For years, many anime fans have associated Christmas Eve with Princess Mononoke from the Studio Ghibliwhich has sort of replaced The Last Unicorn as the holiday animated film. Today you once again have the opportunity to sweeten your December 24th with San and Ashitaka, who can be found in the ProSieben Maxx program from 8:15 p.m.
But before that I still have to pluck an anime bone with you. No, no one disputes that Princess Mononoke is an absolute masterpiece. But we have to talk again about the poor fan reception of Hayao Miyazaki’s supposed final work The Boy and the Heron. At 7.1, it is the director’s worst-rated film by the Moviepilot community. Are you crazy?
The Boy and the Heron: The misunderstood magnum opus from anime master Hayao Miyazaki
The anime film is called in Japanese
Kimi-tachi wa do ikiru ka? (How do you live?) and refers to a formative book from Miyazaki’s childhood. The only thing the Bildungsroman has in common with the unbridled fantasy storm of The Boy and the Heron is the loss of a parent. The film is much more related to the episodic anime classic Night on the Galactic Railroad, in which two kittens travel through the universe on a train and have to say goodbye to each other at the end. That beyond that one deeper meaning in The Boy and the Heron should be obvious to everyone who has seen the film.
In The Boy and the Heron, Mahito (voice: Soma Santoki) loses his mother in a fire during World War II. The quiet boy later moves to the countryside with his father and his new wife Natsuko, where a mysterious heron (Masaki Suda) lures him to an even more mysterious tower. Through this, Mahito enters one fantasy world that is both colorful and filled with melancholy hoping to see his late mother again. A world that raises suspicious parallels to our world and may have found a new steward in Mahito.
While the breathtaking animation once again demonstrates Miyazaki’s lifelong experience and the soundtrack by house and court composer Joe Hisaishi is, as always, the perfect complement, one thing can be said about the story: it creates an emotional premise with the reunion of the dead mother , which in the end is not quite as tearful as some would have liked.
Watch the German trailer for The Boy and the Heron here:
The Boy and the Heron – Trailer (German) HD
The audience’s emotion must therefore come from the intellectual engagement with the material. There is a little for that Background knowledge necessary, because it’s not necessarily an unpack and go film. But perhaps direct accessibility is not the measure by which we should measure the quality of this masterpiece.
Another fantasy maestro, Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), had it right when he said the following during the international premiere of The Boy and the Heron in Toronto, according to Deadline:
We have the privilege of living in a time when Mozart composed symphonies. The Boy and the Heron: The Existentialist Miyazaki Retrospective
Watching The Boy and the Heron as a hardcore Hayao Miyazaki fan is like one colorful journey through a decades-long filmographya career, a life’s work. While there have always been visual parallels in his anime, often attributable to the animator’s identifiable style, this feels different. Some visual echoes to his twelve films and even his directorial debut, the classic series Future Boy Conan, seem too clear.
The great-granduncle’s pavilion, which seems to have been stolen from Porco Rosso, the stained glass window that brings back memories of the location-changing magic disk from Howl’s Moving Castle, or how Mahito dives through the bushes and grass on the way to Magic Land just like Mai from My Neighbor Totoro . But there are not just vain references for the sake of self-reference.
The last time I experienced the extremely personal final work of a master director who is infinitely close to my heart was in 2017. That was when the 18-hour Twin Peaks: The Return by David Lynch was released, which not only celebrated his enigmatic TV series 25 years later returned, but also reviewed his entire career. As he did back then, he held up a mirror to our viewing habits and dramatically underlined how impossible reboots and revivals are that want to return to a place that no longer exists.
Miyazaki, on the other hand, has completely different artistic concerns. The 83-year-old veteran, known for the (taken out of context) meme quote “Anime was a mistake,” created an incomparable one with Studio Ghibli Fantasy empirewhich is approaching the end of its golden era after the partial sale to Nippon TV (via Hollywood Reporter ) and at the latest with Miyazaki’s (again postponed?) retirement. A fantasy institution that seems doomed without a worthy steward? Wait a moment …
Fantasy Legacy: 13 Building Blocks of Anime Creation
In an interview with Shukan Bunshun, Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki revealed that the Characters from The Boy and the Heron represent key figures of the legendary animation studio. The great-grandfather is the now deceased co-founder Isao Takahata (The Last Fireflies, The Legend of Princess Kaguya), Mahito is Miyazaki and the heron Suzuki himself. The only question is whether the greedy birds of paradise are for other anime producers or the insatiable otaku- audience standing.
After Takahata’s death there are said to have been some changes to the script, the details of which we do not have. Either way, Miyazaki has made a film about his own tensions about his legacy. He himself is the old man with the fantasy kingdom and 13 building blocks of creationwhich could stand for his twelve anime feature films plus the Conan series. Or does the 13th stone that Mahito keeps at the end represent the hope of the creative future beyond his work?
Maybe the message is a bit more personal. Is he telling his own son Goro Miyazaki (The Chronicles of Earthsea), whose anime attempts (of course) didn’t live up to his father’s quality, that it’s okay? That “building your own tower” doesn’t have to mean taking the same path as the deified ancestor? Why not all together…
Japanese films are similar to the Japanese language. At least in the sense that she’s incredibly good with it ambivalence evade. (Also a reason why Twin Peaks was so popular in Japan). The Boy and the Heron is a moving coming-of-age story about farewells and resilience, a fantasy adventure boiling over with creativity with a world of wonder that is in no way inferior to that of Chihiro’s Journey to Magic Land – and at the same time a multi-layered allegory about the Act of creation and one’s own legacy.
This exposure of the animation artist’s soul was rewarded, among other things, with the Oscar from the American Academy, which, for once, made the correct decision. So the golden boy didn’t go to the superhero spectacle Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, but for the first time since Chihiro to Miyazaki, who left us one of his most brilliant building blocks with The Boy and the Heron. One that we will be talking about, speculating and discussing for a long time.
You have been able to stream the film since October of this year Netflixwhere most of the other Miyazaki films are also available.