The Boy and The Heron Tells the Story of Mahito’s Adventures

Studio Ghibli is once again releasing a new film titled The Boy and The Heron or Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka. According to MovieWeb, this film follows a young boy, Mahito Maki, as he yearns for the loss of his mother.

However, a talking heron says his mother is still alive and Mahito follows him to an abandoned tower to search for her. Unexpectedly, this tower takes him to another world and…yes, you get that right! The journey starts from there as he wanders around the magical world of Ghibli.

Hayao Miyazaki’s New Film in Years

The frequent director of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki is once again the director of this new film. In addition, his last film, The Wind Rises was released in 2013.

Moreover, there’s a unique sense The Boy and The Heron feels like Miyazaki’s earlier film in tone or premise. For example, the closest one is My Neighbor Totoro — consisting of a story of a kid escaping to the fantasy world. However, thanks to Miyazaki’s decades of experience, we should see some new innovative things added to this film.

The First Release Occurred without a Trailer

Fun fact, this film was released in Japan in July 2023 without a single trailer. Even a promotional still is nowhere to be found! Just one poster that tells very little about the film picturing a painting of white heron.

The Boy and The Heron First Poster/ Source: Posteritati

The Ghibli producer, Toshio Suzuki, chose not to do any promotion of this film because he wanted to try ‘something different.’ So, this makes the project more mysterious and unique. The second reason is it can give the audience a greater cinematic experience because of the minimum content revealed.

But, now the film has gone international and it recently debuted a trailer featuring English dubbing. So, are you curious about the names?

English Dub Casts are Full of Big Names

The Boy and The Heron English Casts/ Source: Rappler

If you’ve seen the English dub trailer, you may notice the casts are full of your favorite actors & actresses. There are Christian Bale, Florence Pugh, Willem Dafoe, and Robert Pattinson, the sweetheart of your youth! So, it’s such a great list of actors, right?

Furthermore, most of the actors involved have voiced numerous animated films before. For example, Christian Bale as Howl in the English version of Howl’s Moving Castle and Willem Dafoe as Rat in Fantastic Mr. Fox. So, the talents involved in this film are not questionable!

Conclusion

To conclude, The Boy and The Heron will be in the theater from the end of November to December if you’re in South East Asia or some European countries. So, you shouldn’t miss it because of how unique the marketing and the big names in it.

But, don’t worry if you missed it in Japan last July, there are other countries that still and will play this film in theaters until the end of the year. So, grab your popcorn and embark on the journey of Ghibli’s beautiful world!

Although Ghibli’s films usually come with English dubs, most Japanese films are not and subtitles can sometimes be a bit rigid. So, you may need to level up your Japanese before watching Japanese films.

Luckily, StuDrill has a solution for that! With StuDrill, you’ll have no trouble understanding and speaking in Japanese. Also, there’s an AI feature that teaches you how to speak and understand Japanese better. Coming soon this autumn!