The Boy and the Heron Plot Explained: The Meaning & Symbolism of Movie

The most recent Studio Ghibli film (The Boy and the Heron) is now streaming on Max, but its ending may be confusing for a lot of viewers.

Hayao Miyazaki wrote and directed the Academy Award-winning animated film, which was in development for seven years before its release in July 2023.

As with most Studio Ghibli films, The Boy and the Heron features both a Japanese and English-speaking cast, the latter of which includes A-listers such as Robert Pattinson, Karen Fukuhara, Gemma Chan, Florence Pugh, and Willem Dafoe.

What Happens in The Boy and the Heron?

The Boy and the Heron tells the tale of a young boy, Mahito, who travels to the country with his father after his mother is killed in a hospital fire during the Pacific War.

His father remarries his late wife's sister, Natsuko, but Mahito struggles to adjust after losing his mother. 

While living on Natsuko's estate, Mahito meets a talking heron who promises he can take her to meet his mother. After seeing, the now-pregnant, Natsuko disappear into a mysterious tower on the estate, Mahito follows with the heron and enters a wondrous and strange other-world.

Mahito soon learns that his friend, the heron, is in fact a man inside of a bird suit. Together they explore this new world and come across a young pyrokinetic woman, Himi, and Kiriko, a young and powerful version of one of Natsuko's maids, who join the journey.

The group comes across the Warawara, depicted as small cute beings who represent the unborn human souls that live in the other world. 

Mahito is shocked to find that the pelicans of this world attempt to eat the Warawara, questioning how they could do something so evil. But one of the pelicans tells Mahito that they were forced into this world and are simply trying to eat to survive. 

Another danger the group faces is an army of anthropomorphic man-eating parakeets, who have taken Natsuko. 

In a dream, Mahito meets Natsuko's grand uncle, who is depicted as a wizard who needs Mahito's bloodline to become the custodian of the world. When he awakens he finds the Parakeet King is taking a captive Himi to the Wizard, in hopes he will agree to maintain the world.

The Wizard implores Mahito to build a better world, represented by a stack of stone blocks. However, Mahito refuses, revealing he is malicious as represented by an injury he gave himself at the top of the film. 

When the Parakeet King tries to build a world with the block he finds it is too unstable and falls over, causing the world to fall apart around them. Mahito, Himi and the Birdman manage to escape and find Natsuko. 

Before they part, Mahito learns that Himi is a young version of his birth mother, and he tries to warn her of her future, but she returns to her timeline. 

Exiting the tower, Mahito and Natsuko return to their world, along with the anthropomorphic animals who all return to their natural form. The Birdman tells Mahito he should forget his experiences in the other world. 

The film ends two years later, with Mahito and his father returning to Tokyo, along with Natsuko and Mahito's new baby brother. 

The Boy and the Heron Ending Explained

While The Boy and the Heron is not an adaptation of any one story, it does incorporate the meaning of many cultural symbols and philosophies.

A large theme throughout The Boy and the Heron, as with many of Miyazaki's films is the acceptance of loss and change.

The other world is designed as twisted and strange as it is to represent the failure of a dream due to the realities of the world. The Wizard hoped to build a perfect world and filled it with parakeets and pelicans - only for them to become twisted by the needs of hunger. 

When Mahito is approached by his granduncle to inherit and build a new world, he rejects the offer because he knows that he is also tainted by his suffering and that no perfect world can exist. 

Mahito has learned he cannot escape the pain of losing his mother, but in the real world, imperfect though it may be, he has a path towards healing - by accepting Natsuko as his new mother.

The literal translation of the film's title is 'How Do You Live', which could be somewhat inspired by Genzaburo Yoshino's 1937 novel of the same name. The book is even included in the film as a gift left to Mahito by his late mother.

Miyazaki was asked in an interview with the New York Times whether his film would answer the question in its title 'How Do You Live'? To this the director responded, "I am making this movie because I do not have the answer."

Hence, The Boy and the Heron provides a perspective on the many different ways humans and creatures live their lives. It observes. It paints a realistic portrait of these lives. But it doesn't pass judgment on them. 

Eventually, when Mahito is confronted with the question of how he wants to live, he rejects the idea of a fantasy world, accepting that pain and suffering are a part of life, and that one without them is no way to live.

The Boy and the Heron ruminates on a lot of the big questions in life: how to accept death and the guilt that comes with it, the inevitability of human needs, the weight of responsibility, the desire to change something for the better. 

But it doesn't give a resolute answer to any of them, instead leaving the viewer to decide what they take away from the film.  

The Boy and the Heron is now streaming on Max.