Earlier this yr, GKIDS and Studio Ghibli launched the Academy Award profitable movie The Boy and the Heron on bodily and digital codecs. Since then, the film has additionally been added to Max in your streaming comfort.
GKIDS was sort sufficient to ship me the 4K UHD + Blu-Ray package deal to take a look at and overview, however all ideas beneath are my very own. I do need to additionally make it clear that this won’t be a overview of The Boy and the Heron. For that, take a look at the overview that our staff wrote again in November.
THE BOY AND THE HERON “follows younger Mahito, who, after dropping his mom in the course of the warfare in a hospital fireplace, strikes to his household’s property within the countryside. There, a collection of mysterious occasions lead him to a secluded and historic tower, residence to a mischievous grey heron.
“When Mahito’s new stepmother disappears, he follows the grey heron into the tower, and enters a fantastical world shared by the residing and the useless. As he embarks on an epic journey with the heron as his information, Mahito should uncover the secrets and techniques of this world and the reality about himself.”
The primary, and arguably finest, cause for wanting to purchase a bodily copy of this movie (and any piece of media) is that you just personal that duplicate and nobody can simply de-list it and take away it out of your library.
I really feel as if lately, this has change into an even bigger and larger deal and I absolutely help and encourage proudly owning bodily media. It is also nice to have bodily media for once you don’t have entry to streaming for any cause similar to simply transferring to a brand new place earlier than you get the web arrange.
One other prime cause for wanting to purchase any film is to entry the bonus options included within the residence launch. For The Boy and The Heron, there are about seven bonus options though two of them are only a music video and trailers so not all that exceptional.
Nonetheless, the opposite 5 will attraction to quite a lot of folks. First, you’ve got “Characteristic-Size Storyboards.” From what I may inform (I didn’t watch the entire thing) that is actually the whole film however utilizing the storyboards as an alternative of animation. That is cool, though positively not my type of factor.
I may positively see how folks extra into the method of animating/storyboarding/filmmaking/and so on. can be actually interested in this.
One other particular characteristic is “Drawing with Takeshi Honda” which I didn’t end watching as a result of it ended up being longer than I believed. Basically, this particular helps you to watch supervising animator Takeshi Honda draw key characters from the movie and he’ll throw little tidbits out whereas doing it.
This was just a little attention-grabbing to observe, though its shortcoming derives from the truth that Honda doesn’t speak so much (and he even mentions that he doesn’t often speak whereas drawing and so he won’t have been the only option for this) and so there’s only a ton of silence simply crammed by beautiful music.
The final three particular options are separate interviews with Honda, producer Toshio Suzuki, and composer Joe Hisaishi. I personally discovered the interview with Hisaishi to be essentially the most attention-grabbing.
He talked just a little about how he and Hayao Miyazaki have labored collectively for about 40 years. He additionally shared how a small music he composed as an unrelated current for Miyazaki ended up as the primary theme for The Boy and the Heron.
The interviews with Honda and Suzuki had been effective, however didn’t stick out to me personally. Honda’s interview appeared to be extra targeted on how he ended up engaged on the movie and what it was like doing artwork subsequent to Miyazaki. In the meantime, my largest takeaway from Suzuki’s interview was that the Grey Heron appeared to be primarily based on him.
On the finish of the day, I feel that buying a replica of The Boy and the Heron will not be a nasty transfer. The animation is beautiful, the film is attention-grabbing, and on the very least you may personal a replica that may’t simply be written off for tax functions.
In the event you like watching interviews with members of the manufacturing crew or need to watch the film through storyboards, I feel the particular options will certainly provide you with some added worth. In the event you like The Boy and the Heron, I’d at all times suggest buying a bodily copy.
You should buy it now out of your favourite retailers with digital copies costing round $9.99 and bodily copies beginning round $27.
