{"id":103024,"date":"2024-03-11T01:11:30","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T01:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.alltheanime.com\/?p=30976"},"modified":"2024-03-11T01:11:30","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T01:11:30","slug":"the-boy-and-the-oscar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/11\/the-boy-and-the-oscar\/","title":{"rendered":"The Boy and the Oscar"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Andrew Osmond.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Hooray, The Boy and the Heron<\/em> has won! When it snagged the Best Animated Feature Oscar last night (sorry, Spider-Verse<\/em> fans), it marked only the second Oscar victory for an anime feature film. The first time was twenty-one years ago, when Spirited Away<\/em>, also directed by Hayao Miyazaki, won Best Animated Feature at the Oscars in 2003<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some other anime features have been nominated in the intervening years, two of them by Miyazaki. Howl <\/em>lost to Wallace and Gromit in 2005, and The Wind Rises<\/em> to Frozen <\/em>in 2015. (Ponyo<\/em> missed being nominated in 2010.) Two Ghibli films that weren\u2019t by Miyazaki were also nominated without winning, They were Takahata\u2019s farewell film Princess Kaguya<\/em> in 2014, and the low-key but wonderful When Marnie Was There<\/em>, by Hiromasa Yonebayashi<\/a>, in 2015. The Red Turtle<\/em> was nominated in 2016. It\u2019s wonderful too, but I don\u2019t count this French-animated film as Ghibli, let alone anime.<\/p>\n

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Only one anime that\u2019s not by Ghibli has ever been Oscar-nominated<\/a>, and that was Mamoru Hosoda\u2019s Mirai<\/em> in 2018, which lost to the first Spider-Verse<\/em>. Outstanding directors such as Naoko Yamada, Masaaki Yuasa and Makoto Shinkai have all yet to get an Oscar nod. Many other excellent films of the past two decades have been snubbed. They include The First Slam Dunk<\/em>, Children of the Sea<\/em>, Promare<\/em>, Maquia, Paprika <\/em>and In This Corner of the World<\/em>, and that\u2019s just counting the stand-alones.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sadly likely that Boy and the Heron<\/em> will be the last feature film that Miyazaki directs, unless he can delegate creative work on his next feature to a degree that he\u2019s never managed before. It\u2019s not inconceivable. The fullfrontal.moe <\/em>website has superb extended interviews with Heron<\/em>\u2019s animation director Takeshi Honda<\/a> and animator Toshiyuki Inoue<\/a>. What emerges from them is that with age catching up with Miyazaki, he relied heavily on Heron<\/em>\u2019s animation director, Takeshi Honda<\/a>. It was Honda, for example, who was responsible for the design of the pivotal character Natsuko. It was because, Inoue says, \u201cMiyazaki isn\u2019t very good at designing adult women.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Boy and the Heron<\/em> has some of the most obvious \u201csignature\u201d animation of any Miyazaki film \u2013 namely the early sequence when Mahito rushes through a nightmare of wildly distorted people. Most people will just think it\u2019s by Miyazaki, but a fair number of fans and professionals know that it\u2019s the signature distortion of Shinya Ohira, who was adding his personal touch to Miyazaki films back with Spirited Away<\/em>.<\/a> While the commentary on Heron<\/em> will always centre on the director, the Oscar win is still also a victory for Honda, Ohira, Inoue and Heron<\/em>\u2019s other artists, many of whom worked on Miyazaki\u2019s films for decades.<\/p>\n

What of Heron<\/em> itself? How much of its reception, including this Oscar, is skewed by the feeling that it\u2019s indeed a farewell film? I\u2019m no dispassionate pundit. I\u2019ve been invested in Miyazaki\u2019s films for decades, and I do like Heron<\/em>. However, I\u2019d personally rate it below another recent anime fantasy, Shinkai\u2019s Suzume<\/em>, which has some broadly overlapping themes. I\u2019m not surprised that Heron<\/em> has been praised, but I am surprised that there hasn\u2019t been more of a backlash to it. Of course there are exceptions, such as an Anime News Network<\/em> <\/em>podcast<\/a> called \u201cIs The Boy and the Heron<\/em> Miyazaki\u2019s Worst Film?\u201d<\/p>\n

