I get the film needs this moment to show how frustrated and angry Mahito is with his life, but it doesn't feel earned, and it's quite shocking seeing as the film didn't show his frustration beforehand. There’s another small moment earlier in the film where Mahito, after being beaten up by his classmates, hits himself in the head with a rock, which just seems uncharacteristic of him. It's the inciting incident that drives Mahito to head into the tower, but still, it feels like a moment that deserves some explanation. I get that this is needed as a plot device. For example, it's never explained why Natsuko heads into the tower to have her baby. (Image: Studio Ghibli)Ĭharacter motivations in “The Boy and the Heron” don't feel plausible, and some actions don't feel earned.

That's where the real meat of the story is, but it comes and goes in the span of a few seconds.Ĭertain characters appear that make me question their role in the overarching story. This leads me to believe that the characters learned this about each other off-screen, which is a waste of a great scene. This seems like a big moment, but instead, both characters accept these truths at once with no reaction. The ending, in particular, is an egregious example, with the film casually revealing that Lady Himi, a young girl Mahito befriended in this other world, is actually Mahito's mother. The plot is so efficient that it breezes past important moments that deserve a closer look. He's always trusted that his audience can keep up, which I respect and admire, but in this case, it feels unfair to the audience. Miyazaki has never been the type of auteur to hand-feed the audience the plot. The problem is that by the time Mahito reaches this world, there isn't enough time to slow down and explain everything, having instead to rush through important plot beats that left me confused. That's where Mahito makes interesting friends and begins to change as a character, going from a sullen, quiet boy to a boy willing to risk his life for people who seemingly didn’t mean a lot to him before. That's where the film really begins for me, as Mahito is forced to deal with the disappearance of Natsuko, who is believed to have gone into the tower. However, this drags on until finally, Mahito steps into the other world beneath his world. It does start to get interesting once the gray heron shows up and begins to prod Mahito to visit the old, haunted tower on the property.

While the family dynamics are complicated and not well explained, the real problem is that the film takes a lot of time to lay out this part of the story.

The film follows 12-year-old Mahito Maki ( Luca Padovan) as he moves from Tokyo to a rural part of Japan during World War II, where he lives with his father, Shoichi ( Christian Bale), and his father's new wife, Natsuko ( Gemma Chan), who is the younger sister of Mahito's mother, Hisako ( Karen Fukuhara). Usually, that's a sign of a good film, but in this case, it's a sign of the film's failure to create the fully immersive experience I was expecting.Ĭritiques of the plot aside, “The Boy and the Heron” is one of the best-looking animated films in recent memory. Although I had a good time because I got to see a Studio Ghibli film in theaters on the day of release, something I hadn't done before, I left very confused and with a lot more questions than answers. Yet, the film has glaring issues with pace, plot, and character motivations. The animation is gorgeous, and I'm so glad I chose to watch the English dub because the cast killed it. “The Boy and the Heron,” supposedly Miyazaki's final film (the man has retired four times, so take that statement with a grain of salt), once again immerses the audience in a fantastically whimsical and strange world. What other animation studios grapple with, Ghibli does it effortlessly, putting you firmly in the middle of a world so lived in and magical that it stays with you long after the credits roll.

Movies from Studio Ghibli, especially those made by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki, are something special. The titular boy and the heron are frenemies forced to work together.

Anime studio pro 11 editorial reviews