Summary

Hayao Miyazaki’s movies are deeply influenced by his personal experiences and dreams, incorporating elements of his family’s history and his own struggles. Miyazaki’s unique approach to filmmaking starts with illustrations, with concept art often being created before scripts or storyboards. The Boy and the Heron, rumored to be Miyazaki’s last film, reflects his own longing for connection with his mother and his experiences as a child adjusting to new surroundings.

When Hayao Miyazaki was four years old, his family piled into the back of a truck to escape an air raid. As the bombs fell around them, a mother and child pleaded to come with them. But Miyazaki’s father said there was no room, and they left the small family behind.

Studio Ghibli seemed impossible to imagine at the end of World War II. But now, nearly 80 years later, Miyazaki’s work tells of his past events and dreams for the future. His movies are permeated with the flying machines of his family’s airplane factory. His mother, the woman that she was, shows up in Miyazaki’s many strong female characters. Visions of war and destroyed cities reveal themselves in his illustrations. But beyond this, innocence supersedes violence, especially in films like My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, when children find strength as their families struggle.

The Boy and the Heron is one of those films. Released in Japan but not yet in the US, the story follows a 12-year-old boy who struggles to settle in a new town after his mother’s death. But when he hears rumors that she is alive, a talking heron leads him into a fantastic world. It’s rumored to be Miyazaki’s last film, although he’s retired before. Still, we’ll show you how his whole life has been leading to The Boy and the Heron.

Miyazaki’s Style and Early Career
HBO Max

When Miyazaki makes a movie, he doesn’t begin by writing an outline or an opening scene; no, all his concepts for films begin with a simple drawing. Miyazaki, at his heart, is an illustrator. Even as the film is being written, frames are still being drawn. Production might start before the idea for the movie is even finished.

Ponyo, for example, started with some drawings of a young girl hugging a boy, a boat sailing on the sea, and a swarm of jellyfish. All of these were watercolor paintings hung in the studio when production began. Then, slowly, Miyazaki and his team of animators fleshed out a storyboard, then a script, and finally the 2008 Studio Ghibli film Ponyo.

But Miyazaki was not always captain of the ship, so to speak. In 1963, he began working for Toei Animation right before the studio stopped hiring. There he worked as an “inbetween artist.” Fairly low on the totem pole, they draw the movement frames for when a character’s hand has to go back and forth while waving and other tedious animations. But while working on his first anime, Wolf Boy Ken, he met director Isao Takahata, who would help him found Studio Ghibli twenty years later.

When he left Toei with Takahata several years later, they started working together on a number of projects. At first, they had a dream of adapting Pippi Longstocking but were unable to get permission. What came of it was a short film called Panda! Go Panda!, which bears a strong resemblance to Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro.

There, a small red-haired girl goes on adventures with a large happy panda in a way that Totoro would look like many years later. Though he and Takahata would direct together, this is the first project he wrote and animated, the type of role he would continue to take in the future.

Related: Every Studio Ghibli Movie, Ranked

The Boy and the Heron Next to Miyazaki’s Life
Toho

When Miyazaki was a boy, he asked his mother to give him a piggyback ride. But she cried because she could not manage due to her spinal tuberculosis. But she still cared deeply for the family despite being confined to her bed. Many of Miyazaki’s protagonists, or even supporting female characters, do nothing more than accomplish domestic tasks. But they do so in a heroic way, and they’re rewarded for it.

In Howl’s Moving Castle, Sofi is cursed to look like an old woman, but on the inside is a beautiful girl. Howl is constantly off fighting a war that we don’t see. Despite the conflict going on outside, our attention is drawn to Sofi as she cleans up a house and remains determined to be a rock for this mysterious wizard.

Related: 10 Anime TV Shows to Watch if You Love Hayao Miyazaki Movies

Miyazaki idolized his mother. Perhaps because he, too, was ill. When he was young, he was diagnosed with digestive issues and told he wouldn’t live past 20. This gave him a lack of physicality and is probably the reason he began to draw. When he did, he drew mechanical things, tanks, boats, and airplanes. Similar to Jiro in The Wind Rises, he could never be a pilot – much like Miyazaki couldn’t work in his father’s airplane company – so he had to realize his dream of flying through different means.

In The Boy and the Heron, a 12-year-old boy searches for his mother. But while he still believes she is dead, he must adjust to life in a new town by himself, much like his family moved frequently when Miyazaki was little. It’s a trope that showed up in My Neighbor Totoro as well. While exploring the town, the boy comes across a strange tower and begins his journey through a fantastic world.

Just as a difficult life in post-war Japan seeps into Miyazaki’s films, so too does a deep longing for connection with his mother. Because he could never achieve this connection in the way most children do, he had to dream up new ways to make that connection real. Just as his characters had to go through a strange world like in The Boy and the Heron, Princess Mononoke, or Spirited Away, so too did Miyazaki make a spiritual journey to bring his soul into his work. We are blessed to see the fruition of that journey in what may be his final feature film: The Boy and the Heron.