The Boy and the Heron (2023): The Three Miyazakis, Malice-Filled Stones, and a Father’s Message

Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (Studio Ghibli Official) is not just a fantasy film; it is a raw, agonizingly personal confession from a master animator confronting his legacy and his family. Released on July 14, 2023, this cinematic enigma left audiences both mesmerized and deeply bewildered.

If memory serves, the existence of this film was first teased at the very end of the NHK BS documentary The Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki(終わらない人 宮﨑駿, in Japanese) in January 2017. In a quiet scene, Miyazaki handed a feature film proposal to producer Toshio Suzuki. By October of that year, the Japanese title (How Do You Live?) was officially revealed.

After years of anxious waiting, Studio Ghibli took an unprecedented gamble: they released zero promotional material aside from a single, cryptic poster of a “Grey Heron.” Thanks to Toshio Suzuki’s brilliant marketing blackout, I was blessed with the absolute luxury of experiencing a brand-new Miyazaki film completely blind.

Immediately after its release, social media was flooded with comments calling the film “incomprehensible” or claiming it “makes no sense.” Personally, I believe “intensely complicated” is the more accurate description. Every single frame, character, and line of dialogue is loaded with multiple meanings, overlapping metaphors, and deep psychological projections.

Today, we are going to crack open the heavy doors of The Boy and the Heron. If I were forced to distill the absolute core of this massive film into a single sentence, it would be this:

This is the story of Hayao Miyazaki finally choosing to be a father.

While that is my ultimate takeaway, reducing the film to just that would be a disservice to its staggering complexity. We need to peel back the layers.

First, let’s examine a groundbreaking narrative shift: the explicit portrayal of a “father acting as a true father to his son,” a dynamic previously absent from Miyazaki’s legendary filmography.

*Please consider this your official warning: the following deep-dive analysis contains nothing but major spoilers.

*This is a translated version. The original (Japanese) is available here.

Deep Analysis: Unlocking the Mysteries of The Boy and the Heron (2023)

The Rare Depiction of a True Father Figure

One of the most glaring differences between The Boy and the Heron and the rest of the Ghibli pantheon is the incredibly vivid, active portrayal of Mahito’s father. Specifically, he is explicitly depicted fulfilling the role of a “son’s father.” While this might spark some debate among fans, let’s briefly review the track record of fathers in Miyazaki’s past works:

You could argue Pazu’s deceased father in Castle in the Sky casts a shadow, but he is merely a memory. While Howl functions as a surrogate father to Markl in Howl’s Moving Castle, he is far too emotionally stunted to fulfill the actual responsibilities of parenthood.

Prior to this film, the closest we got was Koichi in Ponyo, but his demanding job as a ship captain isolates him from his family. Meaningful, face-to-face interactions between a father and his son were practically nonexistent in Miyazaki’s universe.

Yet, in The Boy and the Heron, the dynamic between Mahito and his father is front and center. The film repeatedly highlights scenes demonstrating his profound, unshakeable love for Mahito. I know I wasn’t the only one deeply moved by the sight of this wealthy, pragmatic industrialist frantically grabbing a Japanese sword and charging into danger solely to save his boy.

But why did Miyazaki suddenly choose to highlight this dynamic now?

To answer that, we must venture into the fantasy world.

The Grey Heron’s Lure: “Your Mother”

The Boy and the Heron opens with an incredibly grounded, harrowing depiction of wartime Japan. However, it isn’t long before Mahito is lured by the grotesque “Grey Heron” into a realm of surreal fantasy, a trademark of Miyazaki’s imagination.

The crucial detail here is the specific bait the Grey Heron uses to trap him. He whispers two words: “Your mother.”

It is a well-documented piece of Ghibli lore that Hayao Miyazaki’s own mother suffered from spinal tuberculosis and was bedridden for much of his childhood. In various interviews, Miyazaki has confessed that his inability to physically interact with his mother—to simply be hugged by her—left a permanent, agonizing wedge in his heart.

For a director carrying that specific emotional baggage, simply erasing “mothers” from his narratives would be a cowardly escape. Instead, Miyazaki has spent his entire career projecting the idealized “mother” into the subtext of his heroines.

In a very real sense, Miyazaki has kept the concept of his “mother” locked away safely within the confines of his own “works.”

The otherworldly tower the Grey Heron lures Mahito into is the ultimate physical manifestation of that concept.