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Heron <\/em>is an odd film, in the manner that started with Spirited Away<\/em>. Its story trajectory is constantly deflected by out-of-nowhere developments and characters. It starts as a creepy, angry ghost story with a boy who graphically self-harms on screen.  By the end it\u2019s about beating up flesh-eating budgies and other cartoon folderol. I find that an amusing contrast to all the fantasy stories that start<\/em> light and then get grim. Heron<\/em> is a true journey in that there\u2019s no way to see the later developments in advance. But I\u2019m surprised that critics have bought into its oddness so readily.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also struck by how so much of the writing on Heron<\/em> focuses on its parallels to Miyazaki\u2019s past films, but doesn\u2019t bring up themes that a first-time Miyazaki viewer could spot, themes that make the film distinctive. Heron<\/em>\u2019s obsession with mother complexes and motherhood is hardly subtle. This is a film where one of the two main females is Natsuko, Mahito\u2019s beautiful aunt, who we\u2019re told is the spitting image<\/em> of the boy\u2019s dead mum. In the early minutes, we see Mahito\u2019s discomfort when Natsuko, squashed up to him in a rickshaw, takes his hand and presses it to her pregnant stomach. Soon after, Mahito peeps at Natsuko embracing Mahito\u2019s own father, who married Natsuko after the sister died.<\/p>\n

And then Heron<\/em>\u2019s other main female is\u2026 a time-displaced version of the dead sister, Hisako, aka Lady Himi. She\u2019s a similar age to Mahito, very pretty, and magic to boot. In one scene she burns cute baby-like \u201cwarawara\u201d while Mahito shouts for her to stop. That\u2019s just after we\u2019ve learned that warawara are unborn souls; previously the script mentioned that Hisako had a difficult pregnancy with Mahito himself. None of this is deep analysis; these details are upfront on screen. They amount to a vision of motherhood that\u2019s awesome, scary and erotic. Step forward Hideaki Anno, who\u2019s the creator of Evangelion<\/em>, one-time God Warrior animator and Jiro\u2019s voice in Wind Rises<\/em>. He once teased<\/a> Miyazaki for not displaying \u201cthe negative things called self-loathing and complexes.\u201d Until now, that is.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

In the Honda interview<\/a> mentioned earlier, the Animation Director even talks of reining Heron <\/em>back a bit. \u201cBecause it\u2019s about the Oedipus complex, if things became too erotic, it would have been too much. For instance, when Natsuko says \u2018I hate you!\u2019 to Mahito in the delivery room scene, I initially wanted to open her kimono and show her chest. But it would have been going overboard, so I gave it up in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the duration of Heron<\/em>, we\u2019re observing Mahito from the outside. We\u2019re left to wonder exactly why, for instance, he hits himself with a rock with such savagery, or why he has such murderous hatred towards the heron. (Though trust Miyazaki to turn this hate toward pedagogical ends; this is a film that teaches youngsters exactly how to make their own bow and arrow.) Mahito\u2019s deeper feelings are left for us to infer too, particularly his changing feelings towards the heron and Natsuko.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the usual approach for Miyazaki. It is, however, very in line with the \u201cobjective\u201d depictions of characters in the films of his late colleague, Isao Takahata. Takahata criticised films that \u201cdrive viewers into a position where they can only align themselves with the protagonist, without objectively indicating the hero\u2019s circumstances.\u201d I think Takahata would have surely appreciated Heron<\/em>; I wrote more on the background here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Takahata has become part of the discourse around Heron<\/em>, for a very different reason.Thank Toshio Suzuki for that. He told outlets like Entertainment Weekly<\/em><\/a> <\/em>that the godlike ageing magus character in the last scenes of Heron<\/em> is actually based on Takahata. I\u2019ve seen some fans present this as the \u201creal meaning\u201d of Heron<\/em>, which is ludicrous. The magus may be inspired by Miyazaki\u2019s memories and feelings of his lifelong friend and rival. But it doesn\u2019t start to square with the Takahata who was known to the public, and to various levels of fan. Even the idea of Takahata as a wizard feels all wrong. Very few of Takahata\u2019s works involve magic, except the magic of nature.<\/p>\n

For anyone outside Takahata\u2019s private circle, the obvious way to \u201cread\u201d the magus in Heron<\/em> is as a stand-in for Miyazaki, like past self-inserts as diverse as Porco Rosso<\/em>\u2019s pig-pilot and the grouchy Kamaji in Spirited Away<\/em>. And whatever Miyazaki\u2019s personal feelings may have been when he created the character, surely he would have known that\u2019s how audiences<\/em> wouldsee the magus. The idea of Miyazaki as the fading sorcerer is sweet and resonant. The allegories I\u2019ve seen built on top of that are not. You can find people saying Heron<\/em> is secretly about Goro Miyazaki<\/a> and Ghibli\u2019s efforts to make him Hayao\u2019s successor. (At the film\u2019s end, is Mahito an alternative Goro who refuses to make Tales from Earthsea<\/em>?) It\u2019s so dully literal and bathetic, far from the awe and whimsy of Heron<\/em>\u2019s finale. For the record, I interviewed<\/a> Goro last November. Although it\u2019s not in my write-up, I asked him if he thought any<\/em> Ghibli character represented him. He said no.<\/p>\n

