Miyazaki's 'The Boy and the Heron' makes clear the world is a fragile place | Hacker News Reader

Miyazaki's 'The Boy and the Heron' makes clear the world is a fragile place

latimes.com

123 pointscempaka60 comments

One aspect of Japanese culture that deeply resonates with me is its unique connection to the geographical landscape. It seems intricately woven with the very essence of Japan, a nation shaped by the terrifying reality of earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, and volcanoes.

These influences appear to have profound influence on the collective mindset of the people. The constant reminder of impermanence has sculpted a distinctive perspective on life, rendering the cultural tapestry of Japan something that feels intrinsically tied to its specific time and place.

I often reflect on this thought -- Japan could have only ever happened in Japan.

I think this is true of all places, people just tend not to recognize it where they live.

One of my favorite ways to travel is by train or motorcycle over long distances, and just watch how architecture, clothing, styles, layouts, etc change or surprisingly don't change in response to geographical changes.

Both are possible, and both tell you a lot about the people there.

Guillermo del Toro really put it well:

> We are privileged enough to be living in a time where Mozart is composing symphonies

I'd encourage anyone who hasn't seen the full breadth of Miyazaki's work to watch them all. It's well worth your time, and especially to see how his work has helped shape a lot of other media you've likely consumed.

Aside from the feature films, also don’t forget:

• his one major manga/graphic novel, Nausicaä

• Future Boy Conan (TV series)

• Panda Kopanda (aka Panda! Go, Panda!) (two short films)

• the five episodes of Sherlock Hound he directed

• On Your Mark (music video)

(of course, there’s more)

Deeper in the iceberg we find early animation work by Miyazaki on the 1969 film Phantom Flying Ship: https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/4d0af6c0638a415173b7de66766...

Future boy Conan is one of my absolute favourite tv shows and it feels so pertinent to our current time. I recommend it to others often, but no one takes a chance on it :(

I go back to watch FBC it every 5 years, it's absolutely fantastic in every way and for anyone.

Not Ghibli or Miyazaki at all but I would recommend Now And Then, Here And There as a companion piece. It's tropes and plot points are similar to FBC but seen through a very different lens.

Cool! I'll check that out!

Nausicaa the comic is incredible, beautiful, bigger story than the film, and has deeper worldbuilding. I second the recommendation.

Miyazaki has also two books with collected essays/articles of his; I have the first one and I would not strongly recommend them though they have wonderful sketch art inside. The essays are mostly old man rants about how everything is done worse these days and they weren't even written recently.

They are artistically sound and beautiful, but kind of boring to be honest. Kurosawa on the other hand satisfies all three.

Any recommendations from his work for someone who hadn't heard of him before?

Rashomon and Seven Samurai are classics. Kagemusha is probably my favorite.

"samurai" movies:

- Seven Samurai

- Rashomon

- Ran

- Throne of Blood

- Kagemusha

non-samurai:

- High and Low

- Ikiru

I would say that the essentials are Seven Samurai, High and Low, Rashomon.

Miyazaki’s films are boring? What?

Yeah, it took an effort to get through spirited away and nausica. I even tried a second watch through of spirited away but at the risk of being blasphemous, I found it boring.

I think it comes down to whether or not you enjoy slice of life. I just watched My Neighbor Totoro with my daughter. It was the first time for both of us. I found it amazing, but, ultimately, nothing actually happens in the movie. Spirited Away and some of the other movies are obviously more fantastical, but they still share a kind of mundane, day-to-day feel to their plots.

They’re often light on plot and don’t foreground conflict. If you don’t enjoy drinking in a long animated “shot” (that’s another thing, they have relatively slow editing) with little movement or talking, don’t appreciate the attention to detail and highlighting of little everyday actions, or aren’t cool with simply absorbing a vibe, I can see how they might bore.

Well I don’t want to come off as a rube. I did appreciate the attention to detail and it’s a beautiful movie with a consistent vibe. You can still find something boring with all of those boxes checked though.

Sorry, didn’t mean to imply that, but my wording kinda does, you’re right. I just meant that if those elements aren’t, at least in the particular mix and form they take in these films, engaging for a given viewer, I can see how they might be boring. They definitely have a different focus and form than most films, including a large majority of very-well-regarded or “sophisticated” films (I don’t mean they’re just different from, like, Fast and the Furious X).

The only two animated films that have ever triggered an emotional response are Watership Down (when I was a kid) and Ghibli's Grave of the Fireflies (when I was an adult). Both were really heavy in ways that are hard to articulate.

The trailer for the latter:

https://youtu.be/4vPeTSRd580?si=CAN__Md9KIKQcehN

Grave of Fireflies was to this day the only movie that made me cry.

It did so twice.

Best movie I never want to see again.

Pedant's note: GP's comment was how Guillermo del Toro compared Miyazaki to Mozart. Grave of the Fireflies was written and directed by Isao Takahata, not Hayao Miyazaki.

The Wind Rises makes me cry every time. It resonates with me in specific personal ways, however.

I think Sylvian Chomet is way closer to 'animation Mozart'. Miyazaki is very good, but overrated.

