THE BOY AND THE HERON
Miyazaki's beautiful, strange farewell — worth the trip for older kids and up.
Should You Watch It?
Here is the decision. Hayao Miyazaki has made something captivating, profound, and gorgeously animated — a semi-autobiographical fantasy about birth, life, death, motherhood, and friendship, drawn from his own memory of wartime Japan. In the end it promotes peace, compassion, and helping others make the world a better, happier place. There's even one positive reference to God. As art, it's the real thing.
It also asks for discernment. There are five "d" obscenities, some weird and scary moments, and three or so ideas woven into the fantasy that thoughtful viewers should notice: a stray suggestion that souls pre-exist conception, a whiff of ancestor reverence, and a multiverse that opens doors to other worlds. None of it sinks the film — the hero ultimately rejects magic and returns to fix the real world — but pre-teens will need a parent alongside.
So: if you have older children or you're an adult who loves imaginative storytelling, take the trip. If your youngest scares easily, wait a few years or watch together.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESWartime Japan. Eleven-year-old Mahito loses his mother in a Tokyo hospital fire. Months later, his father — manager of a warplane factory — moves them to his late wife's rural family mansion, where Mahito has a new stepmother: his mother's pregnant younger sister.
Grieving and out of place, Mahito begins to have strange dreams that his mother is somehow still alive. A peculiar gray heron takes an interest in him — a creature that turns out to be part bird, part man, and known for mixing lies with truth. It tells Mahito his mother waits in another world. Whether to believe it is where the adventure begins.
Is It Any Good?
Four stars, and they're earned. This is Miyazaki at full command — beautifully animated, winsome, and often funny, with a story that stays captivating even when it turns strange. The film moves easily between dream and reality, and its most bizarre inventions land as metaphor and allegory rather than mere weirdness.
What lifts it above spectacle is depth. Beneath the fantasy runs a genuinely profound meditation on grief, creation, and purpose — a boy learning to let go of the mother he lost and turn back toward the living world. The comic set pieces, like an army of menacing giant parakeets, carry real ideas about the danger of blindly following the crowd. It's clever, moving, and made with a master's hand.
The Worldview
At its heart, this film believes something good. It exalts peace over war, compassion over cruelty, and the quiet labor of making the world a better, happier place. Its antiwar theme is unmistakable, and its parade of parakeets forming an army carries a warning worth heeding: beware the mass movements and ideologies that swallow individuals and do far more harm than good. A character even wishes Mahito "Godspeed" — one small, positive nod to God, though the film could use more.
Discerning viewers should weigh three things. The film's explanation of the soul-creatures waiting to be born flirts with the heretical idea that souls exist before conception. The figure of the mad granduncle can suggest an Eastern reverence for ancestors — though this matters less, since the hero pointedly refuses to inherit his role and chooses the real world instead. And the doors opening onto other worlds imply a multiverse, usually a humanist or pagan construct; it can only be squared with Scripture if God, the Uncaused Cause, remains its ultimate foundation, for no multiverse can be infinite without ceasing to leave God as God.
Notably, though the story is soaked in magic, Mahito ultimately rejects it — leaving the wizard's realm to labor in reality. That instinct points somewhere true. We were made not to escape the world but to steward it, and the ache for the mother he lost echoes a deeper hope: "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more" (Revelation 21:4).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements
Strong moral worldview eventually promotes peace, compassion, love, motherhood, helping others, and making the world a better, happier place, plus a character tells the hero, “Godspeed,” at one point, and the hero and his compadres stop a group of menacing giant parakeets and their army from taking over a magical realm, but there is some fantasy magic involving a wizard (the hero decides, however, not to follow the path of the wizard, who happens to be his great, great uncle who went mad from reading too many arcane books), and there’s a reference to the pre-existence of the soul at one point, and the movie’s magical world has a bunch of doors leading to other worlds, implying a multiverse
Foul Language
Five “d” obscenities, and a character tells the hero, “Godspeed”
Violence
Some images of violence, fantasy violence and dreamlike violence such as images of a large hospital fire in which the hero’s mother perishes, boy uses a rock to wound his head after being harassed by some bullies to get the bullies in more trouble, a heron bird swipes at a boy’s head, a mass of frogs cover the boy in one scene, some fighting, some old-time sailing ships are said to be ferrying the dead somewhere, giant parakeets menace other characters and form an army, brief fighting, a mass of mean pelicans fly higher to eat a bunch of small oval creatures who are rising in the sky to be born as babies, but the pelicans are stopped, a noble pelican dies because he refused to eat the creatures, a boy is attacked by some strange strips of white paper or linen
Sex
No sex, but boy’s father marries his dead wife’s younger sister after the wife dies in a massive Tokyo fire
Nudity
No nudity
Alcohol Use
No alcohol use
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse
No smoking or and drugs;
Miscellaneous Immorality
Hero frames some bullies and lies about them, but later admits he’s unworthy because of that, another character mixes lies with the truth but admits it, the character also mocks the hero, and giant menacing parakeets intent on
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
Mahito lies about the bullies to get them in trouble, then later admits he's unworthy because of it. What's the difference between covering up a wrong and confessing it — and what does confession free us to do?
Psalm 32:3–5 · 1 John 1:9The film warns against parakeets blindly forming an army and following the crowd. When is it hardest for you to think for yourself instead of going along, and what should shape our convictions?
Exodus 23:2 · Romans 12:2Mahito could rule a magical world, but he chooses to return to reality and make the real world better. What does it mean to steward the world God actually gave us rather than escape it?
Genesis 2:15 · Colossians 3:23The whole story grows out of a boy's grief for his mother. Where does the Bible say our longing over death will finally be answered?
Revelation 21:4 · 1 Thessalonians 4:13–14The Final Word
Miyazaki has given us something rare: a fantasy that is genuinely beautiful, genuinely profound, and mostly kind to families — while still asking for a discerning eye. Enjoy the wonder, notice the odd ideas, and talk them through afterward. Our answer stands: worth the trip — ages 10 and up.
