is a 2023 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Produced by Studio Ghibli, the Japanese title references the 1937 novel of the same name by Genzaburō Yoshino, which appears in the film, but the film has an original story that is not connected to the novel. The voice cast includes Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Ko Shibasaki, Aimyon, Yoshino Kimura, Takuya Kimura, Karou Kobayashi, and Shinobu Otake. Described as a "big fantastical film", it follows a boy named Mahito Maki (Santoki), who discovers an abandoned tower in his new town and enters a fantastical world with a talking grey heron.
Miyazaki announced his retirement in September 2013 but later reversed this decision after working on the short film Boro the Caterpillar, which was released in 2018. He began storyboarding for a new feature-length project in July 2016, and official production began in May 2017. The film's title was announced in October 2017, targeting a release around the 2020 Summer Olympics. By May 2020, 36 minutes of the film had been hand-drawn by 60 animators, with no set deadline. Production spanned approximately seven years, facing delays as it navigated challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic and Miyazaki's slowed animation pace, before nearing completion in October 2022. Financing for the project involved streaming deals for previous Ghibli films. According to producer Toshio Suzuki, The Boy and the Heron is the most expensive film ever produced in Japan. The screenplay draws heavily from Miyazaki's childhood and explores themes of coming of age and coping with a world marked by conflict and loss. Joe Hisaishi composed the film's score, while Kenshi Yonezu wrote and sang the film's theme song "Spinning Globe".
The Boy and the Heron was theatrically released in Japan on July 14, 2023, by Toho, and was screened in both traditional theaters and other premium formats such as IMAX. The release of the film was noted for its intentional absence of any promotion, with Ghibli choosing not to release any trailers, images, synopsis or casting details of the film in advance of its Japanese premiere with the exception of a single poster. The film received critical acclaim and grossed over $56 million in Japan.
Plot
In 1943, during the Pacific War, 12-year-old Mahito Maki's mother Hisako is killed in a hospital fire in Tokyo. A year later, Mahito's father Shoichi, an air munitions factory owner, remarries his late wife's younger sister, Natsuko. They evacuate to her estate in the countryside where they live with several old maids. Mahito struggles in the new town as he continues to grapple with grief, is pestered by a mysterious grey heron at the estate and endures a tense relationship with Natsuko, who is now pregnant. Pursuing the heron, he discovers a ruined and sealed tower in the woods near the house and makes himself a bow and an arrow from the heron's feathers.
On the way home from a fight with other school children, Mahito purposefully injures himself by hitting his head with a rock. Recovering at the estate, Mahito finds a copy of the novel How Do You Live? with his mother's handwriting inside, which she intended as a gift for him when he was older. His reading of the book is interrupted when the maids search for the missing Natsuko, who is ill because of her pregnancy and whom he sees on her way to the tower. Mahito and one of the maids, Kiriko, arrive at the tower built by Mahito's granduncle, a famous architect who disappeared. The heron taunts Mahito, claims that Mahito's mother is alive and tells him to enter the tower to save her and Natsuko. Once inside, the heron shows a watery illusion that looks exactly like Hisako before Mahito shoots an arrow that pierces the heron's beak and reveals the little man underneath. Feeling defeated, the heron leads them through the ground and into the tower, where they find themselves in an alternate world full of magic.
In the alternate world, Mahito encounters various characters, including a younger, seafaring version of Kiriko; Himi, a young woman with magical powers who assists Mahito and Kiriko; and Natsuko's granduncle, who rules the world as a wizard with great powers. Mahito, Himi and the heron infiltrate a castle guarded by giant man-eating parakeets and find Natsuko, who initially resists leaving with them until Mahito addresses her as his real mother. Amidst the search for the missing trio in Mahito's world, a maid tells Shoichi that the tower was formed after a meteorite struck the ground, and that when Hisako was younger she once disappeared for a year before inexplicably returning.