Ride your wave was a film I was looking forward to. It is directed by Masaaki Yuasa, who is one of the most celebrated anime directors ever, with classics such as Tatami Galaxy and Ping Pong, as well as underground gems like Kemonozume, Kaiba, and Night is Short, Walk on Girl. He brings this dreamlike quality to anime while also boasting some solidly explored themes. However, I found Ride Your Wave to be disappointing.
Before I continue further, I would recommend watching Ride Your Wave as I’ll be diving (hehe get it?) into spoiler territory. If you go in completely blind like I did, there’s an unexpected turn at the end of the first act that is pretty important to my criticisms.
Ride Your Wave is about a girl named Hinako who moves to a new town for college. She gets rescued by a firefighter named Minato, and love brews between them. Unfortunately, Minato drowns in the ocean when surfing alone, which fills Hinako with grief. However, Hinako discovers that she can make him appear in water by singing “their song,” which turns their romance into an unconventional one. It turns from a generic romance into a film about loss and perseverance.
The technical side of the film is pretty bizarre. It has good shot composition and some aesthetically pleasing shots. There’s a montage early in the film with the characters being a couple, and alongside it is them singing “their song.” When they sing, they often are off-key and laugh at each other. It makes their relationship feel more intimate, and would work wonders if both of them weren’t cardboard cutouts. The ost is repetitive, not only because she has to sing the same song every time to summon him, but because the same track plays when he is summoned. The editing is also off-putting, because whenever the film shows something that happened in the past, there’s this weird red and purple layering to the frame for this nostalgic effect. Maybe he didn’t want to use a sepia color correction because that’s pretty standard, but other anime have used incredibly creative methods to communicate this (Only Yesterday).
The characters in Ride Your Wave are bad, as Hinako is just a surfer girl who sucks at everything except surfing. Minato is a “Mary Stu,” who is good at everything except surfing, making him very dull. Minato’s sister, Yoko, is awful. She speaks her mind and isn’t afraid of confrontation, but showed no sadness about her brother passing away until 15 minutes left in the film. She tells Hinako to “get over it” like that isn’t her own flesh and blood. Wasabi was Minato’s firefighter friend who was just as insufferable. He waits until his best friend dies in order to corner his girlfriend at her work and confess his love for her. Hinako mentions two friends of hers, but they have to have two minutes of screen time. The film could have benefited from a longer run time to flesh out these characters, but it already feels longer than it is.
The themes in Ride Your Wave are pretty messy. There’s this weird prevalence of saving somebody’s life and how that leads to love. Hinako saved Minato’s life when they were little and he fell in love with her. Minato saved Hinako’s life from the fire and fell in love with him. Wasabi saves Yoko’s life by standing up to her parents and falls in love with him. Saving someone’s life is a very kind thing to do, but that doesn’t mean that love will blossom. Falling in love with someone means you are compatible, and sharing your lives with one another to support each other. I truly believe they made this theme so the characters have an excuse to like each other because they have no personalities. The themes it does explore well are very easy to read into. Water is ever present in the film, and symbolizes the unexpectancy of life, and how the currents and waves can take you places. The theme of perseverance was well developed, with Minato secretly working his ass off to be able to help people and be the best he can be. He also mentions a time where he watched turtle hatchlings scurrying to the sea with conviction after being born.
The first act of the movie is pretty boring. You’re just watching these two nothing characters fall in love in a generic romance anime fashion. The second act isn’t much better, because this is supposed to focus on the grieving element, but Minato is in the film again within 10 minutes. They show their struggles of their new unconventional relationship in a “comedic” way, but Minato being “alive” again brings up a huge problem. One of the worst aspects of “13 Reasons Why” is that Hannah committed suicide but she’s still present throughout the whole series. This falsely portraits death into being this idea that “you don’t really die, you live on,” but death is death. After you die there is no living to see how your friends and family cope. If many consider that a problem for that show, why don’t people consider it a problem in this film? The third act is also pretty bad, with Hinako trying her best to move on. Yoko and her make a stupid decision to follow a group that is going to launch fireworks from a building, which would definitely cause a fire. Instead of calling the police, they decide to get proof of them doing it instead, which leads them to be in a burning building. The last few minutes were very infuriating. Hinako sings “the song” to try to see Hinako again, but he doesn’t show up. She gets a very upset look on her face when this happens. Then, a cheesy Christmas message from Minato announces from the skyscraper she's next to to say he loves her and will always be with her, which makes her break down crying. So did she move on? Did she get past the grieving stage? The signs point to no, which renders this film pointless.
Overall, the Ride Your Wave was a disappointing experience. The characters suck, the ost got old very quickly, and the themes were underwhelming. It's goals were misguided, trying to balance being a heartfelt romance and a film about grieving. Originally, I was going to give this film a 5/10 but writing down my thoughts further ran my disappointing feelings into the ground. I didn’t like a single act of this film. This felt like a Makoto Shinkai film. It wasn’t as sappy, but just as messy.
