Anime guru Hayao Miyazaki soared out of retirement in 2013 and into the world of his 2023 film, The Boy and the Heron, an adaptation of the Japanese children’s book, How Do You Live?
Director of the Academy Award Winning film Spirited Away, Miyazaki has been hailed as one of the most prominent animation trailblazers in the world with films like Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke and more, created by Studio Ghibli, which he co-founded with filmmakers Tochio Suzuki, Isao Takahata, and Yasuyoshi Tokuma in 1985.
Known for films that explore pacifism, aviation, feminism, and complex human consciousness, the 82-year-old director followed a similar course with The Boy and the Heron, which received two Golden Globe nominations on December 11, 2023, for best Animated Feature Film and Original Score. Many consider the film a top contender for the Best Animation Oscar among other awards in 2024.
Already, The Boy and the Heron glided into a record-breaking $12.8 million opening when it premiered in the U.S. on December 8, 2023, making it number one at the box office — a first for one of Miyazaki’s films at the U.S. domestic box office. In an ode to his own life, Miyazaki unpacks the trauma of being very young when he and his family fled from Tokyo to live in the countryside during World War II, where his father worked in a plane fighter factory. Many of his films, including The Boy and the Heron, are driven by Miyazaki’s memories of wartime, including an objection to using planes as weapons for destruction, which he explores in the 2013 film, The Wind Rises.
In various ways, The Boy and the Heron is a reflection from the My Neighbor Totoro director on his entire life as he becomes more mindful of his mortality as he gets older. The deeply personal semi-autobiographical tale introduces a fantasy world that audiences are accustomed to but it lacks his trademark depth, creativity, and overall enchantment. However, it’s a perfectly imperfect means for Miyazaki to process the emotional weight of ending his legacy without a successor to Studio Ghibli, which was recently sold to Nippon TV.
While he has a son, Goro Miyazaki, who did a few film projects with Studio Ghibli, including Legends from Earthsea, their strained father-son relationship may explain why the studio never had a successor.
The Boy and the Heron is less about the various feathery friends throughout the film and more about honoring Miyazaki’s life and imagining what a world looks like without a creator and without an heir.
The movie follows 12-year-old Mahito Maki (Soma Santoki), who, like his creator, grew up during World War II and, also like his creator, lost his mother at a young age.
Unlike Miyazaki’s mother, Dola Miyazaki, who died in 1955 due to spinal tuberculosis, Mahito’s mother dies in 1943 during the bombing of a Tokyo hospital in the film’s opening scene. The complex animation sequence and colors at the beginning start the film off strong and serve as a reminder of why Miyazaki is one of the masters of the craft. The immersive artistry that launches audiences into Mahito’s hellish nightmare of being powerless to save his mother from the flames is particularly compelling.
However, the movie quickly hits a snag when it skips to the year after Mahito’s mother dies and he and his father — who, like Miyazaki’s father, works at a fighter plane factory — move to the countryside. His father marries Mahito’s mother’s sister, Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura), and Mahito is quickly depicted as stoic and depressed.
There is an attempt to reflect the trauma he’s endured by making him a bit of an outcast who is disinterested in most human interaction. Sadly, Mahito’s personality keeps viewers at an arm’s length, which could be intentional, but this makes it harder to connect with him versus some of Miyazaki’s most compelling characters, like Princess Mononoke and Sophie.
It’s not often that Miyazaki opts for a male lead, but with the story being loosely based on his life, it wouldn’t make sense otherwise. Mahito’s lack of development stands out so strongly because Miyazaki is typically unflinching with the dynamic emotional range of his strong heroines.
As the story progresses, the journey to get his mother back quickly turns into a supernatural journey across time, including a glimpse at life and death. Mahito meets the adorable Warawara, which are unborn human souls who live in the Sea World until it’s time to be born and, by contrast, meets his Grand Uncle, who’s preparing for the end of his life.
Miyazaki doesn’t miss a beat when it comes to keeping this a deeply personal story, including basing his characters on himself and his Studio Ghibli co-founders. Mahito is based on Miyazaki, the Grand Uncle is based on Takahata (who passed away in 2018), and the gray heron is based on Suzuki.
During an interview with Indiewire in November 2023, Suzuki explained why Miyazaki wanted to base the characters off his co-founders.
“He [Miyazaki] said [Takahata] discovered his talent and added him to the staff. I think Takahata san was the one who helped him develop his ability. On the other hand, the relationship between the boy and the [heron] is a relationship where they don’t give in to each other, push and pull,” Suzuki said.
Yet, the most gripping lesson that makes the film meaningful lies in the importance for Mahito to understand that both the deaths of his Grand Uncle and his world and the death of his mother aren’t forces that he can control, meaning his role in life becomes deciding how to live his life. This alludes to the novel the movie is adapted from, How Do You Live?, which is actually included in the film as a gift to Mahito from his mother that he discovers after her passing.
The 1937 novel by Genzaburo Yoshino follows a 15-year-old boy named Junichi Honda, nicknamed Koperu (Copper), and his uncle, as Koperu experiences complex human conditions, such as poverty, spirituality, and more. His uncle chronicles all of the struggles his nephew shares with him in a diary and inserts notes to address Koperu’s concerns, hoping to give him guidance through his challenges.
After World War II, the book was censored and republished in 1945, with critiques of capitalism, portrayal of unpatriotic behavior, and other free-thinking rhetoric removed, especially anything addressing socioeconomic class. The book goes between an omniscient narrator telling Koperu’s story and the uncle’s journal entries.
Finally, at the end, the narrator asks the question that’s the same as the book’s title, “How do you live?”
In essence, it’s a book all about what it means to be a human being. In The Boy and the Heron, it seems to be used as Mahito’s guide to moving forward and pursuing a life of his own, rather than one in the footsteps of his Grand Uncle or anyone else. At the end of the film, Mahito and his family, including his new little brother, prepare to leave the countryside and return to Tokyo after the war.
With a new start, the philosophical question posed by Yoshino on how to live becomes all the more prevalent, as Mahito must set the course for his own destiny, for better or worse.
The film doesn’t bother to cater to audiences, but rather, is a satisfying gift for Miyazaki, from Miyazaki, paying homage to the loss and legacy he’s leaving behind.
The Boy and the Heron is currently playing in theaters.