Ocean Waves

Aired: 1993

Studio Ghibli's first television anime, adapted from Saeko Himuro's novel and aired on May 5, 1993 as a 40th-anniversary special program for Nippon Television, directed by Tomomi Mochizuki and later screened in theaters. Now a university student in Tokyo, Taku Morisaki spots his high-school classmate Rikako Muto on an airplane, and the story flashes back to their senior year in Kochi, when sophisticated and enigmatic transfer student Rikako unsettled Taku and his friends. Understated direction, muted colors and the salt air of a coastal town quietly capture the delicate shifts of adolescent friendship and first love.