The Fake Mother and the Descent into the Mind

Upon entering the tower, the very first entity Mahito encounters appears to be his deceased mother. The Grey Heron seemingly kept his promise. But as Mahito touches her, she collapses into a puddle of water—a cruel, liquid illusion.

From this moment, the film plunges into a deeply abstract fantasy world where the literal “meaning” of events becomes slippery. However, because the landscapes, creatures, and architecture so blatantly mirror elements from previous Miyazaki films, we can confidently identify this realm as a direct, unfiltered symbol of Director Hayao Miyazaki’s inner psyche.

Therefore, introducing a fake, dissolving mother right at the threshold was likely a powerful, meta-textual declaration to the audience: “The maternal figures I have drawn in the past were illusions. This time, I am going to confront and depict the mother I was always meant to depict.“

At this juncture, the subtext becomes undeniable: the protagonist, Mahito, is the primary alter ego of Hayao Miyazaki (Alter Ego #1). This is historically cemented by the fact that Mahito’s father runs a military aviation factory—just as Hayao Miyazaki’s real-life father, Katsuji Miyazaki, was the director of Miyazaki Airplane.

The Vivacious Himi and the Echoes of Ponyo

If Mahito is the avatar for Miyazaki, then the young, fire-wielding girl Himi is the avatar for Miyazaki’s mother.

Rather than portraying her as the frail, bedridden woman etched into his childhood memories, Miyazaki chooses to resurrect her as a fiercely powerful, energetic girl of Mahito’s exact age.

This striking creative choice immediately calls Ponyo to mind.

If you have seen the incredible NHK documentary How Ponyo Was Born(ポニョはこうして生まれた, in Japanese), you will know that the grumpy, wheelchair-bound old woman, Toki, was heavily modeled after Miyazaki’s mother.

Toki’s initial unapproachable, prickly nature was a direct reflection of how difficult it was for a young Miyazaki to physically connect with his sick mother.

At the climax of Ponyo, when Toki magically regains the ability to walk, sprints across the underwater dome, and wraps Sosuke in a massive hug, we are witnessing Miyazaki animating his own desperate, unfulfilled childhood wish.

However, in Ponyo, Toki was still visually depicted as an elderly woman. It was a grounded, albeit magical, representation.

In The Boy and the Heron, Miyazaki shatters that final limiter. He fully animates his mother in the radiant, youthful prime he never got to witness in real life. And he does it with absolute, unapologetic directness.

Implicitly weaving his mother’s spirit into his heroines is something he has always done. But looking her directly in the eye, in her true, vibrant form, is something he had never achieved. This need for ultimate psychological closure was undoubtedly a massive driving force behind the creation of this film. He realized, “I still have things I need to do.”

The Terrifying Realism of Stepmother Natsuko

We cannot discuss mothers without analyzing the complex role of Natsuko, Mahito’s biological aunt turned stepmother. Why did Miyazaki inject such a fraught dynamic into the story?

There are two brilliant narrative reasons.

First, the plot required a deeply internal, psychological trigger to push Mahito toward the ominous tower. If Mahito was perfectly content and felt loved in his new countryside life, he would have ignored the Heron entirely. He certainly wouldn’t have smashed his own head with a rock in a cry for attention.

Natsuko represents a suffocating, inescapable “dissatisfaction” for Mahito. Her presence forces him to confront his unresolved grief, acting as the narrative engine for the first act.

Secondly, Mahito’s complicated relationship with Natsuko serves as a secondary mirror for Miyazaki’s relationship with his own mother.

The confusing mix of yearning for affection and the painful “feeling of distance” a child experiences when their mother is sick is brilliantly projected onto Mahito’s relationship with his new stepmother. By dividing these emotional complexities between the magical Himi and the grounded Natsuko, Miyazaki managed to explore every multifaceted angle of “motherhood.”

The Granduncle’s Tower: A Critique of Ghibli’s Animation Process

If the underworld is a metaphor for Miyazaki’s psyche, the Granduncle and his precarious tower of balancing stones represent the sheer, agonizing mechanics of how Studio Ghibli films are made.

It is infamous within the industry that Hayao Miyazaki does not write scripts. He begins production once a fraction of the storyboards are drawn, simultaneously directing and storyboarding the film as production blazes forward.

Because of this reckless, improvisational style—especially noticeable post-Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away—critics frequently accuse his later films of having “messy plots” or “lacking narrative coherence.”

Miyazaki is acutely, painfully aware of this criticism.

