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Whisper of the Heart

1995 [JAPANESE]

Action / Animation / Drama / Family / Music / Romance

35
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 95% · 21 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 90% · 5K ratings
IMDb Rating 7.8/10 10 78958 79K

dream dreams library italy cat violin

Plot summary

Shizuku lives a simple life, dominated by her love for stories and writing. One day she notices that all the library books she has have been previously checked out by the same person: 'Seiji Amasawa'.

Director

Yoshifumi Kondô Photo
Yoshifumi Kondô

Top cast

Charles Kimbrough Photo
Charles Kimbrough as (voice)
Tatsuya Okada Photo
Tatsuya Okada as (voice)
Minami Takayama Photo
Minami Takayama as Kosaka-sensei
Cary Elwes Photo
Cary Elwes as The Baron
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
1020.31 MB
1280*682
Japanese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 50 min
Seeds 16
2.05 GB
1920*1024
Japanese 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 50 min
Seeds 69

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by neolondres 9 / 10

Ghibli's impressive light-hearted story!

The films story starts slow paced and very unpretentious in the first couple of minutes, but it's made to be this way, so you can really start to get in love with the young Shizuku, a school young girl that loves to read dozens of books at the same time and it is in love with a boy that she doesn't even know, but she knows that this boy read all the same books that she got from her local library. This is a very simple love story that you probably saw in a dozen of other films out there written in a slightly different way, but the distinction in this movie that makes it so special to millions of people around the world is that it was made in the Studios Ghibli, and they have something in that studio that makes even the simplest romantic film become a striking piece of art. Unlike the majority of Disney movies you should not expect scenes animated in the most cutting-edge technology available with pompous special effects, because they almost don't exist in Japan (since it's just too expensive to employ for them) but instead they made this movie full of beautiful imagery scenarios painted by hand with the most care of the world, each scene animated with the same level of care, something that I can't feel in these regular Disney movies (except Lion King and Pixar's). It's scenes that shows the city that Shizuku lives, with the cars passing by, the narrow roads where Shizuku runs through when she goes to the school or back home, or even when she contemplating on how gorgeous can be a sunset. The city itself is a character in the movie, and it serves to tell you that there's also beauty in mundane things and not something exclusive to the sceneries that you see in the post cards. The characters don't develop a lot, and some could literally be excluded from the story since they don't affect the story so much. Everything is very centered in Shizuku, her day by the day at school, with her friends, and the series of coincidences that like destiny leads her to the love of her life, but this don't become such a letdown, because at the end the reason why the story works so well it's because we are discovering with Shizuku those beautiful things that we can see and appreciate, or the joy that is to share with our friends simple but unparalleled moments like singing together the same song (I bet that you don't do it that much, but you know that you would enjoy doing it too).So, it's a movie that starts without too many promises but little by little throws you good images with a few dialogs to not let you guess the characters intentions too much (or to avoid you start to anticipate the characters next lines)and then when you get used to the movies pace, you will be probably feeling the same feelings that this girl will be going through. Be you a man, you will probably going to see some parts of the movie and will think to itself "yeah, I passed through this once", so much believable the situations of the story are. It's not about pet monsters, or beast princes and princess, but it's about real persons in the real world. And how good it is to see that there are movies like this exist besides the regular commercial "fast-food" animated movies.
Reviewed by

Reviewed by kosmasp 9 / 10

Follow the cat

Can an animated movie make you feel things? Can it conjur up emotions from the viewers? Not all can of course, but if you look to Japan and to movies like the one on hand here, the answer is yes. Generally speaking anything that came out of Studio Ghibli can be considered high quality. And I speak past tense, because it does unfortunately not exist anymore.

But they put out so many movies, you will have a good time (re)visiting them. This is one of them, with unlikely two leads ... well unlikely at first to actually be together. It feels so real relationship wise, it really gets to you. Even following the cat, is something you may or should be able to connect with curious wise. A very good movie, with colorful characters - no pun intended.

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