Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises)

Although Jirou Horikoshi's nearsightedness prevents him from ever becoming a pilot, he leaves his hometown to study aeronautical engineering at Tokyo Imperial University for one simple purpose: to design and build planes just like his hero, Italian aircraft pioneer Giovanni Battista Caproni. His arrival in the capital coincides with the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, during which he saves a maid serving the family of a young girl named Naoko Satomi; this disastrous event marks the beginning of over two decades of social unrest and malaise leading up to Japan's eventual surrender in World War II.

For Jirou, the years leading up to the production of his infamous Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter aircraft will test every fiber of his being. His many travels and life experiences only urge him onward⁠—even as he realizes both the role of his creations in the war and the harsh realities of his personal life. As time marches on, he must confront an impossible question: at what cost does he chase his beautiful dream?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Before its release, director Miyazaki Hayao declared that Kaze Tachinu would be his final film. Like most of Miyazaki's films, it was the top-grossing movie of its release year, earning $113 million in the domestic box office in 2013. The film was controversial on both sides of the political spectrum because of its sympathetic portrayal of Horikoshi and its perceived anti-war stance. The film was nominated for an Academy Award, Miyazaki's third nomination.

The film has won several awards. In 2013 it won the Best Animated Feature during the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, during the New York Film Critics Online, during the Online Film Critics Society, during the San Francisco Film Critics Circle and during the Toronto Film Critics Association. Also in 2013 it won the Best Animated Film during the Boston Online Film Critics Association (which tied with Frozen), during the Boston Society of Film Critics, during the Chicago Film Critics Association, during the New York Film Critics Circle and during the San Diego Film Critics Society. During the same year it won the Audience Favorite – Animation during the Mill Valley Film Festival and the Best Family Film during the Women Film Critics Circle. In 2014 it won the Animation of the Year during the Japan Academy Prize, the Best Animated Film during the National Board of Review and the Best Motion Picture, Animated or Mixed Media during the Satellite Awards.

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Adaptation:

Kaze Tachinu: Miyazaki Hayao no Mousou Comeback

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Horikoshi, Jirou

Main

Anno, Hideaki
Japanese

Satomi, Naoko

Main

Iino, Mayu
Japanese

Caproni, Giovanni

Supporting

Nomura, Mansai
Japanese

Castorp

Supporting

Alpert, Stephen
Japanese

Kurokawa

Supporting

Nishimura, Masahiko
Japanese

Honjou, Kirou

Supporting

Nishijima, Hidetoshi
Japanese

Horikoshi, Kayo

Supporting

Shida, Mirai
Japanese

Hattori

Supporting

Kunimura, Jun
Japanese

Sone, Yoshitoshi

Supporting

Kurokawa, Wife

Supporting

Ootake, Shinobu
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Suzuki, Toshio

Producer

Miyazaki, Hayao

Director, Screenplay, Original Creator

Kimura, Eriko

Sound Director

Kasamatsu, Kouji

Sound Director

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Opening Theme

No opening themes have been added to this title. Help improve our database by adding an opening theme here.

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Ending Theme

"Hikouki Gumo (ひこうき雲)" by Yumi Matsutoya

Reviews

Jan 3, 2023

Sweetshits

Recommended

The movie's visuals are as always very pleasing just like other ghibli movies, the ost is so soothing and as for the story, it is originally based on "Jiro Horikoshi the chief engineer of many japanese fighter planes from WW2" tho the movie adds a little more to it since ghibli adapted the movie from Tatsuo Hori's 1930 novel "The wind has risen" and that's where this movie got its name The wind rises. From all the Hayao miyazaki's work this one feels a bit different and special, tho his all works gives a different feeling i still can't get over how the movie depicts, ...

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Jun 17, 2020

Flanes021

Mixed Feelings

I think this movie may be the pinacle of unused potential.

Before I watched this movie I expected something marvellous, because of the responses I heard/read over the Years on the web. Now that I have watched the movie, I´m very much underwhelmed with this film at hole.
One problem I had repeatedly over the course of the movie were the multiple not closer specified time skips. These time skips sometimes came right there when I was expecting something in terms of more character/relationship development. They made me feel like was missing out on letting me get invested in the unfolding drama between Jirou and Naoko.
...
As this movie may be an biographical inspired piece of art by the Grandmaster Hayao Miazaki himself, it makes me feel like it only wanted to tell a plain story and not to take us, the viewers, onto a jerney to experience the story told. This may seem a bit weird, but I hope you understand what I mean.

