The Boy and The Heron Explained | Decoding Hidden Meaning & Symbols in Miyazaki's Latest Ghibli Film

Studio ju's final film and miyazaki's crowning achievement the boy and the Heron is out in US theaters and I'm going to say if you haven't seen this movie do yourself a favor see it in theaters even IMAX because the animation the visuals are Exquisite and beyond that a majestic moving story it is an amazing film but this is not going to be a review video uh instead I'm going to be speaking to those of you who have seen the film with full spoilers today unpacking some of the hidden meanings because as you know although this is an amazing film it can also for some viewers be a little bit troubling and violent and confusing and odd and grotesque um so I want to really go into what some of these images and symbols that mizaki is delivering here are actually attempting to portray at least from my perspective and this only scratches the surface but um let's just get right into it so I'm going to start off with uh the first first one being the initial threshold Crossing as they leave Tokyo mjo arrives at the estate and he sees the Heron for the first time so this is the traditional monom Mythic um crossing of the threshold Vibes here the descent from the material world into the spiritual world if you haven't um heard or looked into the heroes Journey or the monom myth too much um check it out Campbell I mean there's videos on YouTube Morin Murdoch offers the heroin's journey um also uh very compelling but I'm not going to go deep into it what it does uh suggest though just to bring it right from Campbell's words the crossing of the first threshold is with the personification of his Destiny to guide and Aid him the hero goes forward in his Adventure until he comes to the threshold Guardian at the entrance to the zone of magnified power such custodians bound the world in four directions so um as we see the f Heron for the first time we know that we're jumping Between Worlds here there's Tokyo versus the provincial estate we go on to see this is the material world versus the spiritual World adulthood versus childhood the mundane versus the magical world and we actually go through a number of threshold Crossings in this film often times you'll see the Heron depicted above the archway or the threshold uh each time Maho crosses these thresholds he descends further into magic at the estate we also see the power of nature uh we we're just given by Miyazaki a number of of I mean almost minutes of footage without a lot of dialogue where you're just being engrossed and absorbed as Maho is for the first time in nature uh in Japan often times aesthetically what they attempt to deliver is uh something called mon no aware mono aware is an aesthetic philosophy it speaks to the sadness and the power of the fleeting uh impermanence of the natural world um very kind of Bittersweet feeling Joi sai's original soundtrack that accompanies the film underscoring it delivers on this feeling um to the nth degree and um yeah we really just uh see see the estate suffused with this magical natural world's power the next big symbol we see is the Wizard's Tower after Maho spends a little bit of time in nature at the estate he notices the tower in the distance and the musical tone changes instantly Wizard's Tower is a legendary archetype obviously Lord of the Rings stardew Valley shout out uh I could go on and on but it goes back to the Middle Ages when the kings and queens of Europe the nobility would reserve the tallest tower in their castle for their Court astrologer who would often be appointed as you know a pivotal functional member of the court and thereby would Divine sort of the stars for the king and queen uh and you know the highest to of course puts them closest to the stars and yes we then do see uh the great grand Uncle figure later represented as an astrologer once our eyes finally catch him silhouetted um against a backdrop of celestial uh stars and constellations there um so beyond that the uh uh Wizard's Tower is often depicted as the Blasted Tower or the broken Tower and this comes from the major Arcana of the tarot it's it's the 16th card of the major Arcana um has a lot of uh divinatory uh symbols attached to it therein and thereby and by the end of the film we do in fact see the tower in its final blasted form and uh it's a symbol of not only a destruction of the old order but of renewal and um you know I think great grand uncle's wish from Maho to go on and create his own world of his own design uh without malice is is an powerful incredible wish um for for the audience and for Maho and that is in fact what Miyazaki is doing with this film is delivering it as a gift the Wizards Tower also we are told straddles many worlds uh not only the material world in which Maho encounters it but we see the underworld that he descends into and the celestial world so this gives us what we often call in mysticism the triple world the or the triple the three- layer World um this is the the Underworld the Deep the the land of the soul the the material world Earth um that we live on as humans and then the celestial world the heavens typically and in most forms of aestheticism