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THE_BOY_AND_THE_HERON
January 14, 2024
My best attempt:
AMBIGUOUS_APPEAL
The rickety tower of blocks tapped delicately into
place is the creative process, and the central
subject is Miyazaki's attempt at setting up Studio
Ghibli where they can do everything Miyazaki does--
except they can't quite capture his magic.
Miyazaki is the master of the tower, and he has
no successor: when he's gone, it will all come
crashing down.
Dangerbaby's idea:
The Tower is the Tarot card, and it
represents periods of change. The collapse of the Japanese
empire with the close of World
The unstable Tower that needs War II? That's explicitly the
constant attention to keep setting of the story--
standing is our traditional
industrial civilization. Dangerbaby rejects
that: all Miyazaki's
The boy turns down the job of work is set in that
maintaining it because he sees time period.
that it's not good enough, there
has to be something better, But even so: the boy's
something more sustainable-- father is running a
factory producing
Then the central subject is the components for Zeros.
challenge of climate change--
The wind screens: the
The militaristic parakeet king is of cockpit bubbles.
the old order, but he brings it down
by doing things in the old way. They comment on how
beautiful they are.
Myself: I think it's interesting the boy's
mannerisms are very much of that old world, For Dangerbaby the question
he has a stiff, military manner, barking out is "will the boy find a
his intentions to the women around him... better way?" I don't think
there's much sign that he will.
Except perhaps: when the
step-mother he hasn't yet
accepted has gone missing, he
immediately goes after her.
And while he may have wounded
himself as part of a malicious
revenge scheme, we don't *see*
him actually following through
on it. It *could* be he already
feels guilty about it and has
Is it signifcant that the Heron decided to drop it.
speaks to him only after he takes
on this burden of malice?
The heron is *of* When the master of the tower offers the boy
the tower-- we the task of arranging the blocks, the boy
seem him emerge looks at them and detects that they're full
from an image on of malice: he refuses to touch them.
the wall.
The tower master finds a new, untainted set of
The Heron takes blocks-- and the boy thinks about it, and decides
instruction from that he himself is tainted with malice. He's
the tower master not fit for this task.
to be the boy's
guide.
So: someone else will have to take it on?
Perhaps the next generation, the child his
step mother is carrying.
The entire business about blood lines
rubs me the wrong way-- I know it's
a staple of folk tales, but there's
no way to get it to make any sense.
All the many and disparate elements--
is there anyway to really make sense
of them?
Jimmy Durante wearing a blue
heron as a disguise. The arrow that has power
over the Heron because
The boy's mother immolated by fire it is of the Heron--
in the real world, a master of fire it uses a molted feather
inside the tower. as it's tail fins.
The numbers on the doors in the Creating this arrow is
corridor of time. All three digits, a bit of amateur aero-
in no obvious order. nautic engineering on
the boy's part: taking
And: after his father?
"Parakeets!"
Parakeets?
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