In “The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching,” Thich Nhat Hanh’s novel explaining the four Noble Truths of Buddhism (suffering, its origin, its ending, and the path to achieve that ending), the poet and peacemaker compares life to waves in the ocean. Our lives, like waves, rise, then fall, crash into the shore, and then return to the sea. Masaaki Yuasa, the creator of The Tatami Galaxy, The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, and Devilman Crybaby, views life in a similar manner.
As beautiful and inspiring as the waves of life can be, they can also be brutal, harsh, and at times just plain unfair. However, no matter how many times the waves knock us down, in order to grow, we have to keep riding. That’s the simple but still engaging message Yuasa lays out for us in his latest feature, Ride Your Wave, a supernatural love story, that like many of his previous works, is a story of self-growth.

Ride Your Wave is Yuasa’s latest attempt to appeal to a mainstream audience by playing down the more weird and eccentric aspects of his style. Even with these changes, he has once again delivered a delightful animated feature to add to his already esteemed body of work.

Working off a script written by Reiko Yoshida (Liz and the Blue Bird) and accompanied by a mostly gentle, breezy soundtrack by Michiru Oshima, Ride Your Wave follows Hinako, a loopy college student who has just moved to an oceanside town. Hinako is easy to like; she’s chipper, energetic and doesn’t take herself too seriously. While she comes off as a mostly positive person, she doesn’t have much confidence in herself and is unsure of what direction she wants to take her life in; which is a complete contrast to Minato, a firefighter in training who saves Hinako (and her surfboard) when her building catches fire. Minato is smart, charming, dependable, and can whip up an omelette over rice with masterful ease. He seems so perfect, that until we learn why he dedicated his life to helping others, he gets dangerously close to having as much personality as an egg sandwich. However, there is one thing Minato doesn’t know how to do and that’s surf - which is both Hinako’s hobby and passion.

After their heroic meet-cute, Hinako teaches Minato how to surf and before you know it, they begin to date, their blossoming relationship shown in a montage that checks all the boxes of your typical rom-com (days spent running on the beach, nights looking up at fireworks). The two are inseparable; they own matching phone cases, they hold hands while eating dinner, and they even have a special song -- “Brand New Story,” a 2012 single from GENERATIONS from EXILE TRIBE (Ryota Katayose, the lead vocalist, voices Minato, in his voice acting debut). The two “lovey-dovey idiots,” seem destined to spend the rest of their lives together, and that’s sadly true for Minato, who after surfing on his own one afternoon, drowns while attempting to rescue someone.

Blaming herself for her boyfriend’s death, Hinako retreats from her passion, going so far as to move to an apartment away from the ocean, as the water only reminds her of what she has lost. It seems that nothing can alleviate her from her grief, until one afternoon in a cafe, Hinako sings the first bars of “Brand New Story'' and begins to see Minato’s reflection form in a glass of water. After that she starts seeing him everywhere: smiling at her in a bathroom faucet, in puddles, and even sending her messages in raindrops. Hinako’s friends -- as well as Minato’s fellow firefighting trainee Wasabi and his younger sister Yoko -- begin to feel that grief is making Hinako lose her sense of reality, however, what’s happening is real. Hinako has the power to conjure the spirit of her dead boyfriend every time she sings their song, which you will hear, a capella, acoustic, and with music, throughout the film. I almost wanted to believe it was a running gag with how much it’s played. I could happily go the rest of my life without hearing the song - acapella, acoustic or with music - ever again.

Much like his 2017 feature Lu Over the Wall, Ride Your Wave is more charming and tame than the psychedelic and radical anime series and movies Yuasa is mainly known for creating. While this is, by far, the simplest story Yuasa has ever directed, that simplicity does not translate to the visuals, which are the high point of Ride Your Wave. Yuasa’s eccentric animation style really comes forth when he gets to animate fire and water, the latter thankfully being seen often in the film’s latter half. The background art, something I actually don’t usually contemplate when it comes to Yuasa, is very detailed, and his use of tracking shots, pans and zooms also give the film a verve the screenplay and the characters can’t deliver.

At 96 minutes, Ride Your Wave is the ideal length to keep the story from pruning, however, I do wish that some more time was given to establishing the film’s side characters. Minako’s friends, Jun and Ai -- who Hinako refers to as “the cobra” and “the scorpion” because of their straight-forward way of speaking -- appear sporadically to give Hinako support during her grieving period, but we don’t get any sense of their personality. Then, they just vanish from the story once the main elements of the plot come into focus. Wasabi and Yoko fare better, as they both have an actual arc, but I would’ve liked to see more of them, especially Yoko, whose viciously blunt tongue serves as a good counter to the film’s sometimes overly sweet tone.

Verdict

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. The overall message is relatable, the presentation is delightful, and while restraining his more eccentric qualities, Yuasa still finds space to display the kind of style and visual imagination, that has earned him his reputation as one of the most creative figures in animation.