ANI-MOVIES, *The Boy And The Heron

Even though The Wind Rises from 2013 was supposed to be the absolute final movie by the godlike Hayao Miyazaki(for reals this time!), that didn't stop the living legend from doing yet another swansong a decade later in The Boy And The Heron. Loosely based on the 1937 book of How Do You Live?, this Studio Ghibli release was set to coincide with the 2020 Olympics that was delayed because of the coronavirus, but the majority of the film featured hand-drawn animation, so it was extended until 2023 produced by Ghibli veteran Toshio Suzuki. Toho initially released it and went to be one of the biggest selling Japanese movies in the history of cinema. This otherwordly epic harkens back to Miyazaki's earlier fantasy works like Spirited Away and Ponyo which presents a sprawling story that is very unclear on exactly how the magic in this unearthly setting works.

In the throes of the Pacific War, Tokyo is attacked and young Mahito's mother dies in a hospital fire. His father runs a munitions factory and later marries his deceased wife's younger sister Natsuko who is going to give birth to their own child. Mahito and his father move into Natsuko's family estate where a mysterious tower has been closed off for decades. Despite not fitting in with the new kids in the neighborhood, Mahito bashes a rock into his head making a large scar which we learn later on that he did to cope with the loss of his mother and getting used to his new surroundings. The boy now has a scar on him with the right part of his hair shaved off and is recovering at home while being harassed by a gray heron bird. Natsuko goes missing, so Mahito goes to the tower where he believes she has gone to. Along with the old maid Kiriko, Mahito journeys into the tower but fades away when he falls for an illusion of his deceased mother. The boy is sent to a world filled with oceans and islands where the heron is revealed to be a person called the Birdman who wears the heron body like a suit. Despite their frustration with each other, the two of them agree to work together for find Natsuko currently being imprisoned by a kingdom of huge parakeets. They get help from a girl named Hime with pyrokinetic abilities and a younger version of Kiriko. The entire world is held together by the will of Hime's granduncle, and the firestarter is also the youthful version of Mahito's mother from another point in the past, so the younger Hime is encountering her future son at the same time that he is discovering this mystic realm. The Granduncle offers Mahito the chance to take his place and keep this hidden world stable and be free of the harshness of real life. Mahito rejects this deciding to go back to his family along with Natsuko, leaving the younger Hime and Kiriko to go back to their time. The door to the magical land is permanently shut off as Mahito and his aunt/stepmother greet his father when the story cuts to two years after WWII where his new family moves back to Tokyo with the Birdman just leaving and not heard from again.

The Boy And The Heron can be a struggle to sit through at some points while watching it as is another story of a child being sent to an isekai world, except that Miyazaki regularly declines to explain how the laws of physics behave in this dream realm. It's visually the greatest one Miyazaki has worked on since Spirited Away, but the lush animation unfortunately takes away from the character motivations and what drives them. The film is more interested in underlining the look of a fantasy world than focusing attention on the rich cast. The dub is unusual but effective starring child actor Luca Padovan as Mahito, plus two different Batmans with Christian Bale as Mahito's father and Robert Pattison as the cryptic Birdman. If you're looking for another feature from Studio Ghibli to show your kids like My Neighbor Totoro, you might want to hold off on playing this one for them as it's a bit more for those who liked Howl's Moving Castle because of its mature themes.