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Japan · 2019
1h 34m
Director Masaaki Yuasa
Starring Ryota Katayose, Rina Kawaei, Honoka Matsumoto, Kentaro Ito
Genre Animation, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Romance
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College student Hinako falls in love with Minato, a handsome firefighter with a strong sense of justice. The love is short-lived when he is lost at sea... until one day, Hinako sings a song that reminds her of Minato, and he miraculously appears in the water.
Ride Your Wave is the sweetest and most conventional story Yuasa has ever directed. Even with its formulaic story occupied by characters who would have benefited with more development and personality, there’s still plenty to enjoy in this light-hearted romance.
Fancifully heartfelt, Ride Your Wave doesn’t constitute his top effort, but it’s inviting enough to persuade audiences unfamiliar with him to dip their feet and then fully dive into the profundity of his imagination, where wonder awaits.
Los Angeles Times by Charles Solomon
The filmmakers give Hinako weaknesses and doubts as well as strengths and talents. She’s a more complex, fully realized character than many heroines in recent American features.
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
The director, Masaaki Yuasa, is adept at stories and visuals where water is a major character.
The Hollywood Reporter by Justin Lowe
The filmmakers’ reliance on romantic situations throughout the midsection may have some older teens and adults rolling their eyes, but the final scenes over-deliver with a literal flood of action that enables Hinako to definitively prove herself and discover her true calling.
Sooner or later, Hinako is going to have to learn to face the world on her own, which is where the tension finally arises before this dopey film reaches its sappy conclusion — by showing its heroine, so effortless on water, “learning to ride life’s waves, too.”
Austin Chronicle by Richard Whittaker
Yuasa entrances the eye, but he also know how to make your heart soar with this deft, delicate, and highly entertaining story of loss, of coming to terms with grief, of moving on without ever forgetting.
RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams
Ride Your Wave moves without a great sense of urgency, but only because Hinako’s emotional turmoil isn’t a great conflict or a tragedy. It is, however, as real as the private heartaches that we self-consciously wear on our sleeves.
It’s rare to see an anime story that solely focuses on adults navigating the issues of maturity, personal development, and a stymied future. It’s even rarer to see anime that simultaneously tackles those ideas, and wraps them in such an extravagant visual fantasia.