Whisper Of The Heart
Whisper Of The Heart (Mimi Wo Sumaseba) is a heart warming story about a girl, trying to find her own path in life. With school exams pending, that might not be an easy thing.
Shizuku is a schoolgirl who loves books. Hence, she set herself the modest task of reading 20 books over the summer. While going through her library books she notices a name that appears on every library card. Amasawa Seiji and instantly falls in love with this unknown person. The next day she goes to ask a school teacher to open the library earlier so she can borrow a new book. She later notices she's the first person to ever borrow the book, but is suprised to find out the book was donated to the library bw Amasawa family. She then meets her friend Yuuko and both girls go the the sports park to read on Shizuku's translation of "Country Road" and when they leave Shizuku doesn't notice she forgot the book on the bench. She notices the missing book only a couple minutes later and when she returns to get it she finds a boy reading it...
The movie has Ghibli written all over it... which effectively means it's damn good. The story about love and pursuing life goals, as well as finding one self. It was written and produced by Miyazaki in 1995 and has just about the right ammounts of humor, "action", fantasy and mistery to make your heart smile.
On the side note: The movie introduces two characters that got their own anime in 2002 called "The Cat Returns (Neko no Ongaeshi)". The Characters are the cat named Moon (Muta), and the cat figurine Baron Humbert Von Jikkingen.