Thursday, August 8th 2024
Studio Ghibli is responsible for some of the most brilliant animated movies of the last decades, which can be largely credited to the work of Hayao Miyazaki, one of Ghibli’s founders and the director of movies like ‘Spirited Away’ (2001), ‘Princess Mononoke’ (1997), ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ (1988), ‘The Wind Rises’ (2013), ‘Ponyo’ (2008), ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ (1989), ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ (2004), ‘Porco Rosso’ (1992) and ‘Castle in the Sky’ (1986). Most of his work includes anti-war messages or addresses complex issues such as the human being and nature, progress, individualism and responsibility, which has earned him the recognition of experts, filmmakers and many of his followers, the Western public and critics.
After a prolific career in animation in filmmaking, Miyazaki was set to retire after ‘The Boy and the Heron’, the latest Studio Ghibli movie, which premiered in Japan this 2023 with very little to no information or promotion about the movie itself before the release, other than the poster. Miyazaki changed his mind about retiring but of course, this mysteriousness around the film is the promotion of the movie itself, everyone loves a well done intrigue campaign and it worked, cause we are all pretty intrigued and eager to see it.
Before the premiere of the movie worldwide, the studio did release a set of promotional images with Entertainment Weekly consisting of stills from the final product, as well as trailer for the movie, in which we start with a village set on fire and a kid between the crowd to find his mother. We cut and then we see the same kid in a variety of magical, mystical, cryptic fantasy settings, very alike to what we’re used to seeing from Studio Ghibli. A dark voice says “about time you came”, everything goes to black and we see a heron picking up flight. And yes, that’s enough information for us to be hyped and excited about this final Miyazaki film. The phrase “where death comes to an end, life finds a new beginning” is also shown between the Ghibli imagery that the trailer is filled with.
After a 10-year hiatus, Hayao Miyazaki comes back with what appears to be a solid offer, as both the animation and the story seem to capture the essence of everything Studio Ghibli stands for in terms of storytelling. This is Miyazaki’s second “retirement”, as he vowed to make his last film back in 2013 with ‘The Wind Rises’, so can’t say that this goodbye is definitive, as we have been proved wrong. But we’re definitely more than ready for this new dark fantasy. We don’t want to give away too much from the film as we believe the secretiveness around it makes it all more especial and thrilling, but we’re gonna leave you with a spoiler-free synopsis of the film, extracted from The Verge and Japanese media reviews, but we all are gonna have to wait until December 8th, 2023:
“During the Second World War, young Mahito Maki (Soma Santoki) suffers a heartbreaking family tragedy and must move immediately to the countryside, where his father (Takuya Kimura) works for a family making planes for Japan’s military, as Miyazaki’s own father did.
Isolated, Mahito begins exploring the mysterious landscapes and encounters a grey heron, persistent in its presence. The boy also happens upon an abandoned tower. Curious, he enters. From there, The Boy and the Heron expands into a wondrous, often-startling phantasmagoria.”
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