Whisper of the Heart(Studio Ghibli Official) is a 1995 animated feature directed by Yoshifumi Kondō.
Here, I revisit the characters and voice actors of Whisper of the Heart and consider what makes these people—and their story—so appealing. Who inhabits the world of Shizuku and Seiji?
The discussion below contains spoilers, so please read with that in mind.
*This is a translated version. The original (Japanese) is available here.
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Whisper of the Heart (1995) Main Characters & Voice Actors List
| Name | Age | Voice Actor (English Dub) |
|---|---|---|
 Shizuku Tsukishima | 14(3rd year junior high) | Brittany Snow |
 Seiji Amasawa | 15(3rd year junior high) | David Gallagher |
 Moon | Unknown | |
 Seiya Tsukishima | 45 | James Sikking |
 Asako Tsukishima | 43 | Jean Smart |
 Shiho Tsukishima | 18(1st year university) | Courtney Thorne-Smith |
 Baron | Unknown | Cary Elwes |
 Shiro Nishi | 80 | Harold Gould |
 Yuko Harada | 14(3rd year junior high) | Ashley Tisdale |
 Sugimura | 14(3rd year junior high) | Martin Spanjers |
- [1]
- While various fan theories exist regarding their exact ages, no definitive age settings have been officially released for some of the supporting characters.
Whisper of the Heart (1995) Character Map
Shizuku falls for Seiji, but his clear ambition to become a violin maker leaves her feeling that she is falling behind—that they are no longer on equal footing.
Although she is in her final year of junior high and has entrance exams ahead of her, Shizuku decides to test herself by writing a novel. Her grades suffer, but her parents decide to let her see the attempt through.
▼ Explore what the characters say
A few memorable lines reveal how Shizuku, Seiji, Seiya, the Baron, and Sugimura approach ambition, love, responsibility, and failure. Explore the Japanese dialogue, English subtitles, romanization, literal translations, and dub wording in our guide to eight memorable Whisper of the Heart quotes.
Character Profiles and Analysis
Shizuku Tsukishima | Voice Actor: Brittany Snow
Shizuku Tsukishima: Background and Analysis
The central protagonist of the story. A 14-year-old third-year student at Mukaihara Junior High School.
Shizuku loves reading so much that she borrows books from the school library even during the summer holidays. Yet all that reading does her no good when it comes to noticing her friend Sugimura’s feelings for her.
Meanwhile, she grows closer to Seiji Amasawa, whom she meets thanks to the guidance of a cat.
Falling for Seiji is all very well, but it turns out that he is someone who:
- has a dream of becoming a violin maker,
- plans to study in Italy to make that dream a reality,
- fights with his parents over that ambition, and
- wins their permission to go, on certain conditions.
In other words, he is a boy with an almost absurd amount going for him.
Shizuku had thought only as far ahead as how nice it would be to attend the same high school. The gap between them leaves her a little discouraged, but she decides that she, too, can put herself to the test by writing a novel.
With entrance exams approaching, she throws herself into writing and leaves her studies aside.
What matters to the story, I think, is that her parents find out about this test she has set herself.
Shizuku persuades them to give her time to work on it. Like Seiji, she has now managed to:
- set herself a goal—writing a novel,
- talk with her parents about how to pursue it, and
- gain their permission to do so.
Had her parents never noticed what she was doing, this neat parallel with Seiji would not have emerged. In that sense, the teacher who reported her falling grades did a good job.
I would argue that Shizuku has as much determination and initiative as Seiji, the boy she loves. That parallel is one of the things I find interesting about the film, and I discuss it at length here:
Further reading: Seiji and Shizuku’s Promises
How My View of Shizuku Changed
For those of us who grew up when almost everyone went on to high school, taking the entrance exams seemed an ordinary part of life. Seen from that perspective, Shizuku’s neglect of her studies made her look alarmingly reckless to me.
I even thought, “Run, Seiji! This girl is trouble!”
As I get older, though, I find her way of living less reckless than I once did. In fact, I find it admirable.
The important thing is that she persuaded her parents. Yes, she had an unusually understanding father, just as Seiji had his grandfather. But that support does not diminish the fact that she made her own wishes clear.
Shizuku is someone who speaks up for herself.
It would be best to recognize how admirable that is while we are still young. Yet perhaps it takes a few more years to appreciate it.