Therefore, the terrifyingly fragile tower of geometric stones the Granduncle desperately tries to balance is a direct metaphor for the structural fragility of Miyazaki’s own films.

Through this lens, it becomes undeniable: the Granduncle is the second major alter ego of Director Hayao Miyazaki (Alter Ego #2).

If you still doubt this theory, examining the mysterious meteorite that drove the Granduncle insane will provide the final piece of the puzzle.

The Meteorite: The Spark of Creation

The ominous tower looming over the estate was not built by human hands; it was constructed around a massive, alien meteorite that crashed from the heavens. The Granduncle dedicated his life to it, eventually being consumed by its power.

As an audience, the sudden introduction of a cosmic rock feels wildly out of place in a wartime drama.

But strip away the literal context and focus on the metaphor: the Granduncle was so utterly hypnotized by this mysterious, overwhelming presence that he abandoned reality, locking himself inside it for eternity.

In this context, that meteorite is “Animation” itself. And the sprawling, chaotic pocket dimension inside the rock is the cinematic universe Miyazaki has spent his life building.

The surreal hallway of doors at the film’s climax practically confirms this. The doors allow characters to leap across time, space, and dimensions instantaneously. That is the exact definition of cinematic editing. Animation can stretch a second into an hour, compress a century into a minute, and transport an audience a thousand miles in a single cut.

Furthermore, the terrifying, man-eating parakeets instantly revert to harmless, ordinary birds the second they cross the threshold back into the real world. The door is the literal screen dividing “fiction and reality.”

However, The Boy and the Heron refuses to be a simple love letter to animation. It twists the knife by heavily incorporating the concept of “the afterlife.” We know this because Mahito’s deceased mother exists there. Therefore, the realm inside the tower is a terrifying amalgamation of:

This dizzying, overlapping ambiguity is exactly what makes the film so famously “complicated.”

By unpacking these layers, it becomes an absolute certainty: the Granduncle is “an alter ego of Hayao Miyazaki, the Animation Director.“

The Origin of the Stone and the Time-Loop

Even if we accept the meteorite as a metaphor for creative obsession, its sudden appearance from the sky feels jarring.

However, Miyazaki actually shows us the exact moment the meteorite is born.

During the climax, as the Granduncle’s universe crumbles, his 13 building blocks plummet into a void-like expanse. In the background of that chaotic destruction, a single shooting star streaks across the dark sky.

That specific shooting star is the very meteorite that will crash into the past, driving the Granduncle mad in the first place.

The bewitching stone grants immense god-like power, but it traps the wielder in a perpetual, agonizing cycle of eternity. The Granduncle is a prisoner of his own creation.

At the beginning of the film, Mahito is similarly trapped in a cycle of profound grief over his mother’s fiery death, a stasis exacerbated by his resentment toward Natsuko.

It is only by reading the physical novel How Do You Live?—the gift left behind by his mother—that Mahito finds the psychological strength to break free. That book acts as the vital emotional anchor of the film.

Having successfully shattered his own cycle of grief, the evolved Mahito would never accept the Granduncle’s offer. He refuses to inherit the cursed stones and lock himself away in an eternal loop of creation and isolation.

It is a breathtakingly brilliant narrative resolution.

And it confirms a mind-bending truth: The Boy and the Heron secretly operates on time-loop mechanics.

A Hidden Buddy Film: The Real-Life Studio Ghibli Counterparts

The Grey Heron as Producer Toshio Suzuki

If Mahito and the Granduncle represent different facets of Hayao Miyazaki, and the bizarre dimension is his creative studio, we are left with one massive, squawking anomaly.

The Heron Man.

You could argue the Granduncle dragged a normal bird into the tower and mutated it, just like the parakeets and pelicans. But that logic fails. The parakeets lose their sentience the moment they exit the tower. The Grey Heron, however, retains his cunning personality, magical abilities, and human teeth in the real world. He is the one who initiates the journey.

The Grey Heron plays by an entirely different set of rules. So, who is he?

If Mahito is Miyazaki, then the deceptive, aggravating, yet fiercely loyal Grey Heron is undeniably… Producer Toshio Suzuki.

Suzuki has been the manipulative, brilliant mastermind standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Miyazaki and Takahata since before Studio Ghibli even existed. The man who coaxed, tricked, and supported Miyazaki into making film after film is perfectly caricatured as the Heron Man.

