Forum - View topicREVIEW: The Boy and the Heron HD 4K Blu-ray Anime Film Review
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Theozilla
 Posts: 144 Location: Oakland, California |
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Very nice review, but there are a couple of misinformation errors in it. Such as My Neighbor Totoro not having any “new sibling” as a plot element of it. But more importantly, Hayao Miyazaki’s mother did not die during WWII & in fact was a major influence on him & his later work.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2637 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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Fixed! It was two sentences that got mushed together without my realizing. You are correct, she didn't die until about forty years after the war. I do, however, think that Totoro has a "new sibling" element to it, even if that's only up to interpretation. In the credits, we see the girls and a baby, and that could mean that their mother was hospitalized for pregnancy complications and came home after the baby was born. |
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Theozilla
Posts: 144 Location: Oakland, California |
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The baby Satsuki and Mei are seen with during the credits of My Neighbor Totoro I think is clearly meant to be a local child from the girl's community. Mei is also seen with the baby and other babies in the credits as well. Furthermore, the mother in My Neighbor Totoro is never once drawn as pregnant looking, and the film is pretty apparent that Satsuki and Mei's mother is recovering from a long term illness she has had for a while (long enough that Satsuki has recognized and remembered previous times their mother's condition has taken turn for the worse that were previously described in the manner of being as "just a cold" and whatnot). And during the credits when the mother comes home from the hospital there is no baby seen anywhere during that end credit illustration. All that combined with the fact that no pregnancy or potential future sibling is ever mentioned once during the film I think makes it pretty clear that the mother in My Neighbor Totoro is not pregnant (and is more likely suffering from a illness similar to the spinal tuberculosis that Hayao Miyazaki's mother suffered from and required her to stay in the hospital for a few years before returning home). |
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dm
 Subscriber Posts: 1454 |
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Miyazaki’s mother was hospitalized for tuberculosis, I think, leading to a long absence during his childhood.
Nice review, Rebecca. I look forward to seeing the film. |
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FireChick
Subscriber Posts: 2468 Location: United States |
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I still need to watch this. Good thing it'll be streaming later!
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shosakukan
Posts: 329 |
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In an interview, the writer-director Miyazaki Hayao has said that the house which the Kusakabe family has moved to was built for a tuberculous patient's being under treatment and the reason why the family has moved to the house is that the countryside's clean air is good for Mrs Kusakabe, who is ill. In a note about directing My Neighbor Totoro, Miyazaki has also said that Mrs Kusakabe is in hospital due to a lung disease. The real-life hospital on which the Shichikokuyama Hospital in My Neighbor Totoro is modelled is a hospital for TB patients. The novel version of My Neighbor Totoro, published by Tokuma Shoten, says that the hospital which Mrs Kusakabe is in is a hospital for TB patients. So it is probable that Mrs Kusakabe is a TB patient. Period-wise, My Neighbor Totoro is set in Shōwa 30s (Shōwa 30 is 1955). In 1950, the institute which would later become the Kaken Pharmaceutical Company started to produce streptomycin in Japan. So Mrs Kusakabe's returning home suggests that it is a period that TB patients started to be able to have better treatment. (Literary writer Hori Tatuo passed away in 1953 due to TB, though.) The title of Miyazaki Hayao's Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises), which a character whose name is Naoko appears in, is derived from Hori Tatuo's novella Kaze Tachinu. Hori Tatuo, who himself was a TB patient, wrote works in which TB patients are under medical treatment in the countryside's hospitals such as novella Kaze Tachinu and novel Naoko. |
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nyaa
Posts: 139 |
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I saw this at my local theater when it came out last year and honestly it didn't really make much of an impression on me at all. Thought it was rather meh.
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Rekishika
Posts: 25 |
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Not that it is very important but I doubt that Mahito's mother is meant to have died during a firebombing of Tokyo. Near the beginning, Mahito says that it was three years after the war had begun that his mother died. "War" could either refer to the Japanese-Chinese War which began in earnest in 1937, or to the Pacific War in December 1941. (See also this post in Japanese
https://realsound.jp/movie/2023/07/post-1378533.html) If it was the former, no bombing of Tokyo occurred before the Doolittle Raid in 1942, which was by daylight. The latter would mean a pretty tight timeline for Mahito's father to marry again and getting Natsuko pregnant before the end of the war, because it could only have happened after 10 March 1945. (The first nighttime raid on Tokyo, on 9/10 March 1945, was extremely different from what is depicted in the film; more people were killed on the spot than in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.) And, as the Japanese Wikipedia entry on this film notes, there is no clear sign that the hospital burned up because of a bombing raid. (https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?&oldid=101303705#cite_note-25) I'd rather argue that it was an accidental fire. Since the evacuation of civilians (mostly children) came only in 1944, I'd also argue that the main events of the film are set in 1944, although that would seem to be contradicted by Mahito's statement. |
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Theozilla
Posts: 144 Location: Oakland, California |
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Wait, how do the main events of the film taking place in 1944 (which is also the same year Miyazaki's family evacuated to the countryside in real life) contradict Mahito's statement? |
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Rekishika
Posts: 25 |
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I just rewatched the beginning. Mahito says that his mother died in the third year of war and that he left Tokyo with his father in the fourth year. (He doesn't use the word for "evacuation".) Since, later, the father mentions the fall of Saipan, it is clear that the main events are set in summer 1944. I'd say that that was the third year of the Pacific War which began in December 1941, but if one designates the whole of 1941 as the first year, one would say that 1944 was the fourth year. (That would be similar to the old Japanese age reckoning system "kazoedoshi". The same reckoning explains why some Japanese speak of the "Fifteen Years' War", from the Mukden Incident in September 1931 to the Japanese surrender in August/September 1945.) So it's not necessarily a contradiction; sorry. It also means that there is no reason to assume that the hospital fire was caused by bombing. |
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SpookyDollhouse
Posts: 39 |
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The only way to come out of this movie saying "nothing happens" is if you didn't watch the movie.
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Theozilla
Posts: 144 Location: Oakland, California |
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Okay so it taking place in 1944 is not contradicting any statement by Mahito. That's all all I was confused about (as I already understood that the hospital fire wasn't necessarily caused by a firebombing). |
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