“Good grief the bodies are piling up.”

– Hayao Miyazaki

“Good grief the bodies are piling up..” Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron. Directed by Kaku Arakawa, NHK, 2024.

(*translated from Japanese)

Best movie, documentary or otherwise I’ve watched this year. It lingers in the mind after each viewing.

There’s a Dante reference.

Miyazaki works at the same type of desk as the rest of his team.

COVID-19 is brisked over – Miyazaki kept working.

The field they keep next to the studio is for the neighborhood kids. It has an abandoned soccer goal on one end. At one point the grass finally grows in and Miyazaki overhears a group of kids playing sandlot baseball.

Realizing a dream doesn’t make the suffering go away. Miyazaki suffers over thousands of binned sketches.

The longer you live the more you experience the death of friends and colleagues.

This is inescapable.