Miyazaki, the Animator with the ‘Midas touch’ has got it again. His latest work ‘The Boy and the Heron’ became the second Studio Ghibli film to win the Oscar after ‘Spirited Away’ won in 2003.
‘Other artists may emerge, but there is currently no one who can step into his shoes, and for whatever reason he has not been able to foster a true successor.’
The film , The Boy & the Heron opens with Mahito Maki, the 12 year old protagonist , losing his mother in the aerial bombardment of Tokyo in March 1945, in which an estimated 100,000 people died.
While the world rides the Hallyu wave of South Korean popular culture, Japan would have struggled to project it’s own cultural treasures without Ghibli’s output. ‘Miyazaki is a national treasure, but he is also an international treasure” said Susan Napier. She is a professor of Japanese studies at Tufts University & the author of Miyazakiworld : a life in Art.
‘He is a genuine auteur & his work is utterly unique & original. So, unfortunately he is irreplaceable’.
Kelts describes him as Japan’s ‘undisputed emissary of anime’among overseas audiences who are otherwise uninterested in Japan.
The film may have been Miyazaki’s valedictory feature length work, but he does not appear ready to step away from his sub urban studio just yet. Given his propensity for talking himself out of retirement, no one might be more relieved than the great man himself.
We want more.
Asian Entertainment 