The Boy and The Heron (2023)

Yesterday, I was able to drive to the mall and watch a Miyazaki Animé movie for the first time on the big screen and I thought this would be a nice treat for me as I have always been viewing Studio Ghibli movies with the confines of my computer monitor at home. Since this is reportedly Miyazaki’s last movie, now 83, his swan song so to speak; it was the perfect time for me to do so. So I went to the theater expecting to go home with a happy Miyazaki Animé movie experience in tow.

I wasn’t wrong. I enjoyed the movie and although I am not obliged to say why, I thought having a novel experience in life is always the best experience anyway. So I convinced myself that despite the mixed reviews I have read prior, I will enjoy the movie regardless and that I did! Certainly! Triumph over matter (or material)!

Anyway, not veering off the topic, I read a little about or watched some YouTube reviews on how the movie would unfold and although many had said it really wasn’t the best Animé Feature Miyazaki has made (it was convoluted and confusing in many instances),  it was still satisfying on my part. Being an artist myself, the artistry or the painstaking hand-drawn animation shown in this movie was worth the price of admission. In other words, seeing the various anthropomorphic animals come to life (and there were a lot!) was probably good enough highlights for me! I don’t claim to be a Ghibli film geek anyway. Just as how I would regard regular live action movies, I’m just interested in them with a general curiosity.

Nonetheless, the movie experience has to be real. First off, let’s start with Mahito. He is the main carrier of the story, the boy you see on the poster and the one you have to travel with mentally if you want to be transported to a world that mainly exists in the mind of the creator, Miyazaki himself. He is no flighty character but he goes through a myriad of fanciful encounters beginning when his mother dies in a hospital fire brought upon by War and had to move to their countryside estate from Tokyo to live with his aunt Natsuko who is now also his stepmother and when she gets lost and he tries to find her; then this is where all the flights of imagination begin…starting with a strange gray heron that mysteriously appears to call on him out of nowhere.

This gray heron would lead him to a tower that he hopes fervently would lead him to his dead mother (as the heron promises) and ultimately his pregnant aunt Natsuko who looks strikingly similar to his own mother. What follows is where the so-called confusion sets in. First of all, Studio Ghibli movies are notably punctuated with spiritual references, and this one was inundated with it so much so that you may be reminded of past Miyazaki movies like Mononoke and Totoro that featured similar characters like the Warawara and other forest creatures. To add to this, the old ladies at the estate look like the big-nosed ladies from Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle and many people suggested this as perhaps a culmination of all Miyazaki’s works and as a kind of valediction to one of the greatest filmmakers of modern history and if not, certainly the most popular in Japan, I would think.

Going back on track, I wouldn’t be concerned with any of this if it weren't for the hype surrounding this movie. I'm really more concerned with how the story moves along but it is important to keep in mind that there is a thin veil between earthly worlds and the supernatural here. The next scene I remember is of the gate in the middle of a field he tries to enter after somehow navigating himself out of the dimly-lit tower and meets this pirate named Kiriko similarly named with one of the old ladies at the estate who tries to help him with his personal quest to look for Natsuko early on. Maybe this female pirate who probably belongs to the netherworld is a younger representation of his old lady friend. They both see zombie-like boatmen who Kiriko says she needs to trade things with and a flock of warawara (white, adorable creepy-crawlies) they try to feed with a big fish (catch) for them to develop wings to fly (more like float) to their freedom or even rebirth, that is if another flock of starving pelicans don't eat them first. Confused yet? Enter Lady Himi who casts fireworks in the sky and burns the pelicans in order to set the warawara free.

At this point, try to keep yourself free from judgment with the pelicans as I have (not, really) for they are also good spirits who are simply sharing the same space with other creatures and are basically just hungry themselves. There are no adversaries at this point, at least for Mahito.

Going back to the heron, the one supposed to be sharing equal billing with the boy (at least in the title); he turns out to be a mischievous little human-like goblin who actually ends up helping out Mahito even if at first this wasn't the case. At one point, since the two had an earlier altercation when the heron shows Mahito's mother as a lifeless (oozing) body, Mahito wanted to kill off the heron with an arrow's fletching made from the gray heron's feathers. Instead of dying, the heron's beak gets a hole which prohibits him to fly and Mahito later helps the heron out by plugging the hole with a piece of shaved wood.

Anyway, back in the tower and through his quest to find only Natsuko now, we get to meet Lady Himi the fire mage again, in a different dimension and as a young girl who offers to be his mother at one point. They go through the maze-like tower with an array of differently numbered doors leading to more dimensions or portals and Lady Himi points towards one door that will lead him back to his (earthly) world. The mysterious, magical tower architecture was explained as an extraneous energy (a meteor) that took roots in that place where Natsuko's grand uncle built a tower around to act as his library. The Grand Uncle as this old man is called is a virtuous intellectual who looks like a cross between God and Einstein when Mahito comes face to face with him. In other words, he could be Architect, Scientist, Creator, God in this realm he has founded and he wanted a successor (Mahito, in fact) to rule this world that Mahito by now gets first-hand vision of, as he is part of his bloodline. In this realm, we also get to know an Army of Parakeet People led by a Parakeet King who eventually halts this turnover of succession.

There are (building) blocks involved, simple tools the Grand Uncle measures the world by and they symbolize balance of the cosmos, or if you prefer, the preservation of the uprightness of his world. When these building blocks get rearranged by the Parakeet King, himself a symbol of tyrannical rule and of malice that somehow entered this realm, the magical world itself collapses and the bevy of characters we have been introduced to are forced to flee back to their world.

It would seem that Lady Himi the fire mage is Mahito’s mother in the magical realm but since she would not go back to the world she died in, ironically also by fire, Mahito goes back to his new family, to stepmother Natsuko and father Shoichi and all the other creatures return to their normal selves, with the parakeet people for example reverting back as regular-sized parakeets. The heron as a final message for Mahito tells him it is normal to forget, referring to what he has been through mentally and emotionally so we are faced in the end with a resolution of Mahito being able to accept his new life devoid of grief for his dead mother.

Despite the seemingly complex story structure, it would be wise to be simply part of Mahito’s course or passage as there really is nothing dire, tragic or even strange there. It was just a cryptic journey towards life’s acceptance.