When viewed through this lens, The Boy and the Heron reveals itself to be Miyazaki’s first true “buddy film” since The Castle of Cagliostro. The Heron initially appears as a menacing trickster, manipulating Mahito with lies, but eventually morphs into an indispensable, grumpy comrade who ensures Mahito survives the journey.

If the underworld is the “realm of creation,” then Mahito and the Heron fighting side-by-side is a beautiful, thinly veiled tribute to the decades-long war Miyazaki and Suzuki waged together in the animation trenches.

Kiriko as Color Designer Michiyo Yasuda

Once you accept the “buddy film” framework, the identity of the film’s most confusing supporting character instantly clicks into place.

The fierce fisherwoman, Kiriko.

She starts as a frail, superstitious maid in the real world, only to appear as a badass, magical sailor in the underworld, serving as Mahito’s protector and guide.

In the context of Ghibli’s history, I believe Kiriko represents the late, legendary color designer Michiyo Yasuda, who passed away in 2016. While not explicitly confirmed in the text, knowing that the Heron is Suzuki makes it incredibly logical to cast Kiriko as another foundational pillar of Miyazaki’s creative life. Casting her as a tough, capable navigator of the spiritual seas feels like an appropriate tribute.

The Incomprehensible Time-Loop: Decoding the Timeline

Himi and Kiriko

As the underworld collapses, Himi and Kiriko bravely step through a portal leading back to their own timeline in the past, knowing full well that Himi is choosing a path that will end in her becoming Mahito’s mother.

The interaction between a boy and his time-displaced mother confirms the sci-fi time-loop. But because it unfolds inside a dimension where time and space are mixed up, the mechanics become mind-numbingly complex.

In an interview with Asahi Shimbun (“The Boy and the Heron” Director Hayao Miyazaki talked about the new film. And Genzaburo Yoshino, in Japanese), Miyazaki allegedly told his staff after the first screening: “You probably didn’t understand it. There were parts I didn’t understand myself.” Personally, I suspect he was referring specifically to the chaotic temporal logic of the timeline.

For what it’s worth, here is a summary of the timeline I came up with:

It seems Mahito’s mother wandered into the tower a long time ago, and considering that the Granduncle is still alive, it means that in that world, time passes incredibly slowly compared to the real world.

What do you think? Of course, I’m sure there are dissenting opinions! I expect objections, especially regarding the handling of Kiriko. I don’t think I could figure out the “reason” why Kiriko had the same scar as Mahito even if I thought about it for a thousand years.

But we must remember: what we humans can understand are physical phenomena that can actually occur. The world created by the Granduncle and time loops don’t actually exist, so it’s natural that we can’t understand them.

We have wandered into the magnificent, incomprehensible fantasy world created by Director Miyazaki. Isn’t that what fiction is all about?

What Happened to the Mother’s Body?

In the main story, Mahito is told by the Grey Heron, “You haven’t seen your mother’s body, have you?” It seems this is true, and Mahito never received the closure of seeing her remains.

There are two possibilities for this:

Normally, the former would be the case. It makes perfect sense for a protective father to shield his son from that horror.

However, assuming that she had obtained “the power of fire” in the strange world, the latter possibility is also quite conceivable.

Himi, who returned to the original world, naturally lost her memory of meeting Mahito, but at the moment of her death, surrounded by flames, Mahito’s mother regains “the power of fire” and its memory, becoming a “fire spirit” to protect Mahito.

The reason Mahito saw his mother’s figure clad in flames in a dreamlike state is probably because of this.

Also, it could be said that the reason Mahito’s mother, who was spirited away, had “the power of fire” was because “Mahito’s mother, who became a fire spirit, went to that world with Mahito.”

See, it makes no sense, right?

It’s irresponsible for me to say “it makes no sense” after writing it myself, but I feel like the nuance gets across somehow. Of course, if I abandon the almost baseless insistence that she was “protecting Mahito as a fire spirit,” I would be freed from at least this incomprehensibility. But in the end, in the world of The Boy and the Heron, at least in the world where the Granduncle was, “cause and effect” do not necessarily occur along the normal time axis.

I suppose this “temporal coherence” part is what Director Miyazaki meant by “I didn’t understand it.”

The Eerie Shrine: Miyazaki’s Hidden Demons

When Mahito wandered into the “underground world,” the first thing he saw was a mysterious, eerie shrine. It seems there was something inside it that had to be appeased with prayers.

