14-year-old Shizuku Tsukishima (voiced by Yoko Honna in the Japanese-language version) attends Mukaihara Junior High School in Tokyo. She lives with her parents and older sister and her best friend at school is Yuko (Maiko Kayama), but her real love is books. She's a bookworm's bookworm, and one day she visits her local library and is stunned to find all the books missing. Upon browsing the checkout cards, she discovers somebody named Seiji Amasawa (Issei Takahashi) has borrowed them all. Shizuku now tries to track Seiji down, and learns he's actually boy in her grade and Mukaihara. Once they then meet, she discovers he's a budding luthier who has a crush on her and therefore has begun borrowing books en masse, obviously knowing how much she loves them, to make her notice him. In return as they get to know each other, Shizuku starts writing more and singing, and then their relationship deepens and their previously unknown connections are revealed.
Whisper of the Heart was former animator Yoshifumi Kondo's sole directorial effort before his sudden death at age 47 in 1998, and Studio Ghibli's first theatrical film directed by neither Hayao Miyazaki (who nonetheless wrote the screenplay) nor Isao Takahata, but I'm afraid for me, it could've been considerably better. Visually it's as gorgeous as anything else Ghibli have made, and the voice cast all give adequate and natural performances, with dialogue that feels realistic for each character. However, the narrative was, for me, increasingly plodding and predictable to the point where I was ultimately almost entirely disengaged. It simply felt to me to be much too formulaic a YA romance, even for 1995 which was long before that genre exploded in popularity at least here in the West.
It's a nice story, sure, but one that I found to be told in a very stale manner despite the aesthetic flair on display, and it also ignored what I considered numerous chances for comic relief. Overall, Whisper of the Heart obviously did not win my heart. 6/10.
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