Le Garçon et le Héron

The imagery that completely stuck with me is when things overwhelm Mahito. From the frogs, to the pelicans, the warawara, the fish guts, and the parakeets. And Mahito's reaction is not even fight or flight. He stays still as if frozen and completely unable to react.

And that's maybe why it was important for Mahito to know that forgetting is normal. His feeling of loss and grief and the feeling of having to adjust to changes in his environment may be overwhelming and maybe a solution is trying to forget.

The granduncle is Miyazaki himself. He tries to find someone who can continue his legacy but in the end completely accepts that the worlds that he built and the stories he has told may crumble and completely be forgotten. And that is one truth that an artist will find hard to take.

Seeing The Boy and The Heron, Hayao Miyazaki's latest movie feels almost like a monumental event in and of itself. It was announced almost as a surprise with the words "Hayao Miyazaki's last movie". With this amount of hype, including the amazing reviews it's got from critics, my hype was built up to the max. The end result? Not what I expected, and that's ok!

Let's get to the positives, the animation is STUNNING. The way Hayao Miyazaki manages to build these worlds and characters is just an amazing feat, they all come alive with the colours and the movement. Another positive is the tone of the movie, I really hate Disney for trying to market this as a kid's movie, when it's not. It's got some unnerving and scary moments and themes that are not suited for kids, which is good. Hayao Miyazaki is at his best when he manages to blend the adult with the fantastical.

The actors are always amazing, I saw the Japanese dub so I don't know how the western VAs are doing but wow; they all do a fantastic job!

Now to the negatives... a huge thing about Studio Ghibli movies in general, especially the ones from Hayao Miyazaki, is that they're always by rule driven by the characters, it's their journey that's in the front. World building and narrative always takes a second place in his movies to be able to not distract from the characters journeys, big examples of this are Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle where the world building is built by very simple and effective means and rules. But here in the Boy and The Heron the world building is so convoluted and confusing it almost feels like he wanted it to take center stage in this movie and it's such a shame because it feels at like it's at odds with it's own main character who supposedly undergoes a deep deep emotional journey but it all finishes off in a very abrupt and unfitting send-off in the end which really confused me and just didn't feel like a good payoff.

Also the way this movie introduces characters left and right with no rhyme or reason is super confusing. Once again, Hayao Miyazaki did this very minimally in his past movies where the characters get room to be explored and to leave an impact in the story but here once again it's at odds with its own world building- it all feels very haphazard and messy. The Heron is a fun character but I don't feel like he or Mahito do or learn anything from these adventures.

Now, it may sound like I hated this movie, but I didn't. It's just that I care so much about Hayao Miyazaki movies and Studio Ghibli movies that I can't help to compare them to the movies we've seen before. And despite it not being Hayao Miyazaki's best it's still pretty good, it's very much worth a watch.

From Studio Ghibli, The Boy and the Heron is an animated movie about a boy that dramatically lose his mother due the war in Japan, and he and his father have to move to a safer place. When they arrive, they live in a nice and quiet home. In a place, were strange things did happen, and will happen, too. First of all, I have to list up what was good about the film. It was absolutely beautiful animation with great paint, drawing techniques, and amazing colors. They had that mix with painting-like animation, but at the same time, classic Japanese anime. And I really liked that, I think it is a very nice thing, and I can see that this is a technique that Studio Ghibli is using a lot, and they are really doing it well. Very nice music. It was soft, easy and quiet, but at the same time it built up a hidden suspense that was holding. The music was some sort of anxiety mixed with calmness. Very strange. Last thing that was good was the overall atmosphere and the feeling of the movie, at least in the first act. Because then things started to get a little weird. Everything became unknown and messy, the story changed the course multiple times, and I wasn't sure which way the plot was going to go. At the end everything became a little more clear, but still a little weird. When you don't know what is really going on, the action becomes a little nonsense, too. And that was exactly what happened. The action sequences were sometimes fun and entertaining, but I was still questioning: Why are they doing it? Why are they running? What are they running from? What's the point of the story? Good enough that they had a good moral at the end. Very great with a good message about the balance of the world, and that the soul value is very important. After all, this was a movie on the middle. Great music and animation. Fine atmosphere in the first act. But it got a little messy, and the story changed course to many times. They rushed a lot and I didn't get time to think. Studio Ghibli could have definitely done better.

I'm a huge fan of Ghibli (I even have a Princess Mononoke tattoo to show).

I have to say, this movie left me wanting more.

The beginning of the movie feels slower (and mostly coherent) but slowly devolves into a beautiful collage of animation and music. Generally, it feels like the movie is formed as a sampler of the rest of Ghibli, pulling ideas and art from other titles like Spirited Away, Howl's, and Mononoke.

By the time the story comes together in a somewhat haphazard manner, you're pretty much at the end of the movie, and the deep ideas that were to be conveyed had no time to develop. There are various decisions made by the protagonists that lack rhyme or reason because everything critical was saved for the end. I imagine if you watch the movie another 2-3 more times you might catch onto what Miyazaki was intending, but it was certainly lost in a singular conventional theatre style viewing.

Is it worth watching simply based on art and music? In my opinion, yes, but if you're expecting a Ghibli level movie, you might be disappointed.

Mahito's life is dramatically changed, he's lost his mother, and his father has started a new life in the country, escaping a war. One day Mahito follows a heron, and enters a whole new fantasy world.

This first thing I'm going to start with, the visuals, what a feast for the eyes, it is a vividly, beautiful film, some of the scenes are honestly captivating, not just the animations themselves, but the colours and creativity.

To be honest, I can't say I fully understood what was going on, I did find myself needing to read up about the plot, as some of it did go over my head, I imagine this improves with a second viewing.

It feels like a very personal story, I wonder if Miyazaki was exercising personal demons through it. As always there's a strong moral angle running through it, but plenty of really good scenes.

I'm nitpicking, but I did prefer Spirited Away, maybe simply because I found it easier to follow, but I'd recommend this very highly.

Worth seeing for the incredible visuals alone.

7/10.