Whisper of the Heart

"I found someone I like."

1995 1h 51m JA

🙌

7.9

BANGER

★7.9TMDB · 2,371

AnimationDramaFamily

Synopsis

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Shizuku lives a simple life, dominated by her love for stories and writing. One day she notices that all the library books she has have been previously checked out by the same person: "Seiji Amasawa."

“I found someone I like.”

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Cast

Yoko Honna
Shizuku Tsukishima (voice)
Issey Takahashi
Seiji Amasawa (voice)
Takashi Tachibana
Seiya Tsukishima (voice)
Shigeru Muroi
Asako Tsukishima (voice)
Minami Takayama
Teacher Kosaka (voice)
Mayumi Izuka
Kinuyo (voice)
Yorie Yamashita
Shiho Tsukishima (voice)
Keiju Kobayashi
Shiro Nishi (voice)

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Yoshifumi Kondo
Writers: Hayao Miyazaki, Hayao Miyazaki, Yoshifumi Kondo
Languages: Japanese
Countries: Japan

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 7

ERA

Did you know

31 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Yoshifumi Kondo, shot by Atsushi Okui. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Yuji Nomi. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Takeshi Seyama shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 7

CAST

Did you know

Yoko Honna and Issey Takahashi and Takashi Tachibana carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 7

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "I found someone I like.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 7

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt0113824 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Yoshifumi Kondo directs. Atsushi Okui behind the camera. Yuji Nomi scores. Takeshi Seyama cuts. Produced in Japan. Dialogue in Japanese.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

131 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.
2Directed by Yoshifumi Kondo, shot by Atsushi Okui. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
3Original score by Yuji Nomi. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
4Editor Takeshi Seyama shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
5Yoko Honna and Issey Takahashi and Takashi Tachibana carry the top of the cast.
6Marketing tagline: "I found someone I like.".
7IMDB entry: tt0113824 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
8Classified under 18 themes, including "dreams", "library", "italy", "violin".
9Released under 12 different titles around the world.

The technical file

Cinematography: Atsushi Okui
Original score: Yuji Nomi
Editing: Takeshi Seyama
Runtime: 111 min · 1h 51m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Original language: JA
Certification (US): G
IMDB: Whisper of the Heart (1995)

Also by

Yoshifumi Kondo

Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland Pilot 2
1984 · ★ 6.3

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Community reviews

What people are saying

CinemaSerf2026-09-17
★ 7/10
"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.

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