In 'The Boy and the Heron,' Miyazaki asks: How do we go on in the midst of grief?

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/01/ [login to see] /the-boy-and-the-heron-review-hayao-miyazaki
"Those of us who love the work of the anime master Hayao Miyazaki have happily learned not to take his retirement announcements too seriously. In 1997, he claimed that Princess Mononoke would be his final animated feature; in 2001, he said the same about his future Oscar winner, Spirited Away. Still, there was a greater air of finality in 2013 around The Wind Rises, a mournful drama of love and loss that felt like a fitting swan song.

But Miyazaki clearly had more to say. A decade after The Wind Rises, he returns with The Boy and the Heron, which combines the excitement of a child's grand adventure and the weight of an older man's reflection. The boy of the title is 12-year-old Mahito, whom we first meet on a fateful night in 1943. Bombs are falling on Tokyo, and his mother dies tragically in a fire at a hospital. A year later, a still-grieving Mahito moves to the countryside with his father, who's about to marry a woman named Natsuko".