viewers to a high and low of emotional troughs and crests.
What made Shizuku find a writer in herself is the accumulation of so many events that made her find the way of writing her emotions to bring a balance to herself. The supportiveness of her parents is yet another advisory teaching from the Ghibli film, for the parents to attempt to accept their children in their differences and similarities. The anime deviates significantly from the book written by Aoi Hiiragi.
It is the yearning for the following situations that makes one want to live life in the trajectory impressed by Ghibli. Following a chubby cat to an antique shop whose owner has the most terrific stories, reeking of vintage memories bettered with the listening curiosity of a stranger who happens to be a writer.
Coincidentally she stumbles upon the boy she had been searching for, only to grow together with disagreements and then fondness. The vintage mood of the entire film is heightened by the aesthetic matching the moods of the protagonist, an omnipotent realistic portrayal of the beautifully simple lives of the protagonists. The beautiful characterization of the main characters is what appeals the most.
The foil to Shizuku’s character, Amasawa, with his ambitiousness and relentlessness makes her yearn for that same stability and coherence in her train of thought. Every pent-up emotion leads to their heartfelt confession, and mainly when it is reciprocated, it is beautiful and heartwarming to behold yet another simple yet so beautifully powerful masterpiece dazzling the eyes of the viewers.
From imperfect first drafts to imperfect first pieces played on a violin, the imperfect yet realistic expressions of the story and the viewers coincide beautifully keeping up with the tone of the film that makes its unmatched and sheer brilliance be praised elegantly.
