The Wind Rises · reception & legacy
2013 · Hayao Miyazaki
How The Wind Rises has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Released as Miyazaki's announced 'final film' amid real controversy — nationalists in Japan bristled at his anti-war essays while critics abroad asked if it soft-pedalled the Zero fighter's history. A decade on, it's widely reappraised as his most personal work, a self-portrait of the artist that hits differently now that The Boy and the Heron rewrote the 'farewell' narrative.
What's debated
The forever-debate: is it a moving meditation on beautiful, cursed dreams, or does it let its engineer hero — and by extension Miyazaki — off the hook for what those dreams were used for?
Its footprint
The Paul Valéry line that gives it its title — 'The wind is rising! We must try to live!' — became the film's calling card, and the whole thing is endlessly read as Miyazaki talking about himself: the obsessive who sacrifices everything to make something beautiful.
Where it stands
The 'grown-up Ghibli' pick — the one fans cite to prove Miyazaki's late period was his most personal, and a fixture of 'underrated Ghibli' lists despite an Oscar nomination.