Plot: The film starts off with Jiro as a young Japanese boy who is influenced by a dream about him and the famous Italian aircraft designer Caproni, to become a plane designer and to make great, beautiful planes. Over time, Jiro becomes a very innovative and accomplished airplane designer. Meanwhile, he reunites with a woman named Nahoko who he helped get to safety during the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake and they start to fall in love.
Alright so this is it. The final film of one of the greatest writer/directors in all of animation. And how was it? Well, it may not be his greatest masterpiece, but that in no way stops it from giving us a great, albeit bittersweet and generally different final film to end this legacy he has created. The Wind Rises gives us what is actually a highly fictionalized biography of Chief Engineer Jiro Horikoshi with another element that Miyazaki adds based on a 1936-7 novel called The Wind has Risen. What comes out is arguably Miyazaki's most realistic and mature movie while still giving us some beautiful, artistic animation despite not really having any actual fantasy elements to it like his other films. And it's a shame that there is no fantasy to this film because the majority of his work was surrounded with fantasy. His most creative work came from films that had fantasy to them like Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke and Kiki's Delivery Service. So some people like me and Candra find it a bummer that he didn't go with making one last film like that for the end of his career. But I personally would make the slim argument that he did manage to try to have a little bit of mystical moments with Jiro's dreams of him and Caproni and especially the sound mixing with things like the Great Kanto earthquake. But I digress. Whatever you would've liked to have put in Miyzaki's final The Wind Rises delivers in giving us another well made animated film regardless with a story that is uniquely structured, great animation, likable characters, beautiful musical score, and a cute romance between the main characters. If there are any real problems with this movie that's not a matter of just comparing it to the rest of Miyazaki's work, it would be that the pacing during most of the first half of the movie is very slow. Most of it is just Jiro trying to figure out the designs for his and going to Germany or getting assigned to some big project and what not. And while it's not terrible per say, it did leave Candra asking me if it was starting to become boring while we were watching the movie and...yeah it kind of was. Another is part of the relationship between Jiro and Nahoko where them falling in love kind of came out of the blue. That's not to say that it was love at first sight or anything, they did have some scenes together even after the earthquake. But at the same time, the development to their relationship was so oddly formed that once they're saying that they deeply love each other and want to get married, it felt like it just came out of nowhere. But again, it wasn't so badly done that there wasn't any chemistry seen between them even before that, and even after they confessed their love, their relationship officially came out as one of the most likable and interesting things during the second half of the movie. Are they as lovable as Howl and Sophie, Sheeta and Pazu, Seiji and Shizuko or Soske and Ponyo? No. But that in no way stopped them from still coming out as Miyazaki's last, cute, romantic couple for fans and non-fans alike to root for. They still have problems that they're facing and try to help each other out and have special moments with each other just the way the love our couples from his films, even if their story is much more mature than the rest of them.
And that's my review for The Wind Rises. It's not the best of Miyazaki's work, but it still gives us one final great film from him with it's uniquely structured story, beautiful animation and music, likable characters and a cute romance. It does drag a little and the romance came little out of nowhere, but at the end of the day, it's a great, mature final film for Miyazaki to give us before he sadly retires. It saddens me and Candra along with many other people that he's done, but his career shall be long remembered from giving us some of the greatest films of animation and/or film in general, and for that, all I think any of us can say is farewell Hayao Miyazaki, and thank you.
Rating: 80%
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