The Boy And The Heron Ending Explained: How Do You Live?
This article contains major spoilers for "The Boy and the Heron."
Hayao Miyazaki is one of the greatest animation auteurs of all time. He is the man who helped revolutionize anime in Japan and made the only Japanese anime that has won an Oscar. He is arguably the best-known name in animation outside of Walt Disney himself. Miyazaki is also a man who loves to threaten audiences with retirement. He first announced his retirement in 1997 after "Princess Mononoke." He did it again after "Spirited Away" in 2003. Then again in 2013 after "The Wind Rises." Yet here we are, in 2023, with Miyazaki saying that he is actually not retiring with his latest movie.
That latest (but not last) movie is "The Boy and the Heron," a movie that has undergone some changes (more on that later) in its story and also a big change in title for its international release. The film perfectly encapsulates Miyazaki's career and genius, as well as what has made him a legend and Ghibli a powerhouse. In his review for /Film, Josh Spiegel wrote that the film "utilizes the medium of animation to tell intensely personal stories that open up our eyes to grand new worlds, strange new characters, and unforgettable images."
"The Boy and the Heron" brings back themes Miyazaki has explored for years, like environmentalism and pacifism, as well as the power of art. It is also one of the densest and most inaccessible movies Miyazaki has made, one that is deeply weird in the best way, with layer after layer of imagery and worldbuilding. Here is how it all goes down.
Trapped in another world
"The Boy and the Heron" follows Mahito Maki, a young boy from Tokyo who flees the city with his father during WWII after his mother dies in a fire. Now living in the countryside, Mahito struggles with his grief and his new life. There's also the pesky gray heron that never stops pestering Mahito through the family estate of his stepmother Natsuko (who is also his aunt).
Things get weird when Natsuko suddenly disappears one day. The heron, who is actually a strange creature with the face of a man (hidden inside the beak of the heron) taunts Mahito, telling him that Natsuko is at a nearby abandoned tower that Mahito's granduncle was obsessed with and disappeared in. When the two enter the tower, they find themselves in an alternate fantasy world. That's right, "The Boy and the Heron" is Miyazaki doing an isekai (Japanese for "another world").
While in the fantasy world, Mahito encounters all sorts of fantastical creatures, like spirits, an army of parakeets, and a young woman with magical powers named Himi. All the while, he starts becoming friends with the heron — reluctantly. After a couple of adventures and encounters, the two face off against the parakeets and infiltrate their castle to rescue Natsuko, who is giving birth.
A big choice
While inside the tower, Himi is kidnapped by the Parakeet King, who uses her as leverage to bring Mahito to his granduncle, the man in charge of this world. The granduncle then offers Mahtio a choice. He can take over and shape this fantasy world, or go back home.
According to the granduncle, only people of their bloodline can rule this world, and only someone free of malice can take over. But that is not Mahito. He is full of grief, pain, and hatred. He has seen more than any child should, and he desires not to ignore it, but to face it head-on. And so he decides to return home, leaving the fantasy world to collapse. And as it turns out, Himi is a younger version of Mahito's mother, and she decides to go back to her time, knowing she will die, so that Mahito can be born.
The film ends with a 2-year time skip, where we see Mahito and his family go back to Tokyo after the war. It seems Mahito is now ready to face life and everything that comes with it, taking a lesson from a book his mother left for him before she died — "How Do You Live?"
How do you live?
The key to understanding "The Boy and the Heron" is to go back to the film's Japanese title, "How Do You Live?" That title encapsulates the film's themes of living with grief and how you move on after experiencing great loss. Indeed, most of the film is about Mahito struggling to live now that he lost his mother and his home. He is plagued by nightmares of his mother calling for him while engulfed in flames.
The original title is borrowed from Genzaburo Yoshino's 1937 novel of the same name, which acts as a crucial plot point as Mahito is inspired to make his climactic choice based on that same book — which appears in the film. Likewise, the climax hinges on the granduncle, seemingly representing Miyazaki, asking Mahito and the audience how they'll live in a world full of death and pain.
That question can also be interpreted as Miyazaki talking about the value of art, and why we do creative things when the world is full of pain. The film never offers a clear-cut answer or a happy outcome. Instead, the film seems to simply hope that the question "How do you live?" will inspire us to keep searching for an answer
The real boy and heron
In an interview with IndieWire, producer Toshio Suzuki talked about how personal the movie is for Miyazaki. They say to write what you know, and the characters are based on himself and his collaborators. "Miyazaki is Mahito, Takahata is the great uncle, and the gray heron is me," he said, referring to the late Isao Takahata, who co-founded Ghibli with Miyazaki and Suzuki. "So I asked him why. He said [Takahata] discovered his talent and added him to the staff. I think Takahata san was the one who helped him develop his ability. On the other hand, the relationship between the boy and the [heron] is a relationship where they don't give in to each other, push and pull."
After Takahata passed away in 2018, Miyazaki changed the script out of grief. According to Suzuki, the movie became more about the boy and the heron in this change. "In his mind, initially, the Heron was something that symbolizes the eeriness of the mansion and that tower, even ominous, that he goes to during wartime. But he changed it to this sort of budding friendship between the boy and the Heron."