It’s been ten years since we had a new film from the brilliant Hayao Miyazaki, the mind behind Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and so many other beautiful animated tales from Studio Ghibli, which Miyazaki co-founded. After 2013’s The Wind Rises, Miyazaki retired—but that didn’t stick.
His latest film, titled The Boy and the Heron in the US, was released in Japan without any of the marketing that seems standard: no images, trailers, ads, or synopsis was provided before the film arrived in theaters. But we’re getting a slightly more traditional rollout, complete with a first teaser.
The teaser reveals very little, and the description provided by Studio Ghibli is more poem than synopsis:
A young boy named Mahito
yearning for his mother
ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead.There, death comes to an end,
and life finds a new beginning.A semi-autobiographical fantasy
about life, death, and creation,
in tribute to friendship,
from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki.
Elements within this trailer seem to nod to previous Miyazaki films, from the watery woman (Ponyo) to the living flame (Howl’s Moving Castle) to the little white blob creatures that are like and not-like the kodamas in Princess Mononoke.
The Boy and the Heron is in theaters December 8th. The film will be shown in its original Japanese with English subtitles, as well as in an English language version.
