The Boy and the Heron

Last night I decided to see a double feature at the Broadway.  I started with The Boy and the Heron, which is a beautiful coming of age story involving a fantastical journey, and I really loved it!  Twelve year old Mahito Maki (Soma Santoki) loses his mother in a fire during World War II and then moves from Tokyo to the countryside when his father Soichi (Takuya Kimura) gets remarried to Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura).  Mahito is still processing his grief and is not happy with the move or with his new mother when he encounters a gray heron (Masaki Suda) who pesters him until he follows him to a mysterious tower in ruins.  When Natsuko disappears, the heron lures Mahito into the tower promising him that they will find her and his mother.  Once inside, they encounter other worlds filled with magical characters and creatures (I loved the warawara) before finding Natsuko, a younger version of his mother (Aimyon), and the granduncle (Shohei Hino), a wizard who rules this world.  The granduncle offers Mahito the choice to stay and rule this world in his place or to return to his own world despite its malice and pain.  I really loved Mahito's journey of self-discovery in which he learns resilience in the face of grief and hardship and I loved the evolution of his relationship with both his mother and Natsuko.  The world of fantasy in this movie is really dense with meaning, mythology, and symbolism and I know that I missed a lot of the more subtle themes (I am a relatively new fan to Miyazaki and anime in general) but one of the metaphors that really stood out to me was the use of building blocks as a hope that the next generation will create a better world.  The animation is absolutely gorgeous and I love that the score by Joe Hisaichi seems to match the emotion in every scene.  I loved the experience of watching this with a really large crowd and I am looking forward to watching it again (I saw the subtitled version, which is my preference, but I also want to see the dubbed version because the English voice cast is intriguing).  I highly recommend this!