BEN O'SHEA: He’s Like The Walt Disney of Japanese Animation.

The new Japanese animation flick The Boy & The Heron hits cinemas today featuring the voices of Christian Bale, Florence Pugh & Robert Pattinson, Ben O’Shea reviewed it for Clairsy & Lisa.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Great the Flick with Ben Oshe on ninety six am.
Good morning, Ben, Good, Good morning, guys. I've got an
exciting one to talk to you about today. Are you
Miyazaki fans? But I think Notki tell us so mes
y Right, So he is a Japanese animation god ho.

(00:24):
So that's me we're talking. So we're talking like the
Walt Disney of Japanese animation. You could make the case,
maybe you know, maybe you know, his resume is even better,
and all you have to look at is who he
has influenced over the years, right, So this is the
guy who has given us the Oscar winning Spirited Away

(00:45):
back in two thousand and one, Pono, my neighbor Toto.
These are all on Netflix these days, so they're pretty
widely streamed. But so John Lassiter, who is one of
the founding creative officers of Pixel, he came up with
the idea of toy story when he was visiting with
Miyazaki in Tokyo, oh okay the origin, so there'd be

(01:08):
there'd be no toy story without Miyazaki. And then you've
got people like Pete Doctor, who is a three time
Academy Award winner who won Oscars for Up, Inside Out
and Soul for some of Pixar's best movies. He is
hugely inspired by Miyazaki and when he became creative director

(01:31):
of Pixar, basically anytime they were making a Pixar movie
and they got stuck for inspiration, they would put on
a Miyazaki film in the office and that's where they
would get their ideas from. So it gives you, it
gives you kind of an idea, and even beyond animation,
like directors like James Cameron, Where's Anderson Gillom mal del
Toro have all taken inspiration from Miyazarki over the years.

(01:53):
And now the animator is in his early eighties and
about thirteen years ago, in about thirteen years ago, he
pulled the pin on his career. He's like, you know what,
I'm done. I've made a bunch of movies. I'm retiring,
and he kind of, you know, went off the radar
for a little while, and then a couple of years
ago decided to get back into it and he's doing

(02:13):
this last film, The Boy and the heron which everybody
who's into Japanese animation and animation in general, and a
lot of filmmakers been super excited about, and it's finally
getting into release here in Australia this week, And like
films like Spirited Away and How's Moving Castle, he tells
this story of a young character in Japan sort of

(02:36):
around about the time of World War Two, which is
a period that Miyazaki has always been very fascinated with.
It's is kind of his own childhood yep. And this
boy is forced to flee Tokyo when his mom dies
in a hospital fire because of the bombings in World
War two, goes to regional Japan with his dad and
his dad's new wife, and when he's there in this

(02:57):
strange surroundings, he gets involved in this kind of mysterious
adventure involving a giant heron and this cast of wild characters.
Miyazaki films are always kind of known for this incredible
imagination that he brings to it, sort of sort of supernatural,
but they touch on something sort of very human and universal,

(03:18):
and they end up being like incredibly beautiful films that
make statements about family, sort of learning about yourself as
well as the environment and you know, the evils of war.
So there's a lot of big themes going on in
all of his films, and like, if you're a purist,
you would probably try to see these films in you know,

(03:38):
the original Japanese language with the subtitles. But Miyazaki always
knew that the key to success overseas was having sort
of English language dubs of his films, and so they've
always put so much effort in incredible voice casts, and
with the Boy and the Heron, like I would say,
this is probably the best voice cast that they've ever

(03:59):
put together. You just listen to some of the people
involved here. So you've got Christian Bale who plays this
young boy's dad. You've got Florence Pugh who and plays
a sort of a plucky female saler. You've got Willem
Dafoe as a Pelican, Dave Battista as the King of
the parakeets and as the voice of the Heron, sort

(04:20):
of one of the major characters. You've got Robert Pattinson,
so you've got just these Mark hamill is in it
as well, he's a great grand uncle. So it's really
a who's who of all of these big name actors
in Hollywood who have just been more than happy to
kind of add their voices to this movie because Mirzaki
is just such a god in the cinematic industry. And

(04:44):
you know, for anybody who's watched any of his films,
this is you know, this is a masterpiece. There's no
other way to describe. It is an absolute Gems has
let you down when a comeback. He's so highly impressed.
Yeah yeah, yeah, oh yeah yeah, Like his films are
like nothing else. And and it's in a way it
kind of gets a bit Christopher Nolan esque in some

(05:05):
of the twists towards the end. It feels kind of
like more of a you know, sort of a Hollywood
twist kind of vibe than some of his previous films.
But it's also you know, it's highly conceptual. If you've
never seen one of his films, you'd walk into it
and go like, or did they have a magic mushroom
on the way in or something? What the heck is
going on? But they really are. There's such a special

(05:26):
special movies. And if this is the last one that
he ever makes, he's gone out on a high note. Well, gosh,
what are you giving it? Well, I'm giving this one
four and a half month. We know, when you're excited
about and I don't think Lisha and I are alone
who would have answered the question in that way when
you asked about me is actly we both went more so.
I was like an education for a lot of people
right there, and here's your passion. Yeah. Absolutely absolutely recommend it.

(05:50):
Thank you, Ben, Thanks Benny, see you next week. Thank
you guys,