shamanism esotericism the uh three world is United by an axis a central world tree or a world axis and in fact the kanji or the character for king a king is one who who is the axis between the three Worlds the uh truly powerful individual uh or one who travels the three worlds so thought that was pretty cool the spiral stairway um is also part of the tower when Maho first goes into the tower all he can see is the first few steps of the Spiral stairway this is a major symbol of the initiatory path or the magical path because unlike a linear stairway where you can see every step and what awaits you at the top with a spiral stairway you cannot you can only ever see what's ahead of you about two or three steps ahead no matter whether you're at the bottom or anywhere on the stairway similarly you can only see what's two two or three steps behind you so it really is depicting The Descent into the unknown a a big move into the magical world that you know you are you go into this like Socrates knowing only that you know nothing you don't know what awaits you here um beyond that with the Wizards Tower is the inscription over the arway I'm sure a lot of you caught this F potestate is is Italian uh obviously an inscription presumably put on there by great-grandfather but it means I am made of divine power I am made of divine power we don't know if grand grand uncle's talking about himself about the estate about the Tower or about what awaits you within the tower once you go inside but I think it's an incredible affirmation I want to spend a moment on the Magi restoration we're told that the tower falls from the heavens shortly before the Magi restoration and this is a historical event more than a symbol um what they're speaking about is uh effectively kind of post US Civil War a series of governmental civil military social reforms that the Japanese emperor enacted in order to seize or restore power from the military leader the Shogun um who had ruled Japan for centuries prior to that and by doing so by instating these reforms this is like 1868 uh 1870s um so relatively recent in modern history uh it is what transformed Japan from a feudal society into a more modern society that we know it as today so to say that this arrived before the mag restoration and then the great grand Uncle began to um work on the tower build the Tower afterwards effectively tells us that this Tower also straddles two major points in time temporally and it also speaks to the eccentricity of the great grand Uncle characters because keep in mind historically Japan was closed off to foreign powers for two and a half centuries prior to this so for you know Japan to be opened up again you know books to become accessible great grand Uncle enamored as he was with Western powers and Western knowledge and everything you can see it in the architecture everything about his world the estate the manner um it's it's a big leap into modernity great grand uncle was quite quite an odd guy he's quite an outsider he's not your normal man of his times necessarily so yeah another quick note about agricultural volunteers a scene pretty early in the film where Maho is supposedly going to school and then you know after the scene after after the wounding uh Mao's father shuichi pulls him out of school have a little compassion for the father here um it's not just that he's being ignorant thinking that you know these other boys hurt him it's that he doesn't want his son doing hard labor because at this point in time in World War II all of the men have basically been conscripted into military service or as we see with uh father's Factory workers um conscripted into Industrial Service for the military so in the lack of you know men who would otherwise be doing this Farm agricultural labor the children who are made through their education and the education officials to fill in doing this hard labor so what the father's doing here is really stopping his son from doing hard labor so um in case you didn't catch I don't know maybe you guys caught that I don't know anyways have a little have a little sympathy for Dad here so yeah speaking of this kind of scene this part of the film um mahito gets into a fight within the first minute of meeting his peers and afterwards self harms he he um wounds himself self with a uh pretty significant head wound and this scene elicited the biggest uh emotional visceral reaction out of uh the theater when I was seeing it um and in case you've never seen a head wound bleed do know that they do bleed profusely as compared with other wounds of the body so it's not it miyazaki's depiction is not excessive um but what's really going on here is after this and you know as the viewer you could also be like well now that he's hit himself in the head isn't he just like Tri isn't he like having is does he have a concussion here like maybe because after this the movie takes a distinct turn toward the weird um but what I feel is actually happening here is the initial wounding uh on the shamanic path of uh what initially creates a shaman or the quote unquote wounded healer um often in uh Global shamanic societies the shaman is the individual who from birth or early on or somehow along the path of Life