I saw the film at a festival last month, not sure what to expect for a beloved creator coming out of retirement. I should not have been worried, it's astounding -- Del Toro isn't really exaggerating in that praise. I hadn't read about it being autobiographical until afterwards, but it did seem incredibly personal. I found it to be profoundly joyful and sad in multiple ways, especially in the aspect of a master searching for a protégé.

While not Miyazaki (but still Studio Ghibli), Isao Takahata's films Grave of the Fireflies (and to some extent, Princess Kaguya), isn't really some ”feel good” movies. Optimistic is the last thing i would describes those two masterpieces.

Had seen most of the Ghibli movies and then turned on Princess Kaguya for the first time as something to help my spouse fall asleep. By the end were both crying. This was 3 years ago and was the last time I cried and can't recall the last time I cried before that.

Princess Kaguya is my favorite Ghibli movie but also never rewatched because it's so emotional. All that and I'm not even a parent, let alone good with kids whatsoever.

I haven't seen any of Miyazaki's work - which of his movies would you recommend I watch first and why?

It really doesn't matter -- they are all incredible.

I've randomly picked three to watch with my gf because one of her friends kept saying they were all master pieces. Castle in the sky, spirited away and Howl's moving castle

I did not really enjoy a single one of them, castle in the sky was the best but it didn't make me want to watch the rest of his filmography.

Just stop there then

I honestly can’t fathom how someone would not be mindblown by these three movies.

They all seemed to offer very surface level lore/characters, the themes are super simplistic too: war bad, nature good, consumerism bad. The rhythm is all over the place

It's not bad but it's a far cry from "these movies are all 110/100 and will literally change your life forever". I don't care for animes in the first place so idk, they might be that good compared to the rest of them

Nobody said they would change your life. They transport you to a different world for a few hours that’s it. Some of these adventures are quite epic as well.

Not all movies are for everyone. It's okay to not like something

It's also possible that a lot of people wouldn't like movies you love.

That said, Castle in the Sky in particular is not only one of the best animations I ever watched, it's likely one of the best movies I ever watched.

I thought Spirited Away (made in 2001) was awful, so much so that I didn't watch anything Miyazaki made after that for years.

I tried The Wind Rises (made in 2013), also found it terrible.

However, before those two films, I had seen several Studio Ghibli's earlier movies and found them pretty good. I thought Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (pre-Ghibli but the same group of people, with director Miyazaki) was absolutely amazing. So my impression is that their earlier films are much better than their newer works.

No better way to do it than release-order. Start with The Castle of Cagliostro and make your way to The Wind Rises. I'd recommend watching the films he wrote but didn't direct as well, which are Whisper of the Heart, The Secret World of Arrietty, and From Up on Poppy Hill.

Excellent, thanks very much!

Note that his sons films are conspicuously missing from this list, hehe. Tales from the earth sea was absolute garbage.

Well I was only saying the films directed or written by Hayao Miyazaki. I actually did list From Up on Poppy Hill, directed by Goro and co-written by Hayao.

Princess mononoke, totoro, spirited away, kiki, porco rosso, floating castle, castle in the sky, basically all of them except the last ones IMO (ponyo, the wind rises)

I would recommend starting with Spirited Away. It has a bit faster pacing than some of the others, and tons of interesting creatures that really show off the character design prowess. I love Miyazaki and Ghibli films in general, but they do put some people to sleep.

Most of them are great but the absolute essentials are (imo): Spirited Away, Totoro, Princess Mononoke.

If you'd prefer a path of greatest hits, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke are probably the titles you'll see recommended most often. Spirited Away being a sort of coming of age story filled more with a sense of wonder, whereas Princess Mononoke is a violent story centered around the complex struggle between man and nature, as is closer to a traditional fantasy setting if that's your bag.

Miyazaki's work is so different than the mainstream Japanese anime industry!

I think the future will be a large group of Amish like who will be pacifists and shun technology and a group who live in the citadel with AI creating everything in their consciousness. Deeply unhappy but addicted to the rat race.

The future?

Shunning technology on its own won't lead to pacifism. Otherwise, what you described is pretty much a typical fantasy setting.

I think even the little that we have seen from chatgpt is a sign that generated content will always be heartless, poor quality but people will be ok with it and adopt it. So I think it would make sense that eventually this will break the market into two.

Or… you view it as just another perspective just like that from a human coworker where most ideas are throwaway but you take what you like and leave the rest. Understandably we all want AI to be perfect but what we have today is much more human.

Sturgeon's law ("ninety percent of everything is crap") is well known, and a lot of money has been made and time spend consuming a significant chunk of that 90%. AI only needs to be better than 90% of that 90% to succeed.

When anabaptism was new, there were also many non-pacifist sects, but those eventually all failed to survive the conflicts they got into the with the wider non-anabaptist world.

Neal Stephenson's Fall [1] is by far not his best book, however, the first part has a chilling depiction of societal divide into Ameristan and, for lack of a better word, the blue states that feels entirely plausible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell

I just finished the audiobook version of this on a long drive through the heart of Ameristan. Very plausible. Remember Moab!

It's a shame, the Ameristan near-future dystopia parts of Fall were quite good, but the virtual world plot became increasingly silly. My mood would pick up whenever I landed on a chapter that got back to the "real world" plot.

I'm slowly coming around to this conclusion as well.

I told my wife that we should consider being farmers in the future. She said we'd starve to death. Can't figure out if I agree with her.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com