If that world is “Hayao Miyazaki’s inner world” and “Hayao Miyazaki’s animation world,” then what was inside that shrine was “the murky something that Hayao Miyazaki still hasn’t put into his works.”

To “create a work” is to “expose oneself” in some form, but if you put everything inside you out there, it won’t be entertainment, and it won’t be something that should be shown to people in the first place.

You can’t create a work without exposing yourself, but if you expose yourself too much, it will fall apart.

Director Hayao Miyazaki probably injected his essence into his works on that fine line, but he must be aware that there is still something he hasn’t brought out. That something was sleeping inside that shrine. The fact that he prayed to it and appeased it can be taken as a declaration of “I’m not putting this in this work either, you know.”

However, there is a big difference between what he thinks he hasn’t shown and what actually hasn’t been shown. Perhaps we have received the “something” that Director Miyazaki thinks he has hidden.

Mahito’s Rejection: Denying the “Malice-Filled Stones”

If the Granduncle is Hayao Miyazaki as an animation director, then the dialogue with Mahito at the end of the story was a dialogue with himself.

The Granduncle tries to make Mahito inherit his work and tells him to stack stones, but Mahito rejects inheriting the Granduncle’s work, saying, “They are malice-filled stones, not warm wood.” As a result, the world the Granduncle loved collapses, but what did that scene mean?

As we have considered so far, that world can be thought of as the world of animation that Director Miyazaki has created, but Mahito describes it as “malice-filled stones.”

What part is “malice-filled”?

Miyazaki’s works have fascinated many people, including myself, but the production site is a bit special. In addition to the aforementioned storyboard work, the process of correcting the key animation drawn by animators is a bit harsh.

Director Miyazaki, who was originally a genius animator, checks all the key animation drawn by the animators and corrects it with his own hands. The job of the animation director is to clean up Director Miyazaki’s roughs while understanding his intentions.

And those corrections are ruthless. The key animation that was painstakingly drawn is thrown away and replaced with something else.

In short, he wants to draw everything himself, but since he can’t, he has no choice but to use other people. At least, that’s how it would look to those around him.

The reason the production site holds together in such a situation is that Director Miyazaki’s corrections are ultimately extremely good.

Of course, not all animators thought the corrected version was better. There were probably many who beat up Hayao Miyazaki in their hearts.

In Ghibli Textbook 9: Whisper of the Heart(ジブリの教科書9 耳をすませば, in Japanese), famous animator Kitaro Kosaka says the following while talking about director Kondo’s animation checks:

Kondo-san’s checks have two stages. When the key animation comes in, he first corrects only the characters. So the cut goes to the in-between animation staff without the acting being checked, and he checks the acting for the first time when the in-between animation is done. The key animator’s effort is not completely wasted like in Miyazaki-san’s checks, but this method is also very risky…

(Original Text in Japanese)
近藤さんのチェックは二段階なんです。原画が上がってくると、まずキャラクターだけを直すんです。ですから芝居はノーチェックのままそのカットが動画スタッフにまわり、動画が上がってきたときに初めて芝居をチェックします。宮崎さんのチェックのように原画マンの労力が全く無駄になるということは少ないのですが、このやり方はリスクも大きく・・・

Unlike Director Miyazaki’s works, where everything is corrected from scratch, I think it was a work that key animators could participate in without being too intimidated and with a sense of freedom…

(Original Text in Japanese)
一から直されてしまう宮崎監督作品とは異なり、現我慢にとってはあまり畏縮せずにのびのびと参加できた作品だったと思いますし・・・

It’s clear that the production site for Director Miyazaki’s works was a rather difficult place even for top-class animators.

Furthermore, it is also noteworthy that most of Miyazaki’s works are created by one person, Hayao Miyazaki, who handles the original story, screenplay, storyboards, and direction.

That is a very amazing thing, but considering that he even directly corrects the key animation himself, it can be said that Miyazaki’s works are a closed world created by the person named Hayao Miyazaki.

This “unique harshness of the production site” and the fact that it is a “closed world” are likely the reasons why what the Granduncle built up was described as “malice-filled stones.”

If you think about it this way, the ending means that Hayao Miyazaki decisively denied his own world. However, what Mahito denied was “malice-filled stones,” and it would be fine if they were “warm wood.”

Furthermore, it is also noteworthy that Mahito remembered what happened inside the tower. Mahito was in a state of being “spirited away,” and normally, those who return from being “spirited away” lose their memories of it.