endures an actual significant physical or mental wounding um self-inflicted or not um often times it's you know individuals who are blind or deaf um seriously or schizophrenic um but um in such a wounding for the shaman the wound becomes the power through which the magical world enters into you and um it becomes the the source of how you can become What's called the wounded healer effectively um so uh this is I believe the true beginning of maho's um move on to the magical path and uh we do uh see this in fact as uh the other beings around him uh come to call him in fact the long awaited one so um the long awaited one couldn't have necessarily been without that wound that's that's my hypothesis yeah that's what else I was going to say think of like the the the fisher king of parsifal for example here is kind of what this symbol hearkens back to um in a lot of classical literature okay let's talk about the Heron the Heron is the mentor guide uh but we have to respect Miyazaki here because typically in a lot of fantasy you know folktales fables Proverbs the mentor guide is uh often times like an old male wizard an enlightened being a or a powerful being a magical being Heron has some power but you know he's he's not necessarily great grand Uncle great grand uncle is who we would think would be the uh the guide Mentor but instead we get the Heron who is sort of the assigned guide by the powerful wizard um this doesn't detract from what he represents again if you want to read more about the symbol hero's journey Mentor got discovery of the mentor um so we have to respect mizaki also for depicting Heron as he is he is another aspect of miyazaki's Personality just as great grand Uncle as Miyazaki a facet of him so is the Heron also so is the father shuichi also is Maho they they're four generations depicting different sides of Miyazaki in my opinion but this this Heron character is crude and vulgar and uh it he's deceptive he's he's a deceiver deceiver a liar you know um so it's interesting that Maho still grows he still learns um although he is not a wizard the Heron he is a wise man he's he's a wise individual that you know the typically you have to become an old man to get this sort of learned you know Liv in your learn Common Sense Street wisdom that the herend does in fact possess uh and I think this is just kind of the hard wisdom that Miyazaki picked up over the years uh as in classical Japanese art the Heron is often depicted as a solitary lonely figure as in an individual solitary State often in a wintry scene so I think this is miazaki depicting the quote unquote winter of his life and his retirement which a lot of this film speaks to so while we're at it father shuichi uh he is the modern man he also uh straddles Two Worlds pre and post-war Japan he straddles East and West in being simultaneously nationalist while also dressing in fine Western GB which we see natsuko also adopts by the end of the film I would say you know uh he's he's the man of his time another aspect of miyazaki's personality and in and this guy's um you know he he is the the Tower of paragon to a child you know that the child sees their father as um the role model of how how to live how do you live um and the symbol of what Maho will himself grow into yeah I actually found myself resonating with the father character quite a bit um Maho too but as a new father myself as of a a couple months ago I I have recently discovered Within Myself the the similar feeling that I would also cross Heaven Earth and hell to save my child um so yeah um and while we're well we're kind of on the point all let's just speak to the the blood and the and all of there's a lot of grossness in this film right M asaki does not shy away from that and as a new father that has also been my experience you know uh life is full of and blood uh you know happens and by the time you're miyazaki's age you've surely certainly seen quite a bit of it and it doesn't really just phase you as much anymore uh so I think that's actually what Miyazaki is kind of trying to depict with this viscera you know all the guts spilling out all the it's the visceral nature of life it's part of it you can't ignore it you can't suppress it better to just depict it you know okay so I saw the film subbed and there is the the join us scene I understand this really like shook Japanese audiences quite a bit um but the you know the speaking carp and the frogs um it simply means ple please join us uh frogs and carp are somewhat legendary uh not holy but like revered animals in uh Mahana Buddhist cultures so there is the longmen myth of China in which the carp after several uh failed attempts finally uh swimming Upstream jumps leaps over the Dragon's Gate carp leaps over the Dragon's Gate and in one swift instant transforms into a dragon um so bit of Magikarp into Gyarados Vibes here yes um but similarly uh the uh uh frogs are somewhat I don't know like yeah um revered animals in in Buddhism specifically Zen um which is a a prominent strain in a lot of uh you know provinces of Japan what because of his ability to meditate you know the Frog will sit there and sit calmly for hours waiting for his dinner dinner um just in Stillness and