Reviews for The Boy Who Saw the Wind

Wow. What an under watched, underrated gem of a movie with a bit of a Studio Ghibli feel to it. It isn't. Brains Base did it. There's no need for me to go into the story because the synopsis does it very well . . . . for a change. It takes place in an alternate world that has the of 1930's Europe. There are some pretty fantastic airships, bi-planes, tanks, and storm troopers. The background art flows from dark, menacing snowy nights, bright island life, rain on ruins, to hope filled sunrises. It is very effectivein setting moods that range from the grim, to innocence, to anguish and despair, to the heroic and hope filled, to the spiritual.

Be aware that there is violence and death. It is grim, realistic, and sad but not "twisted" or "splattery". Not really one for the kiddies to watch alone and certainly not just for the kiddies.

Character designs aren't unique or particular beautiful, but neither do they get in the way. With the exception of the "evil dictator" most characters are drawn to convey ordinary people. Come to think of it, I did like the look of some of the supporting characters. The music is equally noninvasive. Besides a flute piece played by the main character in one scene, nothing really stands out.

TBWStW can be enjoyed as a fine bit of fantasy. If you want to go deeper it can make an anti-war statement whilesaying it's o.k. to fight back when threatened. It also dips its toes into philosophy, quantum theory, and theology with its presentation of energy manipulation, many metaphors surrounding flight, and the continuation of the "soul." (Take a moment to wiki C. W. Nicol, the author of the book the anime is based on. He's fascinating.)

I liked it. I liked it a lot, enough to give it a 9. Actually it is more of an 8.5 but I can't do that here.

A wonderful shounen anti-war film which slipped through the cracks. The amazing art will surely catch your eye. The vintage styling, reminiscent of "Now and Then, Here and There", will make you think you're watching a film that's much older than a 2000 movie. The Boy Who Saw the Wind's classic look paints the film as a tribal fantasy epic, despite its technologically-advanced universe. The result is a multi-temporal environment which is nostalgic, modern, and futuristic, all at the same time. Within this universe, the common boy-saves-girl anti-war drama takes place, of which Now and Then, Laputa, Conan, and Agito are variants. The Boy Who Saw theWind makes its mark among these through its tragic plot and awesome visuals.

The only pitfall of this film is the hurried direction which takes place in the second half, most likely due to time or budget constraints. The lack of build-up and anticipation at this point makes the film seem like it's jumping around, but nothing important is left out.

The Boy Who Saw the Wind is worth watching, especially if you enjoyed any of the above-mentioned works.

In the trauma therapy business there's much talk about the nervous system activation. When we encounter a situation that is frightening, dangerous or emotionally painful, our nervous system activates the fight/flight response. If we are unable to resolve the situation we can go into a freeze response instead, completely shutting down either partly (such as not feeling emotions, stop feeling physical pain) or fully such as passing out. If we can resolve a dangerous situation somehow, we still need to downregulate our nervous system to "rest and digest", this takes time and focused effort. One problem in our world is a culture where we ratherkeep a high tension dysregulated nervous system (for example by chronic screen time) than taking the effort to heal.

Many good movies such as the works by Miyazaki Hayao works within the parameter of nervous system activation - downregulation. Chihiro experiences something painful, then she gets help by her friends to integrate the painful event. Tension, release, tension, release. The whole Natsume Yuujinchou can be seen as a story about a boy doing downregulation from a traumatic childhood.

So Kaze wo Mita Shounen is supposed to be a children's movie. From the perspective of trauma and nervous system dysregulation it is absolutely not suitable for children. The traumatic events are stacked on each other accompanied by graphic violence. The situations are never really resolved and there's never taken time for downregulation. The point isn't that children aren't capable of seeing some bad situations, but these situations needs time to be dealt with, to be resolved, just like good works for children does (or as in Naruto when a situation can't be resolved, take time to really process that).

That said, there's other problems with the movie as well, such as a very chaotic second half without any clear direction, the magic the MC has isn't really explained or utilized and comes across as a bad deus ex machina, and so forth. It was an interesting premise but for a children's movie it's not really well made.