Perhaps a clear view of Boy and the Heron<\/em> will be only possible in twenty years\u2019 time, when it\u2019s as far from us as Spirited Away<\/em> is now. By then, we can hope that other anime films will have snagged Oscars, films that aren\u2019t by Miyazaki and Ghibli. For now, this Oscar win is a triumph for both, but also for the crack artists who could show themselves off more than they ever could before. Heron<\/em> also shows a different Miyazaki, who\u2019s now somehow aligned with artists as wildly different as his junior Anno and his mentor Takahata. I think other anime films have deserved Oscars more. But Heron<\/em> is an especially interesting <\/em>Oscar win.<\/p>\n

Andrew Osmond is the author of 100 Animated Feature Films<\/a><\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

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By Andrew Osmond. Hooray, The Boy and the Heron has won! When it snagged the Best Animated Feature Oscar last night (sorry, Spider-Verse fans), it marked only the second Oscar victory for an anime feature film. The first time was twenty-one years ago, when Spirited Away, also directed by Hayao Miyazaki, won Best Animated Feature [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-container-style":"default","site-container-layout":"default","site-sidebar-layout":"default","disable-article-header":"default","disable-site-header":"default","disable-site-footer":"default","disable-content-area-spacing":"default","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[61,122,127,129,124,128,125,132,131,133,126,130,123,66,94,88,97,56,64,65,60,112,40,75,95,104,33,120,105,101,98,115,30,29,41,86,70,69,68,72,71,26,118,108,87,46,55,48,52,54,51,50,83,62,58,57,109,35,59,63,85,79,82,96,80,27,81,114,44,42,43,45,38,39,110,117,100,111,116,73,89,90,92,91,93,84,78,37,102,34,36,77,67,74,99,113,119,28,121,32,47,49,53,103,31,76],"class_list":["post-103024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anime","tag-airpods","tag-anime","tag-anime-characters","tag-anime-cosplay","tag-anime-edits","tag-anime-merchandise","tag-anime-movies","tag-anime-news","tag-anime-recommendations","tag-anime-reviews","tag-anime-series","tag-anime-streaming","tag-animes","tag-app-store","tag-app-store-samsung","tag-appgallery","tag-appgallery-oneplus","tag-apple","tag-apple-music","tag-apple-tv","tag-apple-watch","tag-bbc-sport","tag-best-mobile-games","tag-bixby","tag-bixby-xiaomi","tag-champions-league","tag-cyberpunk","tag-cyberpunk-2077","tag-fantasy-football","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-formula-1","tag-fortnite","tag-free-fire","tag-free-mobile-games","tag-freebuds-pro","tag-galaxy-a52","tag-galaxy-note-20","tag-galaxy-s21","tag-galaxy-watch-4","tag-galaxy-z-fold-3","tag-game","tag-games","tag-golf","tag-harmonyos","tag-how-to-backup-iphone","tag-how-to-factory-reset-iphone","tag-how-to-reset-iphone","tag-how-to-restore-iphone","tag-how-to-unlock-iphone","tag-how-to-unlock-iphone-5","tag-how-to-unlock-iphone-6","tag-huawei","tag-ios","tag-ipad","tag-iphone","tag-live-soccer","tag-lol","tag-macbook","tag-macos","tag-mate-40-pro","tag-mi-11-lite","tag-mi-home-security-camera-basic-1080p","tag-mi-home-security-camera-basic-1080p-huawei","tag-mi-smart-band-6","tag-minecraft","tag-miui","tag-mlb-scores","tag-mobile-game-design","tag-mobile-game-development","tag-mobile-game-marketing","tag-mobile-game-monetization","tag-mobile-games","tag-mobile-gaming","tag-nba-scores","tag-nba-standings","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-scores","tag-nhl-scores","tag-one-ui","tag-oneplus","tag-oneplus-9-pro","tag-oneplus-buds-pro","tag-oneplus-nord-ce-5g","tag-oxygenos","tag-p40-pro-plus","tag-poco-x3-pro","tag-pokemon","tag-premier-league","tag-pubg","tag-pubg-mobile","tag-redmi-note-10-pro","tag-samsung","tag-samsung-pay","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-steam","tag-steeam","tag-top-10-anime","tag-valorant","tag-when-do-the-iphone-7-come-out","tag-when-does-the-iphone-7-come-out","tag-when-is-the-iphone-7-coming-out","tag-world-cup","tag-xbox-series-x","tag-xiaomi"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103024"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103129,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103024\/revisions\/103129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}