silence in meditation so um you know Buddhist monks have a fondness in their hearts for uh frogs and uh um yeah definitely some some harik Mami Vibes as he uses a similar employment of the same symbol in a lot of his texts all right next is the power of books because we learn uh that great grand uncle was enamored with books obsessed and and a half unfinished book was really all that he left after he disappeared one day and shortly after this we discover that along with Maho after we knocked some books a gift that Maho received from his mother that he'd forgotten about um back in 1937 which was a copy of how do you live a book which was itself given to uh ma uh Miyazaki by his mother we see that in the film as well Maho instantly goes on on to um you know without actually seeing anything about this book he reads he goes on to read this book immediately tearing up growing through I mean it's a powerful book um I do have another video about this book um not not necessarily a review video either um but the the book and the movie don't have a ton to do with each other they do carry a similar message they leave you with a similar feeling I I guess but um it's simply the the inspiration for the boy in the Heron it's it's it's not the boy in the Heron so I do want to be clear on that um but I I'll also shout out the local mangaka who has um a great video that he also just released uh that goes kind of deeper into misaki's ties with this um check those videos out here um but what I wanted to say about this uh is similarly that when NATO goes into the forest and Maho has to attempt to go find her he leaves the book half unfinished which I think is also an important nod from Miyazaki um that uh you know you can't learn everything from books at a certain point how do you live you just got to go out and live really um so yeah check out those videos while we're at it I guess also um if how if you've been enjoying this video tell me what you think um obviously Am I Wrong uh am I way off base here uh has this been valuable to you because let me know down below I do intend to do some additional videos in a similar vein to this rather than the generic book content so yeah long story short would love to hear any feedback from you guys so moving along the rose the first time we actually see the silhouette of great grand Uncle up above at the top of the tower is after he drops a glass rose and it shatters on the ground the rose I believe here to be the symbol of the uh esoteric the Magical Mystery school um that great grand Uncle would have likely belonged to and maybe even been trained in somewhat at this time through his his studies his readings the rosac crucian order or the Brotherhood of the Rose cross an ancient secret society that uh taught occultism magic um so if you're in the United States in the San Francisco Bay area you can actually go to the rosac crucian museum in San Jose which I would recommend if um for the very least checking out just their lovely Gardens yeah okay the water lot of Fire and Water symbolism in this movie The Waters typically represent the Waters of the deep the unknown mystery the cosmos chaos actually the descent into chaos or Cosmo cosmic energy and uh the underworld in the film is actually largely water um so yeah I mean I think this is exactly what Miyazaki is doing um is you know this is this is the power of Soul of Spirit and the biblical tradition uh water is used in baptism as a sort of renewal of the Soul through Spirit um kind of a cleansing a reemergence of um M renewed magical power uh we also I want to take a moment to to note in the water in the Underworld we see the uh shade boatmen right these Shades that the buyers that come to uh barter for kiro's fish or bid um wear Garb that's more traditionally Filipino or Taiwanese or maybe okan at the most this is not like traditional Japanese fishermen's uh Garb that they're wearing which in on the one hand kind of is yeah I mean it's a it does uh hearken to the fact that in one way in more island nations the waters are in fact what connect us all truly um but I think it's also you know a a nod toward how Miyazaki continues pulling in different um indigenous esoteric social religious architectural all these different Traditions um which made up modern Japan at that time and yes the Philippines would have been part of Imperial Japan at the time of when the movie took place so there's also that the water the water we are told are The Unborn Souls so in a sense they represent Humanity actually Humanity in the Underworld uh or the the part the magical Soul energy that crosses from the lower world into the material world um that which crosses a different threshold and um I don't know these guys are great water water is kind of Youth Japanese slang for laughing so they're literally just laughing you know and babies laugh but I don't know I I see these guys becoming more popular than the Kodama honestly um they're fun okay lady HEI lady HEI is the traditional uh Miki otori Sama or fire shine Maiden uh legendary kind of spiritual religious figure from pre Shinto into Shinto tradition in Japan what you see is what you get here um they harness the P power of fire um check out Inuyasha