Yokohama in 1963, as nearby Tokyo prepares to host the ’64 Summer Olympics, is the setting for Goro Miyazaki’s delicately nostalgic animated movie.
The heroine is Umi, a quiet and industrious teen balancing school and helping with the boarders the family has taken in at home. Change lands at Umi’s feet in the form of a young man, Shun, leaping out a school window into the swimming pool, to protest the proposed demolition of a ramshackle clubhouse on campus.
One look at Shun, and Umi finds herself helping the all-male club in their fight to stop the teardown.
It’s a film heavily dependent on tone and atmosphere for its charm, the budding relationship shown through things like a lovely twilight bike ride down a hill to the shops below. (Miyazaki’s father, famed animator Hayao Miyazaki, co-wrote the script).
The central couple are sweetly voiced by Sarah Bolger and Anton Yelchin in this English version, but the characters lack the kind of strongly defined personalities found in the most memorable children’s fare. And the inevitable obstacle for Umi and Shun is strangely conceived and abruptly resolved.
Still, it’s the sort of movie that can prompt daydreams about inhabiting its world of flowers and hills, passing ships and harbor lights, where there’s no Internet and romance happens face to face.