I finally saw "The Boy and the Heron" and I liked it. The visuals were unsurprisingly gorgeous. There's so much masterful animation there, especially in all of the little details, and I really liked the mystery and horror of the heron's design and behavior in the beginning of the movie. I thought the aunties / grannies of the estate had some fun and funny designs. The fire sequences at the beginning were fascinating to watch in a terrifying way, and I'm a little disappointed that vibrant style was kind of left behind and didn't come back in a significant way later in the story?

I'd probably have to see the movie again and read other people's thoughts on it, including the creators' statements, in order to form a more ordered opinion on the story. I didn't dislike the story. I won't call it incoherent, because I don't feel like I didn't understand it, exactly, but I do think that it was... hmm... lacking in cohesion.

There were some transitions between scenes that felt noticeably off to me, sometimes even transitions between shots that felt rough, like the film was trying to jam a lot of interesting ideas together, and the flow and pacing maybe suffered for it. It felt a little slow. It was hard to feel tension when what was happening next seemed pretty random sometimes and I didn't actually understand what the threats were exactly until the end, even if I liked the new elements as they revealed themselves; previous interesting elements were kind of left behind story-wise and left the story feeling crowded to me. Like, once all of these ideas were down, it should have been time to go back through to cut, expand, smooth, clarify, and generally enhance what was there so that it all fit together more cohesively and clearly than it did, weaving everything strongly back through everything else. The story could have probably been tighter and more solid.

Admittedly, I saw the dubbed version and it's possible that I am missing out on details or significant cultural context, so maybe this is on me. Even if the movie ended up feeling like multiple film ideas smashed together that each didn't get enough exploration to me, everything wrapped up fine. But if the movie didn't look as fantastic as it does, artistically, I would... probably not have enjoyed the story for itself as a film? I don't know. It kind of felt like watching a children's fantasy novel, where everything is a little random, but it's fine because the descriptions are gorgeous and there is an obvious emotional theme that the book moves towards and ends upon.