Seiji Amasawa | Voice Actor: David Gallagher
Basic Information about Seiji Amasawa
Seiji is also in his final year at Mukaihara Junior High. He noticed Shizuku before the story begins and read a great many books in the hope that the book-loving girl would notice him.
He was already in love with her.
He had also decided that he wanted to become a violin maker and planned to study in Italy after finishing junior high.
Of course, his parents were not about to agree to that, and they argued almost every night.
What impresses me is that he eventually negotiates a concession: he can go to Italy before graduating, work under a skilled master, and give up if the master says he has no prospects.
His grandfather helped, but winning that concession from his parents was still an achievement.
Going to Italy, however, also means being apart from Shizuku.
After they have come to know each other and he has won his parents’ permission, Seiji all but tells Shizuku he loves her. He does so indirectly, saying that he will sing her song to keep himself going in Italy. She seems to understand, and the two become a couple.
That would have been quite enough for one chapter of their youth. But at the end of the film, carried away by the moment, Seiji proposes to Shizuku.
It is an embarrassingly earnest scene, but the ending has a fresh, youthful beauty.
The Biggest Mystery in Whisper of the Heart
When I first saw the film, I found Seiji rather irritating. With age, my response has become much simpler: he is admirable.
It is easy, then, to see why Shizuku falls for him. The puzzle lies in the other direction: What did Seiji fall in love with in Shizuku?
He spent so much time reading near her in the library that people have called him a stalker. Shizuku certainly has her own appeal, but he fell for her before he knew her well enough to discover it.
I still have no clear answer. Perhaps the best I can say is: that is how a shojo manga works.
Plenty of stories reverse the situation, with women falling for unremarkable men. Perhaps the biggest piece of fiction in this film is simply that Seiji fell in love with Shizuku.
Moon
Basic Information about Moon
A cat Shizuku happens to meet on the way to deliver lunch to her librarian father. Probably a cat, anyway. By leading her to Chikyuya, the antique shop run by Seiji’s grandfather, Moon lets her discover who Seiji really is. He may be the greatest benefactor of Whisper of the Heart.
If it weren’t for Moon, Shizuku’s final year of junior high would have been painfully mundane. Good job, Moon!
Moon is not Seiji’s pet but a stray. Seiji gave him the name “Moon,” though he knows the cat is also called “O-tama” and “Muta,” the name familiar from The Cat Returns.
What deserves attention is Seiji’s choice of name. I could rack my brains forever and never come up with “Moon.” Perhaps thinking of a name that stylish is itself evidence that he deserves to be Shizuku’s boyfriend.
Seiya Tsukishima | Voice Actor: James Sikking
Basic Information about Seiya Tsukishima
Shizuku’s father, a librarian.
An admirable man who still manages to be “the father” in a household where everyone else is female.
His response to Shizuku suggests that he holds that position through conversation rather than intimidation. His daughter, in her final year of junior high, has been sitting at her desk night after night—not studying for exams, but writing a novel.
When her ranking falls by a hundred places, her mother and sister become distraught. Seiya alone stays calm.
He eventually permits her to finish this test of herself, provided she returns to being an exam candidate afterward. He seems wonderfully understanding, but he leaves her with a warning: if you choose a different path from others, you cannot blame them for what happens.
In plainer language, I take that to mean, “Don’t take life lightly!” Perhaps his indirect wording also leaves Shizuku with a certain guilt toward her father.
I think it is a fine piece of judgment from the lone man in that household.
Asako Tsukishima | Voice Actor: Jean Smart
Basic Information about Asako Tsukishima
Shizuku’s mother is studying for a master’s degree as an adult graduate student.
I do not think the film tells us what she is researching, but having been through graduate school myself, I know how demanding it can be. She also has a family—a fundamental responsibility that cannot simply be put aside.
She does not turn away from that responsibility. She answers the school’s summons and is genuinely worried by the change in her daughter. This may seem no more than what a parent should do, but it shows that she is not absorbed only in her own work.
What parents seem to do for us as a matter of course is not necessarily easy to accomplish. Shizuku has grown up in a remarkably good family.
Shiho Tsukishima | Voice Actor: Courtney Thorne-Smith
Basic Information about Shiho Tsukishima
Shizuku’s older sister, an eighteen-year-old first-year university student. She is almost more of a mother than a sister, and her initiative surely helps their mother keep up with graduate school.
