Takeshi Honda already had a good concert prepared. The veteran animator was scheduled to work on Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Three times once, the next film in the sci-fi series that Honda had been working on in fits and starts for the past two decades. Before beginning that work, he teamed up with Studio Ghibli fame Hayao Miyazaki on Boro the caterpillar, a short film that aired exclusively at the Ghibli Museum. But how boron It was coming to an end, Miyazaki came to Honda with a proposal: to be the supervising animator of its next feature film.
“Of course I had already booked Evangelion, So I had to say, “I need some time to talk to the other parties and make a decision.” I had to stop,” Honda said. “But Miyazaki was in quite a hurry and spoke very loudly about this. He said, ‘I don’t have any more time.’ No one in the Miyazaki family has lived more than 80 years old. This will probably be my last movie, so you have to join me. And when Miyazaki tells you that, there’s really no way to say no.”
That movie would turn out to be The boy and the heron, which premiered in Japan earlier this year and will be out in North America next month. Honda has worked on some of the most influential anime in history; Not only Evangelion but also people like ghost in the shell and chewing gum crisis. But he had always admired the work of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. This, coupled with the fact that he had already spent a lot of time working on Evangelion, made the decision a little easier. “Since she had been working at the Evangelion series for over 20 years,” says Honda, “I thought maybe it was time to partner with Miyazaki.
At first I didn’t have much to go on. All Honda knew going in was that The boy and the heron It would be a film inspired in part by Miyazaki’s childhood. And once he started learning the details (it’s a movie that features everything from warring parakeets to a cosmic game of Jenga), things didn’t get any clearer. “When (Miyazaki) showed me the storyboard and I read it through to the final scene, I found it very confusing and I didn’t fully understand it,” Honda says. It wasn’t until he saw the entire movie that everything clicked. “I could feel the will, determination and commitment that (Miyazaki) put into this, which was moving. It’s something I don’t feel often in the films I’m involved in.”
The boy and the heron It was in the works for some time. It was initially announced in 2016, with Miyazaki coming out of retirement (again) to direct. Production began a year later. During that time, Honda says, his working relationship with the director essentially split into two different periods, and Miyazaki became more confident (and less hands-on) as things progressed.
“There were a lot of things I could do that wouldn’t be allowed in other studios.”
“During the first year or two of working on this project with Miyazaki, we received a lot of feedback from him,” Honda says. “He told me ‘No, the eyes should be drawn like this’ or ‘The nose should be like this’. So it was a year or two in which he incorporated his style into my work. And after that I was left to my own devices and naturally returned to my own style. I think Miyazaki knew that, but he was like, ‘Oh, whatever, let him do his thing.’ “It wasn’t a deliberate decision on my part, but I think it ended up being my own style anyway.”
Honda also viewed the film’s relatively long gestation period as a positive, mainly because there was no set release date. This allowed the team to spend more time on things without a deadline in sight. “There was no feeling of exhaustion,” says Honda. “It’s much more tiring when you’re working under time constraints. So with this one (I mean, I’m sure the budget was pretty high) there were a lot of things I could do that wouldn’t be allowed in other studios.”
As an example, Honda cites the film’s opening scenes, which involve a tragic and devastating fire. It’s something the team worked on and tweaked for almost the entire production. “Because it’s a first sequence, in other studies you would probably miss it,” he says. “Whereas in this production we spent the entire six years reflecting on this scene.” Likewise, the animators “used almost no CGI,” instead focusing on hand-drawn animation, a time-consuming and expensive process, putting it out of reach for most studios.
And while Honda has worked on several notable films and shows, The boy and the heron It is one that comes with very particular and strong expectations. During the duration of its production, it was widely believed to be Miyazaki’s final film, a film that would close one of the most famous careers in film history. “There was that added pressure of ‘Oh, this is really urgent.’ But you really get used to that pressure once the work starts,” Honda says, “and you start thinking, ‘Oh, this is a really long process.’”
The boy and the heron hits North American theaters on December 8 and is a strange and fascinating experience. One that is quintessentially Ghibli and also very different from anything the studio has done before. However, despite the 82-year-old Miyazaki’s original proposal to Honda, it doesn’t look like it will be his last film after all.
But it was still worth the time and effort, at least for Honda. Initially he had to make a big decision about whether or not to work on the film. It seemed like the right choice and the right time, and six years later that’s still the case. “I think it was the right decision,” Honda says, laughing.