This Is What Critics Are Saying About Hayao Miyazaki's 'The Boy And The Heron'

TV & Film

Jul 19

The Boy from the Boy and the Heron — Image Source: The Digital Fix

The Japanese animation studio, Studio Ghibli is known for movies like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro. Their newest film will also be acclaimed anime director, Hayao Miyazaki’s last film. The new movie, The Boy And The Heron (How Do You Live?) hit theaters in Japan over the weekend with ComScore reporting an opening of $13.2 M, and IMAX has said it has hit a new three-day opening record, with $1.7M from 44 screens. Aside from a title and a poster, the movie had virtually no promotion. This was deliberate, as the studio wanted fans to go into Miyazaki's last film with no preconceptions.

The film has received mixed reviews, but is mostly favorable from Japanese critics, none of whom were given advanced screenings. The film has been praised for its beautiful animation, and world, as it’s “unlike any seen before-even in Miyazaki’s other films”. Others have said that each animation frame feels like a “separate work of art”.

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Similar to Kiki’s Delivery Service and Spirited Away, it is a coming-of-age story. Critics like the story, but call it predictable, and definitely gives it a bit lower rating, than the animation. It tells the story of Mahito, whose mother has died, and his father has remarried his mother's younger sister. They move out to the countryside, where he meets a heron, who informs him his mother is alive and needs to be rescued from a mysterious tower near his home. When his stepmother goes missing, he decides to avoid the warnings and enter the tower in order to rescue her.

The film is filled with many of Miyazaki’s familiar themes and quirks, such as cute, yet eerie creatures, great-looking food, and gravity-defying flights of fancy. While the film is rated G, it has a more mature tone and similar unsettling moments than those seen in Ponyo and My Neighbor Totoro.