She can be forceful with Shizuku, but she is trusted enough to be asked the slightly embarrassing question of when she decided what to do with her life.
Family can be tiresome when they are close by. Yet the room left spacious by Shiho’s departure at the end of the film looks terribly lonely.
Baron | Voice Actor: Cary Elwes
Basic Information about Baron
A cat figurine that Seiji’s grandfather, Shiro Nishi, brought home from Germany. His formidable but rather stylish full name is “Baron Humbert von Gikkingen”; sadly, he is known simply as “the Baron.”
For me, the Baron occupies a wonderfully elusive place in Whisper of the Heart. The story could exist without him, yet his presence makes it the film it is. Moon brings Shizuku to the shop, and without the Baron she might have written a story about Moon instead.
Perhaps the reason is the element of fantasy represented by the image below. The scenes that appear while Shizuku writes her novel are the film’s only excursions into fantasy.
Elsewhere, Whisper of the Heart is essentially a story without fantasy. Yet those imagined scenes appeared in cinema teasers and television commercials.
Perhaps that planted the Baron in our minds before we saw the film. I am convinced Toshio Suzuki was behind it, though whether that suspicion is right or not, it was a clever approach.
Shiro Nishi | Voice Actor: Harold Gould
Basic Information about Shiro Nishi
Seiji’s eighty-year-old grandfather, who runs Chikyuya, the antique shop where Shizuku and Seiji come to know each other.
The Baron, who gives Shizuku the inspiration for her novel, is a figurine Shiro found in a shop while studying in Germany. There is also a story behind it:
Shiro says he asked to buy the Baron but was refused because the matching female cat figurine was away for repairs. A woman named Louise then appeared with a remarkably convenient offer: she would buy the female figure when it was repaired and reunite the pair. Shiro could take the Baron, but war broke out, and the two figures never met again.
He tells Shizuku this sad story after reading her novel. It recalls the story she has just written, and she is astonished.
Am I the only one who finds Louise’s appearance—and a story so reminiscent of Shizuku’s novel—a little too convenient?
Louise probably existed, and Shiro may have been in love with her. Even so, I find it hard to believe that events unfolded quite so conveniently.
I suppose I should simply believe him. When did I become such a jaded adult?
Sugimura | Voice Actor: Martin Spanjers
Basic Information about Sugimura
Shizuku’s friend and classmate, who plays third base on the baseball team.
Surely everyone watching noticed his feelings for Shizuku from the start. She must have been the only one who did not.
In his first scene, though, he is wearing his glove on his right hand, as the image below shows.
If you do not play baseball, the oddity may not be obvious. A regular third baseman would not ordinarily wear a glove on his right hand. I explore that point in the article below.
What do you make of it? Have a guess before reading my interpretation:
Further reading: Sugimura’s Glove and His Tragedy
Other Characters
Yuko Harada | Voice Actor: Ashley Tisdale
Yuko is Shizuku’s classmate and close friend. She is in love with Sugimura, but when he approaches her as a messenger for another boy, she cries in anger and sadness—and stays home from school.
Personally, I think she should give up on him after that. Yet in the end credits, we see them walking home happily together.
It is a lovely scene, but for Sugimura it amounts to a miracle. He ought to repay Yuko for not losing her feelings for him after all that.
Kita and Minami | Voice Actors: Walker Edmiston, Corey Burton
Shiro’s friends, who accompany Shizuku as she sings Country Roads at Chikyuya. Kita plays the lute, and Minami the tambourine.
Ms. Kosaka | Voice Actor: Vicki Davis
The nurse at Mukaihara Junior High. She helps Shizuku borrow books during the summer holidays. I never once needed the nurse’s office myself; are school nurses usually there during the holidays?
We also see Shizuku and her friends eating lunch in the nurse’s office. It seems unremarkable when we follow the protagonist, but they have somehow won a privilege that might leave other pupils dissatisfied. How did that arrangement come about? Would reading the manga explain it?
Kinuyo & Nao
Shizuku’s classmates, voiced by Mika Boorem and Abigail Mavity, respectively, in the English dub.
The images used in this article are from the Studio Ghibli Works Still Images collection.
Can you name the movie before the scene comes into focus?
Put your visual memory to the test with a blurred Studio Ghibli scene.
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