Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron

 Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron is a beautiful relic — and the end of an era

The latest Studio Ghibli film is out in North American theaters after premiering in Japan earlier in the year.

The year is 1997, and famed Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki announced plans to retire following the release of Princess Mononoke, a film that set new records at the box office for Japanese animation and revolutionized the medium. The year is 2001, and Miyazaki announced plans to retire following the release of Spirited Away, saying he can no longer work on feature-length animated films. The year is 2013, and Miyazaki announced plans to retire following the release of The Wind Rises, saying that “If I said I wanted to [make another feature film], I would sound like an old man saying something foolish.”

The year is 2023, and Miyazaki is an old man saying something foolish by releasing a new film, titled How Do You Live in Japan and renamed The Boy and the Heron for the international market.

These opening moments feel unsettling and heavy, especially in flashbacks, only briefly relieved by the kindly gaggle of old ladies at the home or the famed heron. While it embraces the fantastical as it takes us to a whole new world in pursuit of a far-from-normal heron’s promise that Mahito can see his mother once more (while continuing to search for his new mother who recently went missing), the weight of this opening lingers. 

In these moments, it’s a rich, dense fantasy in the vein we’ve come to expect, both in terms of the detail visible in every scene and its greater thematic purpose. You may come to Spirited Away for its eclectic and intricate spiritual bathhouse, but you stay for the human story and deeper undertones at its core.

Continuing this comparison, you could even say these musings on the complexity of the human condition are emphasized by the 82-year-old Miyazaki with this final film, creating something that feels more autobiographical and self-reflective than The Wind Rises. For all that film was technically a biopic, it felt as much a reflection of the man behind the production as it was the master aviator at its center. While fantastical and family-friendly elements litter The Boy and the Heron, filling it to the brim with whimsy that lightens its heavy moments and brings endless charm to its stunning animation, the frank nature in which it explores Miyazaki’s self-reflective musings on memory makes it as much a conversation with the man in the mirror as it is the audience.

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