My claim for the unused potential isn´t something I thought from the beginning, but started to notice around halfway through the movie. The first major event that made wonder was the arc with our pair meeting at the summerhotel. I think this could have been a great prelude to letting us viewers see a possibly sweet romance between Jirou and Naoko unfold. The few scenes we got were only an appetizer for me and left me hungry for more. The proposal wasn´t something build up to and Naoko´s illnes didn´t seem to make much of an impact for the surrounding characters. Following this

The best part of the movie are it´s picture and sound design. The Sounddesign is exeptional for my demannds. The only limmiting factor is in my opinion the Voiceacting. Most of it is avarage, but shines in comparison to Hideaki Anno´s voice. I never heard the voice of a protagonist bugging me so much. It didn´t feel fitting at all. So rough and stale and old for an energetic young man like jirou. Naoko´s VA on the other handwas brilliant and allmost heartwarming (It probably would have been heartmelting for me if i would have gotten to know her as a character more).
One other remarkable aspect of Arrt in this movie combines the diciplines of visual and accustic art: the presentation of technology. The accuracy was stunning both in picture and sound, but especially in the technical drawings for the Airplanes. although this part was artisticly stunning it still left things to be desired, namely expansion and explanation on the plot.

Oh till now I didn´t address the setting of the Movie: Especially in teh later part of the movie, the looming WWII should have been more prevelant in the minds of these working in a war essential industry. But I couldnt find anything of that sort

I think I made this in a confusing order, so for me to keep things together: The Movie teased many things to make the audience(me) hungry for more, but didn´t expand on them futher. This is the case for Jirou´s solo story as well as for the storyfor our couple Naoko&Jirou. in one way or the other I think the two parts hindered each other as well as beeing hindered by the biographical format spanning over multiple decades.

Still, the most underwhelming point in the movie was the Ending. Jirou meeting his dream friend, which tells him: Yeah your inspirational phase is over and by the way your love is dead,
while Jirou just thinks about his planes not comming back. This portion made me almost outragous. This could have been the peek of the movie drama and personal conflicts but surprise surprise, drama fet compleatly missing which is the biggest unused potential imo. Intertvined with that is the absence of romantical continuety. Many Opportunitiest cast aside for what... nothing to relate to as far as I could feel.

Probably the missed opportunities to let the viewership get really invested into the characters led the other problems to bare peaking into the really really underwhalming ending

I think if I had to summarize my critique(rant) into one sentence in neutral speech it would be: The movie only scratched the surface of the story and left depth to be desired, especially in the moments of great opportunities for Romance/Drama.

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Dec 12, 2020

SCLFI

Not Recommended

Considering that engineering’s about as hard of a science as they come, it’s rather ironic that Kaze Tachinu, a film about an aeronautical engineer, feels very poorly constructed and with far too many elements that weaken the overall strength of the narrative. Excessive attention is given to ideas and plot points that do not matter, but the basic points that you would think it would make sense to be the film’s schwerpunkt, end up feeling like they were overlooked to make room for pretty scenery.

The first issue with the structure I have is the scope of his life that is depicted. We see our main ... character, Jirou, through three stages of his life – his childhood, university, and his subsequent career, building planes for Mitsubishi. But when it comes down to it, only the last one is needed, as the first two of these provide a singular purpose that could have been provided far more efficiently by other means.
During his childhood, his appreciation of planes is established, as is the fact he has recurring dreams with Count Italian-bloke, used to provide insight into Jirou’s beliefs regarding his line of work. But they could have just provided narration, which is a perfectly common technique, and it works perfectly well, nothing the Count says is particularly insightful, it’s all very surface level stuff that you’d probably be insulting Jirou’s intelligence if you assumed he hadn’t considered it himself. There is nothing stopping them from getting Jirou to monologue about his own beliefs, especially when he hardly speaks in these interactions. If you’re going to make the conversation so one-sided, why not remove the one side that is never present elsewhere, and is thereby of no value?

Next, his university life doesn’t matter particularly, it shows him as a workaholic who’s considered a bit strange by his colleagues, but it doesn’t matter because that’s all reverted immediately afterwards, and it’s not a major detail by any means. It’s not like there’s any emotional development or anything, again, they could have remove this detail, to no detriment. The real reason it’s shown is to show a singular event, in which during a train ride, a woman saves his hat from falling, and later, an earthquake happens and he helps her out. Doesn’t exactly save her life or anything, and he would have helped her more if he just gave her the money for a taxi. At this point in time, his university life is narratively pointless, but for the wrong reasons, I’ll explain why when the time comes.