Kiko and that is your traditional fire Shrine Maiden not going to go deep into this one because it's quite a prolific symbol um what I think is notable here is that as an attendant of Lady HEI and Natco in the real world um Kiko also harnesses the power of fire with her fire whip fire switch in the magical world also um so she she does bear some of the fire maiden's power in a way um a little hint toward who who KIRO is um and I don't know yeah I mean I could talk about like Fire's protective versus its destructive force um it holds a purification power in in Shinto also I don't know I think for the boy and the Heron it would be better to discuss fire versus water that's an entire this video is getting long that's an entire different entirely different video uh anyway all right next up we have namu amutu namu amutu is what Maho says in the sub version as he uh bids goodbye to the noble Pelican as the Pelican dies um it's translated even in the sub version to rest in peace in Japan bus is used the phrase similarly as rest in peace is used for those who have passed in the west but it does not mean the same thing namsu instead is a prayer to the amida Buddha who is the head Buddha of what's referred to as the pure land in Buddhism and the pure land is another world that Buddhists can go to after death and eternally study Buddhism and become more enlightened enlightening beings so uh to pray over the Pelican is actually explicitly a wish from Maho for the Pelican to travel to another world like Maho is actually in which is interesting to me now we have Birds a lot of birds in this movie which is great who doesn't love birds obviously Miyazaki must love birds we we're given at the end of the film effectively knowledge that these are living elements brought into this magical world in order to help um beautify and help perfect it it it speaks to miyazaki's love for birds and flight yes there there are birds like in Spirited Away there's the atori Sama I mean every single one of M jil's films features birds and flight in some way I mean Poco Roso and The Wind Rises are explicitly about man flight um that said I I believe the Pelicans specifically are a reference to um sort of the more Buddhist like desires of man just the insatiable desire of man something that's never going to end something that's never going to change while we're told more explicitly that the parakeets um through the parakeet uh come to represent more of the malice of man the imperialistic Nationalist fervor even that was sweeping Japan at the time that you know that energy can can diffuse through the dead in and permeate and come to saturate the the underworld and it it's given life through the parakeets um you know with their their consumptive destructive negotiating you know militaristic dynastic uh laws that they seem to follow so lastly we're going to we're going to round this out on the two charms and the ending the two charms um we we get this awesome scene between the Heron and mahito their last interaction where he's like yeah show me what you've got and he brings out the two ch Maho declined all 13 of uh grandfather's charms he also declined the 13 charms that um were sort of un unadulterated by grandfather instead he just picked up his own charm from that realm and also kept the CUO charm that CUO uh gave him it's notable here that the Heron tells him I'm not sure if you guys caught this that it's the CUO charm that has power but the actual seemingly magically power full stone charm is relatively powerless um I think this just speaks this is a message from mizaki there's power in people Stone in our world powerless but but you you have memory of someone who helped you there's real magical power in that um which is so heartwarming right and then the ending you know the Heron tells him forget about this or you probably will forget or you you should forget um and in fact as I think the ending is perfect because when we see Maho close that door it tells us everything we need to know he's done the work he's taken Heron's advice and forgotten about this journey he he doesn't he doesn't bat us a single eye I don't know I know when I'm leaving places or moving on or changing life I I get a little sentimental Mao not at all mahito is is ready to move fully on with his life move back into the real world which is just awesome so if you've watched this video up to this point I am assuming that you've seen the the movie and if you haven't go see it uh it's one of the best experiences in the cinema that I've had in the last five or 10 years honestly and it's just the perfect culmination of mizaki and Studio jil's work and just yeah I mean a movie so full of meaning and power I loved it I'm going to go continue seeing it again and again with the uh English voice cast I know I'm I'm going to check it out again so um that's all I have for you today so thank you all for watching and we'll see you next time

Channel: Samuel Gray

Views: 14,591

Keywords: anime, studio ghibli, miyazaki, ghibli, the boy and the heron, how do you live?, animation, hayao miyazaki, gkids, mysticism, symbols, symbolism

Id: IGL0-u1XYSs

Length: 29min 58sec (1798 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023