Featured Image Credit: Michael Tran/FilmMagic/Studio Ghibli
Topics: Anime, Film and TV
Anish Vij
Studio Ghibli fans are refusing to watch the trailer for Hayao Miyazaki's final film and it makes perfect sense.
The official teaser for The Boy and the Heron came out on Wednesday (September 6) and some are deciding to skip it.
Watch below if you are not one of those fans:
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The Japanese title happens to be the same as the 1937 novel of the same name by Genzaburō Yoshino.
But even though the novel appears in the film, the story itself is different.
"A young boy named Mahito yearning for his mother ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead," reads the film's synopsis.
"There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning.
"A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki."
Well, fans who decided to watch the trailer on YouTube were astounded by how 'the animator can make the everyday and ordinary things in life seem so interesting'.
"I've never felt such a deep mixture of wonder, excitement, and dread from a trailer before," one viewer wrote.
"Knowing that this is Miyazaki's last film (although he has "retired" multiple times in the past, so we can't be certain this will truly be his last one, but it looks pretty final to me) gives me such a painful stab of nostalgia knowing that his career is coming to an end.
"It makes me reflect on how old I am, being almost 30 and having loved his movies since I was a child."
"Miyazaki is undoubtedly one of the greatest creative minds of our time," another commented.
"The works he has created over the decades is unlike anything else in the animation industry.
"Saying one last goodbye to a man who has enchanted many childhoods will be bittersweet."
However, the reason why some Studio Ghibli fans have decided to skip the trailer is because they don't want the film to be 'ruined'.
So in Japan, The Boy and the Heron was actually theatrically released on July 14 and the studio purposely used little-to-no marketing in the lead-up.
No trailers and just one poster, that was it.
And now fans who aren't based in Japan plan on doing the same until the film's nationwide release on December 8.
“Nope. not watching that BOY AND THE HERON trailer. not a damn frame until i’m in that theatre,” one fan wrote.
Another added: “Not watching that new trailer of The Boy and the Heron. I’m going full no exposure when I’m going to watch this in theaters!”
Fair play.