However, thanks to the “piece of stone” he put in his pocket, he retains that memory.

Considering all these things, the meaning of that ending can be said to have been a profound artistic manifesto: “I will not forget everything I have created so far, but I will create animation (be involved in animation) in a different way than before.” Considering his age, it’s hard to believe, but considering what we’ve thought about so far, it’s not entirely strange.

However, considering the Granduncle’s words, “Only those with a blood connection can succeed me,” it can be thought that that ending had a more complex structure.

Here, let’s have Mahito’s father appear again.

A Father’s Confession: Miyazaki’s Message to His Son

As I mentioned at the beginning, it’s fine for now to say that Mahito is an alter ego of Hayao Miyazaki and his father is an alter ego of Hayao Miyazaki’s father, Katsuji, but if you look at the quiet moments at the end of the story, you can see that it’s a little more complex.

Hayao Miyazaki is actually the second of four brothers, but Mahito ends up being the older brother of two siblings. Of course, there is a possibility that Mahito’s siblings will increase, but there is a big difference between an older brother and a younger brother.

What I want to say is that, when you combine the image of the family of four in the last scene with the Granduncle’s words, it seems that Mahito also has Director Miyazaki’s son, Goro Miyazaki, projected onto him, and Mahito’s father also has Hayao Miyazaki himself projected onto him. The real Miyazaki family is a family of four (two sons).

The complicated thing about this movie is that multiple elements are projected onto a single existence, and they change from scene to scene, or exist simultaneously.

Ultimately, from this perspective, the content of the dialogue between Mahito and the Granduncle and the subsequent development can be seen as a message from Hayao Miyazaki to his son, Goro Miyazaki.

To consider the meaning of that message, we need to think a little more, but it becomes even more complicated when written down.

In the dialogue scene between Mahito and the Granduncle, Mahito has two people projected onto him, Hayao Miyazaki and Goro Miyazaki. The fact that such an existence ultimately desires that other world, and that Mahito returns to the “Miyazaki family,” is a wish for Goro Miyazaki to leap into a “world that is not Miyazaki-like,” and at the same time, it means that he, who was Mahito, is leaping into the world of being Mahito’s father.

Furthermore, including the fact that Mahito brought a “piece of stone” back to the original world, the message of the story would be, “Goro, we had our issues in the past, but I want you to continue making animation. However, your way of making it must not be the same as mine, and in the first place, you should have been making it in a different way. But I don’t want you to forget my wisdom and techniques. And I will support you as a father.“

What he wants him to continue making may not necessarily be animation, and it may refer to the work unique to Goro Miyazaki, such as directing the production of Ghibli Park.

As for the “support as a father” part, I am reminded of the figure of Director Hayao Miyazaki who straightforwardly praised Earwig and the Witch.

This interview was released in 2021, and even if it was recorded before that, he was right in the middle of making The Boy and the Heron. For those who know Director Hayao Miyazaki’s appearance in the production documentary of From Up on Poppy Hill, this figure of “straightforwardly praising” felt somewhat strange.

However, after watching The Boy and the Heron, I can think that that interview was also an expression of his stance of “supporting his son as a father.”

Also, including my personal wish, I think that a collaboration between Goro Miyazaki and Hayao Miyazaki will be realized again. If that happens, the meaning of why From Up on Poppy Hill was specially aired on Friday Road Show on July 14, 2023, when the movie was released, seems to become clear.

In any case, it can be said that The Boy and the Heron was a story that declared a “message of support for his son and a return to fatherhood.”

The above is what I thought after watching The Boy and the Heron, but since it has become too long-winded, I would like to summarize it briefly.

Final Verdict: Summary and Impressions of The Boy and the Heron

Synthesizing the Chaos

The work The Boy and the Heron is more “complicated” than “difficult.” Its complexity lies in the fact that the existences of “the world inside the tower,” “Mahito,” “Mahito’s father,” and “the Granduncle” have multiple meanings, and those meanings change freely from scene to scene.

What “the world inside the tower” represents is:

As for “Mahito,” “Mahito’s father,” and “the Granduncle”:

Hayao Miyazaki’s father may also be subtly projected onto the Granduncle. While having such a “complicated” structure, the story created seems to have had the following two themes:

On top of such themes, considering Director Hayao Miyazaki’s unique and harsh animation production methods, the Granduncle’s stacked stones in the story, the dialogue between Mahito and the Granduncle, and the collapsing tower, the following can be considered as the clear, professional manifestos depicted:

Considering Director Hayao Miyazaki’s age, I don’t know how long he can be involved in animation production, but watching The Boy and the Heron, I felt that he has no intention of quitting animation production at all. I admit that my personal desires are heavily included.

