The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ) is a full length historical drama feature, the 'final' movie directed by Hayao Miyazaki. The film is based on the manga of the same name by Miyazaki and was released in 2013.
The film follows a fictionalized account of the life and formative years of Japanese aeronautical engineer Horikoshi Jiro. From his comfortable childhood, dreaming of being an airplane pilot as the first world war ended. Realizing he would be unable to fly due to his near nearsightedness, he instead turns his focus to engineering and design. The film follows him to Tokyo to attend university. He arrives as the Great Kanto Earthquake strikes and meets a girl, Naoko, and her handmaid, who is injured during the earthquake. In school he questions design idea's and Japan's ability to match Western technological achievements.
He and a classmate are recruited to work for Mitsubishi after college and they begin working on prototypes for military aircraft as Japan is ramping up its campaign to invade Manchuria. Jiro's intelligence and design abilities allow him to visit Germany to study their aircraft, where in turn he see's the beginning of the Nazi party. After returning to Japan, a prototype he works on fails and he goes on an extended vacation to re-calibrate his mind. While staying in a villa he meets Naoko again and they fall in love. Naoko has TB and is uncertain of their future. When he returns to work he learns the secret police are looking for him, related to a strange foreign man he met while on leave. His boss hides him while he begins to work on the design of a new fighter aircraft that Mitsubishi will try to sell to the Navy, what would ultimately become the AMG Zero.
Horikoshi was a real person and he did design the famous Japanese fighter plane the Zero for Mitsubishi. He was also a known critic of war in general and the imperial government of Japan. Yet much of the story beyond the design idea's and a few key dates is mostly fictional, some taken from a novel written by Hori Tatsuo about a woman suffering from tuberculosis. Which brings me to the problem with this movie, it is rather disjointed and incoherent at times. Unless you are a student of history the progression of time in the movie is rather vague and confusing. Key historical events are mostly used to mark the passage of time, but they aren't always apparent.
Jiro's lucid dreaming complicates things as well, causing reality and fantasy to be blurred at times. Much of the anti-war sentiment in the movie is heavy handed. Aside from wanting to succeed in creating an aircraft there is little motivation for the things Jiro does. Secondary characters show up merely as a way to progress the plot, if left to his own the protagonist would undoubtedly wile away his time with his drafting tools instead of accomplishing anything remotely dramatic. The romance aspect, while forced into existence, was quaint and cheerfully doomed and completely changed the tone of the second half of the movie. The impact it had on the success of failure of Jiro to succeed in his job was forced and sloppy. In my mind it really only showcased him as a caricature of the ideal Japanese worker, willing to sacrifice his personal life to fulfill his work life.
I don't want to come down on the artwork, but the character designs in the movie were more of a regression for Miyazaki. While not bad they seemed to show an amount of apathy towards the production of the film. A film Miyazaki himself was convinced to make, initially not wanting to do it, stating the manga was initially to occupy himself. There are aspects of the art that are fantastic, most notably the way Jiro's glasses distorted his face, I have never seen that done so realistically before. But other things didn't fit, particularly the strange fantastical air craft designs from the dream sequences. Strange designs Miyazaki seems to have a fondness for that seemed out of place in this movie.
The last thing I want to be critical of is Anno Hideaki's voice acting. It was rather lack luster and unimpressive. There was little motion and little inflection to enhance the character of Jiro, making him seem rather flat and emotionless. Anno should just stick to directing. If you want to see why/how Miyazaki picked him to do the lead role watch the documentary on Studio Ghibli.
In the end The Wind Rises should have been a beautiful opus for the second most important anime director, instead it seemed like a half hearted project made only to serve the man's personal interests instead of telling a compelling and coherent story. I was disappointed in the film to say the least. It felt like two unrelated films haphazardly mashed together; one about a Japanese innovator and the other a tragic tale of a woman with TB.
It is currently available via Disney in North America and features a dub with some notable Hollywood actors.
The film follows a fictionalized account of the life and formative years of Japanese aeronautical engineer Horikoshi Jiro. From his comfortable childhood, dreaming of being an airplane pilot as the first world war ended. Realizing he would be unable to fly due to his near nearsightedness, he instead turns his focus to engineering and design. The film follows him to Tokyo to attend university. He arrives as the Great Kanto Earthquake strikes and meets a girl, Naoko, and her handmaid, who is injured during the earthquake. In school he questions design idea's and Japan's ability to match Western technological achievements.
He and a classmate are recruited to work for Mitsubishi after college and they begin working on prototypes for military aircraft as Japan is ramping up its campaign to invade Manchuria. Jiro's intelligence and design abilities allow him to visit Germany to study their aircraft, where in turn he see's the beginning of the Nazi party. After returning to Japan, a prototype he works on fails and he goes on an extended vacation to re-calibrate his mind. While staying in a villa he meets Naoko again and they fall in love. Naoko has TB and is uncertain of their future. When he returns to work he learns the secret police are looking for him, related to a strange foreign man he met while on leave. His boss hides him while he begins to work on the design of a new fighter aircraft that Mitsubishi will try to sell to the Navy, what would ultimately become the AMG Zero.
Horikoshi was a real person and he did design the famous Japanese fighter plane the Zero for Mitsubishi. He was also a known critic of war in general and the imperial government of Japan. Yet much of the story beyond the design idea's and a few key dates is mostly fictional, some taken from a novel written by Hori Tatsuo about a woman suffering from tuberculosis. Which brings me to the problem with this movie, it is rather disjointed and incoherent at times. Unless you are a student of history the progression of time in the movie is rather vague and confusing. Key historical events are mostly used to mark the passage of time, but they aren't always apparent.
Jiro's lucid dreaming complicates things as well, causing reality and fantasy to be blurred at times. Much of the anti-war sentiment in the movie is heavy handed. Aside from wanting to succeed in creating an aircraft there is little motivation for the things Jiro does. Secondary characters show up merely as a way to progress the plot, if left to his own the protagonist would undoubtedly wile away his time with his drafting tools instead of accomplishing anything remotely dramatic. The romance aspect, while forced into existence, was quaint and cheerfully doomed and completely changed the tone of the second half of the movie. The impact it had on the success of failure of Jiro to succeed in his job was forced and sloppy. In my mind it really only showcased him as a caricature of the ideal Japanese worker, willing to sacrifice his personal life to fulfill his work life.
I don't want to come down on the artwork, but the character designs in the movie were more of a regression for Miyazaki. While not bad they seemed to show an amount of apathy towards the production of the film. A film Miyazaki himself was convinced to make, initially not wanting to do it, stating the manga was initially to occupy himself. There are aspects of the art that are fantastic, most notably the way Jiro's glasses distorted his face, I have never seen that done so realistically before. But other things didn't fit, particularly the strange fantastical air craft designs from the dream sequences. Strange designs Miyazaki seems to have a fondness for that seemed out of place in this movie.
The last thing I want to be critical of is Anno Hideaki's voice acting. It was rather lack luster and unimpressive. There was little motion and little inflection to enhance the character of Jiro, making him seem rather flat and emotionless. Anno should just stick to directing. If you want to see why/how Miyazaki picked him to do the lead role watch the documentary on Studio Ghibli.
In the end The Wind Rises should have been a beautiful opus for the second most important anime director, instead it seemed like a half hearted project made only to serve the man's personal interests instead of telling a compelling and coherent story. I was disappointed in the film to say the least. It felt like two unrelated films haphazardly mashed together; one about a Japanese innovator and the other a tragic tale of a woman with TB.
It is currently available via Disney in North America and features a dub with some notable Hollywood actors.
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