Critics React To Hayao Miyazaki’s Final Film Described As Mature, Complex & Visually Stunning

https://deadline.com/2023/07/studio-ghibli-hayao-miyazaki-the-boy-and-the-heron-japan-release-1235439511/

Acclaimed anime director Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film, The Boy And The Heron (aka How Do You Live?), hit Japanese theatres on Friday, July 14 with no advance publicity apart from a title and a poster.

The move was a deliberate ploy by Studio Ghibli head Toshio Suzuki to encourage audiences to see Miyazaki’s first film in a decade without preconceptions. “A poster and a title – that’s all we got when we were children. I enjoyed trying to imagine what a movie was about, and I wanted to bring that feeling back,” Suzuki told Japanese broadcaster NHK.

ComScore reported a $13.2M opening weekend for the film, distributed by Toho, with IMAX saying it set a new three-day opening record with $1.7M from 44 screens.

“What’s not predictable is everything else,” the reviewer Richard Eisenbeis said. “The world Mahito travels through is unlike any seen before – even in Miyazaki’s other similar films. From oceans with monstrous fish to cities full of man-eating parrots – you’re never sure where the film is going next or who Mahito will meet there.

“Of course, half of what makes the fantasy elements so powerful is the animation,” Eisenbeis continued. “It’s truly astounding. Every frame of this film feels like a separate work of art—one that only becomes grander when put together as part of the greater whole. It’s a film you could watch a hundred times and still discover new things in the background of any given scene.”

Based on a Genzaburo Yoshino novel that is said to have had a special impact on Miyazaki as a child, the film follows Mahito after his mother is killed during the war-time fire bombings of Tokyo.

Time Out Japan’s Emma Steen said that, despite the film’s G rating, it has a “markedly more mature tone and provides more unsettling moments than the likes of Ponyo and My Neighbor Totoro.

“At one point, Mahito deliberately injures himself to evade school bullies and there are freaky creatures, including anthropomorphic man-eating parakeets, to rival No-Face and the Stink Spirit in Spirited Away.”

Steen also said the “plethora of ideas occasionally distracts from the storytelling” but concluded that it’s a “mature, complex masterpiece” and “worth the wait”.