John Ferrandino
Characters: Mahito. The Heron, Himi, and the Granduncle
Plot: During WW2, Mahito’s mother is killed in a fire caused by an American bombing raid. He and his father move to the country estate of the mother’s family, where he marries his wife’s sister, Natsuko. Mahito encounters a Grey Heron who claims to know where Mahito’s mother is, alive. When his stepmother disappears into this mysterious world, Mahito must journey into this land of the dead with the assistance of the duplicitous Heron and a strangely familiar girl named Himi. This world’s creator is a wizard who is Mahito’s great grand-uncle.
Inspirations: This film is based off of Hayao Miyazaki’s childhood, where he like Mahito, grew up during WW2, watched his mother die in a bombing raid, and fathers who were involved in war productions. Miyazaki grew into a pacifist and skeptic of nationalism and industrialization, which are common themes in his filmography. Mahito, the Heron, and the Granduncle are representative of the real life relationship between Miyazaki, Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki, and Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata, respectively. The film is semi-autobiographical to Miyazaki and memoriam to the late Isao Takahata. It is also as of now, Miyazaki’s swan song, so he includes artistic references to his previous films, before he retires.
The story’s themes are derived from the novel How Do You Live, by Genzaburo Yushino, but not stroy. The story shares similarities to the Greek myth of Orpheus and the novel Alice in Wonderland. The world the Granduncle creates blends elements of Hades, the reincarnation of Buddhism, Dante’s Inferno, and Shinto traditions, such as the Heron being a guide for the dead. Dream logic is how the Granduncle’s world is run, surreal, emotional, and nonsensical.
Motifs: Shintoism, physical copy of How Do You Live, geometric blocks, fire, time, birds, boats, death, stages of grief, asteroids, astronomy, and Buddhism.
Mahito’s grief manifests as cool aloofness, rashness, and malice. The Heron attacks Mahito, but loses some of his feathers, which Mahito uses to makes arrows. The arrow pierces the Heron’s beak, forcing him to into his human form, it’s pride in it aerial form being used against it.
The Granduncle’s world is underneath the living world, centered around a mystical asteroid that holds reality altering powers, existing beyond time and space. Birds that he brought with him from the real world become human like and malicious, such as the deceitful herons, the greedy pelicans, and the man-eating parakeets. Also present in this world are the wara wara, the spirits of the dead, who morph into childlike spirits that reenter the world through childbirth. The pelicans prey on the wara wara. The defender of the wara wara is the wizard’s grand-niece, Lady Himi, a child with pyrotechnic powers. She turns out to be Mahito’s mother from the past, who ended up dying in a fire. It’s both her weapon and her death.
The asteroid’s power is controlled by the careful stacking of blocks just using balance to hold it up. The Wizard maintains the stack, adding to the world, showing age, wisdom, and experience. The purpose of this world is to escape death by controlling the cycle. The Wizard freezes time for the visitoos from the real world, where Mahito can meet his mother from the past. Its an island an island in an ocean made up of the dead, who inhabit boats.
(Dante and Virgil crossing the River Styx, The Divine Comedy)
Conflicts: Moving on from grief, self-harm, cycle of life, destiny vs experience, pacifism vs militarism, imperfection in creation, coming of age, deception, refugee of war, and balance.
Mahito is distant and moody after the death of his mother. Since he is the son of a plane manufactuer, he of higher class than his peers at his new school, so he is ganged up on, then afterwards he bangs a rock on his head in order to skip school. He is apathetic towards his step-mother and seeks out the Heron to find his mother. This is just a lie from the Heron, who chides Mahito on his arrogance and malice. Mahito tames the Heron by shooting an arrow into his beak, which is guided by one of his feathers. The pelicans prey on the wara wara because its the only food source in the world. An oversight in the blocks. Mahito takes pity on them. Lady Himi turns out to be Hisako as a child, Mahito’s mother. In the real world during her childhood, Hisako disappeared for a long period of time, but this time is the present Mahito is in right now in his Granduncle’s world, where Hisako serves as a defender for souls. She is aware of her relation to Mahito and her fate. When he finally finds his ancestor, the Wizard, he finds him trying to fix the world by removing malice filled blocks. He begs Mahito to take his place, since he has his imagination and morals, but Mahito declines, revealing to him that he suffers from malice as well. He implores him to let this world go. As the world falls apart, Himi and Mahito return to there own times and the Heron implores Mahito to forget everything.
“I gave myself this scar on my head. It’s a sign of my malice.”
“I’m not afraid of fire.” Himi’s final words to Mahito.
“Mahito, will you continue my work?”
Themes: Accepting reality of death, caring about those who love you, evil is a part of life, humility creates peace over selfishness, looking back on achievements
Mahito’s goals at the beginning are selfish, looking for his mother who might be alive and refusing to to acknowledge his stepmother, but still looks for her out of familial duty. By the end he calls her mother. Unlike most Ghibli films where the outcome os positive, Mahito will still have a dead mother and forget about his memories of her in the wWizard’s world. He still has to go through the messy life that is the Pacific war and post-war Japan, but now he accepts the death of his mother. Miyazaki is private about his past, pessimistic, moody, and cold, which reflects Mahito’s aloofness, but now knows how to find joy in the world and how the darkness fits in. Miyazaki shows this to others with his filmmaking.
The final scene where Mahito goes back to Tokyo after the war, he finishes reading a book given to him by his mother, How Do You Live, by Genzaburo Yoshino. The book’s message is what Miyazaki adapts into his childhood. Having Mahito read it shows that he his accepting of the psychological change on his journey through the Wizard’s world, and accepts the physics of the real world over the imagination of his ancestor’s world, which has ceased to exist.
IBanalysis 