The year is 2023, and Miyazaki is an old man saying something foolish by releasing a new film, titled How Do You Live in Japan and renamed The Boy and the Heron for the international market. When Mahito joins his father to move out of Tokyo shortly after the war to live with his new (and already pregnant) partner in a large traditional home full of peculiarities — like a mysterious heron and an old abandoned stone building in the woods nearby — he struggles to accept this new situation. It’s a strategy that could only succeed at the hands of a studio and director who earned respect like these two