WHISPER OF THE HEART (Japanese) (1995)

‘There’s beautiful crystal in all of us and only true love can empower us to find it.’

A sweet and touching gem of animation by Studio Ghibli. It takes us to the age of innocent and unselfish love and its longing, the unspoken emotions of heart; truly the whisper of heart. Shizuku, a bookworm school girl finds out from library book cards that a boy named Amasawa had read all the books she has been reading. She curiously yearns to meet the boy. One day following a cat she finds the wonderful house of rare artifacts managed by an old man. Surprisingly she meets the boy here and it changes her course of life along with the boy.

The film is another touching example of Japanese shojo manga creativity and wonderful imagination. Director Yoshifumi Kondo has worked with many of Miyazaki films and Miyazaki himself declared him his successor to Studio Ghibli but unfortunately Kondo’s untimely death enabled him to made only single film. One can clearly see the inspiration of both titans of Japanese animation-the art of story telling and visual beauty from Hayao Miyazaki and emotional depth of Isao Takahata, the man who gave the most moving piece of animation-‘Grave of Fireflies’. So along with emotional highs and lows of the girl and the boy we have a mysterious cat, a divided pair of toys and a beautiful clock when striking 12 shows the unrequited love between king and princess and John Denver classic ‘Country Road’ turned into satirically funny ‘Concrete Road’.

Ratings-7.5/10