Whisper of the Heart (1995)

"Shizuku" is a serial reader. She has a voracious appetite for books and can quite literally start at one end of the public library shelf and work her way along to the other. She's also studious and reasonably academic, with aspirations to go onto high school at the end of this semester - much to the joy of her parents and her slightly over-bearing sister "Shiro". Then she meets a cat! A mischievous and teasing beastie that seems to have no home but that wanders the streets being suitably well fed by all she meets. Her pursuit of the cat takes her to an old antiques shop where she meets the elderly man who runs the place, and who regales her with a tale of a prince trapped in an unrequitable love scenario with a princess whose form changes when the sun sets. It turns out that the grandson of the owner is her fellow-pupil "Seiji" with whom she has a nervous relationship. You see, she and her friend were trying to write their own version of John Denver's "Country Roads" - only she alighted on "concrete roads" instead. "Seiji" accidentally found the lyric and had been winding her up with it ever since. She likes him - but does he like her? Now distracted, her grades start to suffer a little as she determines to focus on writing a story about an ornamental statute called the "Baron" that adorns the old man's table. With her vivid imagination gathering pace and her friendship with the amiable and violin-making "Seiji" starting to flourish, it's time for "Shizuku" to take her first steps on her route to independence. As ever with Ghibli productions, there's a cat and that serves to knit threads together here subtly, but engagingly, as this coming of age story avoids all the schmaltzy hormonal stuff and focusses more on what true love might actually mean - sacrifices and all. It's a story about dreams; about striving to attain them and about not being distraught if they don't come to fruition - and the detail of the animation, especially the shading and the accompanying audio, presents us with an environment that is charming, busy and when the violins are in full flow it's toe-taping too. It's not so much about aiming for the sky, or even about aiming high - it's more about just making sure you aim somewhere and I really quite enjoyed it.