Yahoo News Boy Pursues Late Mother in Hayao Miyazaki’s Animated ‘The Boy and the Heron’ Trailer
Studio Ghibli released Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron with visual beauty and deep philosophical messages, but no trailers or marketing for its commercial release in Japan in July 2023.
But animation specialty distributor GKIDS, set to release the Japanese anime legend’s last film in North America on Dec. 8, has rolled out a traditional marketing campaign ahead of the animated feature opening the Toronto Film Festival on Thursday.
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After releasing an English language “pre-teaser,” GKIDS unveiled an official teaser trailer for the film, which centers on a young boy named Mahito, who enters a world shared by the living and the dead. “There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning,” the trailer describes as a musical score by Miyazaki’s long-time collaborator Joe Hisaishi plays.
After his mother’s death, Mahito is told by a talking heron that his mother is still alive, so he goes in search of her, taking him to another and more magical world. The trailer also alludes with epic and beautiful anime imagery to the firebombing of Tokyo during the Second World War, which claimed his mother’s life, and of Mahito having to go live with his maternal aunt.
Released in Japan as Kimitachi wa Do Ikiruka (translated as How Do You Live?), the film is an original story written and directed by Miyazaki, and is produced by the Oscar-winning Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki. The official international title is The Boy and the Heron.
For the release in Japan, Studio Ghibli chose to not release a plot summary, voice cast, trailers, art or description to allow audiences to watch the movie without any preconceptions.
Ahead of the international premiere at Toronto, the animated feature, touted as the Japanese director’s last film at Studio Ghibli, is described in the trailer as “a semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki.”
Many Japanese reviewers have noted that Miyazaki’s own family escaped the bombing of Tokyo for the Japanese countryside and that his father worked during the war as an engineer in a fighter plane factory, just like Mahiko’s. Miyazaki also has spoken over the years about how an especially close relationship with his mother shaped him as a person and helped inspire the strong female protagonists that recur across his movies.
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