the boy and the heron and the stories that find us
on miyazaki, grief, and the stories that seek us out when we need them most
While there are no explicit spoilers below for The Boy and the Heron, be warned that I do discuss tone and themes, so you may want to see the film before you read my take.
Few things in life are as pivotal as your first introduction to Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki. For me, I was a sophomore in high school, and my friend invited me over to her house one autumn Friday evening to watch Princess Mononoke.
Going in, I had very limited knowledge of anime, Ghibli, or the film itself. My only context for Ghibli was the reoccurring trailer previews on my Disney VHS tapes growing up. And as I grew up in a somewhat conservative white-American household, my family wasn’t very interested or receptive to Japanese anime. (Not for any reason other than because it was uncharted territory. I’m not sure any of us knew it existed, let alone which ones we would enjoy watching.) I remember seeing the trailer for Kiki’s Delivery Service for years, and all I ever thought was, “Huh, that movie looks weird.” (That internalized racism runs deep.)
Thankfully, I made a lot of friends in school that appreciated Japanese culture. When we settled down to watch Mononoke, I wasn’t quite sure what I was in for. That particular film is a bit intense for an introduction to Miyazaki — it’s one of his darker films, intensely bleak and filled with violence and anger and desperation. It’s the story of a dying earth that is being over-harvested by humans. (Sound familiar?) Had I watched something like Kiki’s first, maybe everything would be different. But as it happened, Mononoke was incredibly moving, and it has stuck with me since that first watch. Somedays I think it might be my favorite.
It’s difficult not to be affected by Miyazaki’s work, and now, thirteen years later with the release of his newest last film The Boy and the Heron, I can’t help but reflect on how impactful these stories have been on my lived experience.
One of my traditions with Miyazaki films started when I was graduating college.
After watching Mononoke, I vaguely remember seeing Howl’s Moving Castle on my own after asking for the DVD for Christmas (this was before streaming and before HBO picked up the rights, back when it was practically impossible to find Ghibli films in the US for cheap). At some point I watched Spirited Away, but I have no memory of that first watch. As I began to work through the filmography, finding these films in obscure places, something miraculous and magical happened.
Oddly enough, it started with Kiki’s Delivery Service. I had just graduated college, it was summer and I was depressed and uninspired and I felt Stuck in that way that only happens when you don’t have a job in the weeks after graduation. I did not want to make art, I did not want to do anything. I felt useless. When I’m sad I tend to watch films because I can shut off my brain. I wanted something quiet, something easy to digest, something that might be a comfort to my poor brain.
Enter Kiki.
The film that once seemed so irrelevant to my life in my youth immediately cradled my young adult mind and sent shockwaves through my brain. If you’ve watched Kiki’s, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s a story about creative blocks and depression and the fear of not being enough. It came to me at the perfect moment and as the credits rolled I felt like I had discovered a beautiful secret, a piece of the puzzle, an answer to a question I’d been asking myself for a long time. I felt seen.
Miyazaki’s movies are uniquely moving because they somehow turn the mundane of the everyday into celebratory magic. They are comforting and quiet and safe, and they make you feel like everything will be okay.
But they also are violent tales of revolution, of anger, of fear, of the darkest shadows of the human spirit. They are raging fires of terror, a call to action to save a dying planet and a people driven by hatred. These films have something to say, and they do not shy away from the hardest parts of being human. That’s arguably the most important part of them, even more so than the satisfying shots of Japanese food.
After that first watch of Kiki, I told myself that I had to savor these films. That I couldn’t binge them like I would anything else. I couldn’t just turn them on in the background or work through them in a weekend. They had to be intentional. So I made an unspoken rule that I would save them for my bad days.
That was over five years ago now.
Since then, whenever I’ve felt trapped or alone or sad or afraid or lost, I found a new Ghibli movie to settle into. These films became an anchor when I couldn’t find my way. When I felt alone in the aftermath of graduation and my friends started moving away, I turned on Totoro. When I was trying to write novels (and failing), I turned on Whisper of the Heart. When I was drowning in grief after the loss of my grandmother, I turned on When Marnie Was There. I found peace in the world of Arrietty and joy in Ponyo. And while I know there is a huge difference between a Ghibli film and a Hayao Miyazaki film (and I’m probably offending someone by insinuating otherwise), I can’t help but put them together because to me they have given me similar feelings of being alive.
These films have given so much to me, but because I didn’t fall in love with Ghibli until they practically stopped putting out films, I never imagined I’d get the opportunity to see a new Miyazaki for the first time in theaters.
Luckily, if we can count on anything in this world, we can count on Hayao Miyazaki getting bored and coming out of retirement.
The Boy and the Heron is not my favorite Miyazaki movie, and I know that I need to see it again to both understand and appreciate its full story. However, as with the other films, I think it showed up at the perfect time.
When they announced the US release for this film, I was eagerly waiting to plan an outing with my best friend. She too loves anime and Ghibli, and it was a no-brainer that we’d go together. And while we didn’t know the plot or the premise, there was no doubt in my mind that I would enjoy Miyazaki’s swan song, that I needed to see it with my best friend in the theater.
Coincidentally, the early December release date became much more powerful when we realized we could see it in honor of my friend’s brother’s birthday.
Grief is such a slippery serpent, and this season has become a dark time for both of us in the wake of her brother’s death. The nights become long, and it can be so easy to give in to the cruel hands of memory. There are some shadows that will follow us until our final days. And while it is difficult to be the one who walks beside someone who’s grieving, that sorrow cannot compare to the one who experienced the loss firsthand. I have past experience with grief and I’ve lost a few loved ones in my life thus far, but never someone so close as a sibling. Never so unexpected. I did my best, but even I cannot traverse a distance that large.
Last year on the first anniversary, I bore witness to her loss, and neither of us knew how to handle it. How do you live when someone so connected with your life and your love has died? How do you walk the path of grief? How do you comfort someone with a hole so big it has become a canyon?
I didn’t expect to see that projected on screen when I sat down in the theater last night.
Stories find us just when we need them. There are people who have walked our path before, setting out without a map, doing their best to navigate the tumultuous emotions that come with being human and trying to write it all down in the hope (and maybe in the fear) that one day we would walk down that same path. And as we make that journey in our own story, we will find the road littered with references and encouragements and hints from the people who came before us.
But even as artists create their work with a message in mind, the most important part of story-telling is that we the audience influence the message just by our own personal experiences. Miyazaki may be reflecting on how he’s ready to pass the torch and finally retire (I’ll believe it when I see it), but to me this film was an opportunity to make peace with death. Grief takes us by the hand and says, “Yes, you will forget. Your memories are not eternal and neither are you. But that does not mean the love wasn’t there. That does not mean the love was not important and you were not changed.”
As with most Miyzazki films, I walked away with more questions than answers, and I’ve spent the better part of a morning pouring over articles and explanations in order to understand it all. But the truth is, the understanding should come from within. The answers we seek are not in Hayao’s commentary, they are buried in ourselves. How does a story impact your life? How does someone else’s experiences influence your own? You cannot explain how you feel by asking someone else. All you can do is sit in your grief and your memory and come to terms with your life. That is what Miyizaki asks us to do. To sit. To be. To question. And at the end of it all, the answers aren’t as important as the feelings.
So sit with it.
