The history of Studio Ghibli is full of magical stories — Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro. But there is one film that stands out from these sweet fairy tales and became Hayao Miyazaki’s most personal, adult, and heavy project.
This is The Wind Rises (2013) — the master’s last film before his "retirement".
An 18+ anime
This is not a fairy tale or fantasy, but a biographical drama about the creator of the Zero fighter plane, engineer Jiro Horikoshi. A film about dreams, creation — and destruction. About love that does not save. About talent that leads a person to create instruments of war. Miyazaki himself later admitted — this film caused him pain.
"It really is only for adults. This fact brought me a lot of suffering. It is very hard, almost impossible, to make a film without already imagining the faces of the viewers I’m drawing it for."
While working on The Wind Rises, Miyazaki decided for the first time to abandon magic — and faced reality. Historical accuracy, moral dilemmas, the ambiguous figure of the main character, the theme of the artist’s and creator’s responsibility — all this literally crushed the director.
How Ghibli worked on an adult anime
He said he suffered trying to comprehend Horikoshi’s fate, not knowing whether he had the right to show his dream as something beautiful if its result was war and death. It was especially hard to work without the usual check: normally Miyazaki visits the studio’s kindergarten, talks with toddlers, and understands what needs to be done. How to draw for adults — the director does not know. Critics highly praised the work, but the Japanese and international audience received The Wind Rises ambiguously. Some admired its honesty, others accused it of justifying militarism.
"My wife says that Jiro is my spitting image, just a twin brother. I tell her we just have similar glasses."
Miyazaki feared this the most. He always hated war, and The Wind Rises became a painful attempt to look into the soul of a man who dreamed — and involuntarily became part of a machine of destruction.