And, the worst part is, they don’t even show the important parts of his life. This is a story about a person who produced planes for Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War. What, then, would be the most important years of his life to document? 1937-1945, the years that the war actually took place, but that doesn’t happen, more screentime is spent in the fucking Taisho era. Eventually, after several failures because apparently Japanese planes were just so bad they couldn’t stop exploding, he produces his magnum opus, the A6M Zero. So, you would think this is the paradigm shfit for the film, the point where it gets good, and there are many philosophical and thematic angles to take here, especially with his heavily foreshadowed pacifistic stance, but no, the film just ends, which is disappointing to say the least. Speaking of foreshadowing, they foreshadow the war a lot, everyone keeps talking about how Japan can’t possibly win a war, it’s a poor and technologically backwards country, they are going to lose, “they will blow up.” Anachronistic writing aside, they never show it happen, we don’t see them blow up, there is no war, people talk about how a war is going to happen, and then we see the very end of it, with no explanation of what lead to that moment.

In the film’s last act, which is where in a better one the wartime impact of Jirou’s inventions would actually be shown, they instead devote it to a pointless romance that just makes no sense. Remember that one woman who saved Jirou’s hat? Apparently, he’s been in love with her for as long as he’s known her, despite the fact that he’s spoken to her about 3 times in his entire life, and wants to marry her, which comes out of fucking nowhere, makes no sense, but he does, he actually marries a woman he’s never talked to for more than a consecutive 5 minutes. Also there’s some subplot about her having TB. She gets a hemorrhage and starts bleeding out her eyes, which you would think is pretty serious and probably means it’s going to kill her, but no, she runs away from a hospital and goes back to Jirou and lives without any actual health problems. That is, until she leaves again because she knows she’s about to die and doesn’t want to make him sad, or something.

As a furtherance of this, there is just a general presence of plot elements that are unresolved, unexplored, or just not properly explained. At one point, it’s said that the Kempeitai are looking for Jirou, and so he hides. And then it’s never mentioned again, if the Kempeitai want to talk to you, they’ll talk to you, and not going to give up after one try, it’s not like he’s fucking subtle about it, they could very easily barge into his workplace, but they never do.

More than anything else, the process of developing the plane just isn’t there. I don’t know what it’s like, or how he felt. They go through a bunch of models so bad they can’t do a single flight without exploding, and then, it’s done, no explanation of the inbetween. In the beginning, there seem to be arguments about one specific part of the plane, but after this issue is resolved, it becomes extremely vague, they build it for a bunch of years and it doesn’t work, and then it does. Nobody even asks Jirou if they think he did a good job with the Zero, and it’s not like he’d tell anyone himself, this Where’s Wally looking motherfucker apparently can’t express anything unless some Italian in his dreams tells him to.

Another point that seems to not make much sense is Jirou’s character. He’s an aeronautical engineer from some part of Japan that’s not exactly urban, but regardless, he apparently has an excellent grasp on the German and Italian language, even as a child, French and German poetry, German opera, and that’s just the stuff I remember. It just doesn’t make sense, I get it, you want to make your main character seem intelligent, but there are better ways of doing that. I would suggest demonstrating his creativity and technical skill when it comes to designing planes, which just so happens to be his fucking job.

In short, Kaze Tachinu has no focus, it has a bunch of vague ideas that are never realised, as they decided to substitute the actual life and work of the main character in place of some stupid romance. It is a biopic with a main character who is entirely uninteresting, and whose achievements are depicted in such a way you can’t even care about them. The Zero was actually a well made fighter, very advanced for the time, with a huge number of technological innovations. But Kaze Tachinu wouldn’t tell you that, the only thing it’s taught me about Jirou and the Zero is that he designed it in a ‘romantic’ moment where he was holding his wife’s hand.

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Poll: Kaze Tachinu Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Asore - Jul 21, 2013	177 replies	by Mori-Buntarou »» Nov 25, 3:49 PM
its the 10th year anniversary mydaddy - Jul 20	2 replies	by Izuella »» Jul 20, 4:02 PM
In Defense of The Wind Rises Angry_Anime_Nerd - Jun 4, 2017	8 replies	by Valyrian1124 »» Feb 20, 10:52 PM
Hideaki Anno is the best VA of all time. 2shizukasensei88 - Jun 7, 2020	2 replies	by Nikiforova »» Jun 7, 2020 5:53 AM
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