After nine years of preparation, Studio Ghibli finally released a new film this winter: The Boy and the Heron.

      Mahito Makimoto, a 12-year-old Japanese kid who lost his mother in a fire at a hospital in Tokyo during World War II, moves to a rural town with his father and his aunt, who is expecting their child. Mahito has always felt bad for not being able to save his mother from a house fire. After a talking heron continues to follow him closer to his home and informs him that his mother is still alive, Mahito chases it into the forest, where he discovers a tower. There, Mahito and the heron together enter a magical realm.

    This fantastical realm is full of oddities. A gang of pelicans attacks Warawara, an elf hatched by a large fish, as she floats up to the higher realm, the human world, to be born. There exist huge parrots in this world that consume humans as well. Following a string of terrifying encounters, Mahito has a dream in which a sorcerer offers him to inherit this fantasy world. Mahito declines and chooses to go back to his world, despite the fact that it can be sorrowful.

Using characters from the magical world, movie creator Hayao Miyazaki daringly departs from the narrative style of his earlier works to present the inevitable metamorphosis of human existence in the world. I believe that he also gently makes fun of the absurdity of the patriarchal and autocratic society while using the overlapping of different periods to reconstruct the breaks in a mother-son relationship and hinting to the audience that death is just the start of something new. Through the overlapping of time and space, the relationship between mother and son is re-constructed, and the philosophical idea of how death can be a new life is revealed, which opens up a brand new artistic chapter for this elderly creator.

All in all, Ghibli’s formerly “overly romantic and heroic” account of a young man growing up has been revised in “The Heron and the Boys.” In addition to experiencing the unexpected death of his mother, the resumption of his father’s marriage, and World War II, Mahito also went through an unforeseen excursion into a fantasy realm in search of self-worth. The narrative serves as a reminder of the enchantment that happens when hearts open to the beauty of the natural world and the healing power found in the most unlikely locations. The book “What Kind of Life Do You Want to Live”—which had an impact on Hayao Miyazaki’s life—serves as the film’s central inspiration as he employs nuanced allegorical symbolism in this philosophical work to inspire and illustrate the audience’s outlook on life. I would rate this movie a 9 out of 10.