Miyazaki caps career with masterful ‘Boy and the Heron’
If anyone can be said to rival the impact of Walt Disney on the field of animated films, it’s Hayao Miyazaki. Co-founder of Studio Ghibli, his work in Japan’s anime genre is legendary, with films like “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” “Howl’s Moving Castle,” and the Oscar-winning “Spirited Away” – which held the record as the highest-grossing film in Japanese history for 19 years – expanding his popularity and helping to build a global entertainment empire that, like Disney’s, includes merchandise, licensing, and even a theme park.
Millions of fans worldwide – many of them queer – have grown up loving his movies not just for their unique blend of the fanciful, the poignant, and the profound but for the sublime visual artistry and masterful storytelling with which they are rendered.
Now 83, the revered animator announced his retirement from making feature films in 2013 – only to start work, three years later, on another one.
Seven years afterward, that project reached fruition with “The Boy and the Heron,” released in its native Japan last summer.