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So far, I’ve tried to be pretentious and do an “analysis,” but from here on, I’ll state my honest personal impressions.

The Thrill and Bewilderment of a Blind Premiere

What was special about The Boy and the Heron was that there was no promotion at all. It was revealed by producer Toshio Suzuki that it was “a fantasy,” but other than that, only the key visual was revealed.

The Wind Rises had almost no fantasy elements, so in the scene where Mahito enters the tower, I was very excited, thinking, “Oh! The Miyazaki fantasy world is finally open! This is it, this is it, this has been a long time coming!”

However, on the other hand, the structure of “into a mysterious world” was clearly Spirited Away, the fantasy world depicted afterward was clearly reminiscent of previous Miyazaki works, and the end of the story was “Balse” (the destruction spell from Castle in the Sky).

I couldn’t help but think of at least Castle in the Sky, Spirited Away, Ponyo, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises.

In that case, I was a little confused about how to think about what I was watching, but on the other hand, there were parts that I could only think were intentionally incorporating elements of previous Miyazaki works.

I think, like many people, the fresh excitement of having no prior information and honest confusion were what I felt on my first viewing.

However, since I also wanted to write my impressions on my blog, this article is the result of several days of thinking after watching it in the theater. It may be a little far-fetched, but I don’t think it’s too far off.

The Scary, Scary Stepmother Natsuko

The most intense scene in The Boy and the Heron was probably the scene where Natsuko screamed “I hate you!” at Mahito.

However, what’s important is not the scariness or intensity of that scene, but the fact that we, the viewers, had somehow noticed Natsuko’s feelings throughout the story.

The scene that definitively instilled that impression in us was probably the scene where Natsuko forcibly grabbed Mahito’s hand and placed it on her own stomach.

In the end, that scene was a declaration of war against Mahito, who is still a child, saying, “Your father is no longer yours. He belongs to me and this child!“

However, perhaps thinking she had gone a little too far herself, she showed a pretense of caring for Mahito afterward, at least on the surface.

She might seem like a bit of a terrible person, but it’s probably not that easy to accept a child that is not your own as your own. Of course, the same would have been true for the child, but it was gratifying that in the end, it became a case of “after the rain, the ground hardens.”

Mahito’s Malice

In the film, the scene that first confused us was when Mahito hit his own head with a stone and a huge amount of blood flowed.

He described the resulting wound as “proof of malice.” Considering the meaning of “malice,” I think it was something like:

But more than the meaning of “malice,” I feel that the important thing was that the moment I saw that scene with the large amount of blood, I keenly felt, “Oh, this is a movie I have to think about a lot!”

Well, it’s also my problem for watching the master’s highly anticipated work with a strange sense of tension.

The Immortal Miyazaki Humor

What impressed me the most about The Boy and the Heron might have been the immortal Miyazaki humor.

Not limited to animation, there are humorous scenes as an “intermission” in many movies, but personally, I feel that 99.9% of them fall flat or fail.

On the other hand, Miyazaki’s works always make you chuckle at the perfect moment. Even in that Princess Mononoke, he threw in such a scene.

The highlight scene of The Boy and the Heron might be the adjustment scene for the wooden part Mahito made to fill the hole in the “Grey Heron’s” beak. It was very funny with perfect timing.

Other than that, there were exquisite humorous scenes scattered throughout, such as “Mahito backing away on all fours,” which was drawn with the labor of animation, and Mahito’s father’s line, “Mahito has turned into a parakeet~,” and I chuckled at all of them.

Of course, whether humor hits or not depends on the person, so there may be people who are the complete opposite of me and can can’t accept Miyazaki humor at all, but I was very satisfied to see the immortal Miyazaki humor.

However, the scene I laughed at the most might have been when Genzaburo Yoshino’s novel How Do You Live? appeared in the main story as that novel. This has nothing to do with “Miyazaki humor,” but I was impressed and laughed, thinking, “So that’s one way to do it!” The great master Director Hayao Miyazaki is probably allowed to borrow the title by having the novel of the same name appear in the main story. It was a bold method unique to a great master.

That’s all for now!