Ever since watching My Neighbor Totoro with my husband I have been in love with Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli movies. When we heard that Miyazaki would be coming out with (yet another) final movie we both got very excited. The Boy and the Heron is a truly horrendous title for this movie but other than that it feels like the ultimate culmination of Miyazaki’s career and legacy.
https://vocal.media/geeks/the-boy-and-the-heron
That said this movie is such a beautiful telling of grief, loss, and moving on. Mahito starts as a little boy who misses his mom and feels some responsibility for her death, he ends the film as a young man who has allowed himself to love another person as his mother. It was a beautiful movie, a perfect Miyazaki 10/10. I just personally couldn’t fully enjoy The Boy and the Heron because of how personal the story was. It absolutely deserves academy recognition for Best Animated Feature if for no other reason then I think it would be hilarious for Miyazaki to decline to show up again. We saw the original dub because I always want to see movies how they were originally intended but the American voice cast is absolutely phenomenal and I can’t wait to see the English dub as well.
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