Yoshifumi Kondo’s anime “Whisper of the Heart” became a critical and popular success following its release in 1995. Based on a manga by Aoi Hiiragi, the film grossed more than any other Japanese film that year. Now, nearly three decades later, a live-action film by TV drama veteran Yuichiro Hirakawa also takes inspiration from Hiiragi’s manga, though comparisons with the Kondo classic are inevitable.
While both films take liberties with the source material, Kondo’s version had a more interesting and even edgy take, thanks in part to a script by Studio Ghibli maestro Hayao Miyazaki. In the anime, for example, the protagonist composes a parody of John Denver’s “Country Roads.” Her version, titled “Concrete Roads,” comments on the environmental destruction of her Tokyo suburban neighborhood. In the new film, however, she plaintively warbles “Tsubasa o Kudasai” (“Please Give Me Wings”), a folk song with plenty of heartfelt sentiment but no topical critique whatsoever.
That sums up the film as a whole, which is a love story of the pure-spirited, predictable sort and the latest in a long procession of local boy-meets-girl films that tug at audience heartstrings. Similarly familiar from previous iterations is protagonist Shizuku Tsukishima, played as a 24-year-old by Nana Seino. Though her character works as an editor at a small publishing house with a standard-issue irascible boss, she is essentially the same bubbly, innocent, wishy-washy type she was at 14. That is, she is framed as lovably non-threatening with relatable faults.