Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Featured voices: Soma Santoki, Takuya Kimura, Yoshino Kimura, Masaki Suda, Aimyon

The latest from venerable Studio Ghibli director Miyazaki, based on the WWII set novel, feels very much like a valedictory effort with its thematic call-backs to earlier pictures. It’s 1944 and twelve-year-old boy Mahito (Soma Santoki) and his father Shohichi (Kimura) have moved from Tokyo to an estate in the country. Mahito’s mother was killed in a hospital fire in Tokyo one year earlier (one of several disturbing sequences in the picture) and Shohichi is to marry her younger sister Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura). Also in the household are a band of very old and eccentric maids who fuss around the family. Shortly after their arrival, a heron begins to appear to Mahito. The boy is shocked to discover that the heron can speak and it tells him in a taunting raspy voice that his mother is still alive. Mahito follows the heron to an abandoned tower where he is transported to an alternate world populated by fantastical creatures. As usual with Studio Ghibli, the picture boasts some beautifully-rendered and vividly coloured animated vistas, while the themes of parallel spirit worlds and absent parents will be familiar to fans of the studio. The proliferation of mystical creatures and the thematic overload renders this a little confusing even by Miyazaki’s child-logic standards, but devotees will find much to love.

David Willoughby

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