‘The Boy And The Heron’ Supervising Animator Takeshi Honda On Creating Characters “Set In Reality” For A “Somber And Serious” Fantasy

Although he was planning on continuing work on the Evangelion series, supervising animator Takeshi Honda decided to join The Boy and the Heron after speaking with director Hayao Miyazaki. In working closely with the “renowned maestro”, Honda found ways to ground the characters in reality to match a more somber style.

In his most personal work to date, Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron follows the story of a young boy named Mahito, who has recently lost his mother. Along with a cunning and deceptive gray heron, he journeys to a mysterious world outside of time where the dead and the living coexist. The Boy and the Heron won the 2024 Golden Globe for Best Animated Motion Picture.

DEADLINE: How did you get involved with The Boy and the Heron?

TAKESHI HONDA: I had been working with Studio Ghibli from quite a while back. The first one I did was Portable Airport. And then after that, Tales from Earthsea, and then after that came Ponyo, which was the first feature film I did with him. 

And to speak further about my kind of relationship with Miyazaki, I was also working on Boro the Caterpillar, which is a short-animated film, and while we were working on this, he came to me with his next offer. He said, “Come with me and let’s make my next film together. I want you on my next film.” I was planning to do Evangelion, so it was a very, very hard decision because of course I’ve been involved with Evangelion for 20 years now by that point. But he says to me, “This is going to be my final film, so you have to come.” I had to have a little time to think, but I ultimately decided to get on board with Miyazaki-san.

DEADLINE: What was it like working with Miyazaki on a film that he had a personal connection to?

HONDA: It was a very good working relationship. Of course, I was very nervous in the beginning because needless to say, he’s such a renowned maestro. But he actually is a very considerate person. There was this accessibility because whenever there was something that I didn’t understand or I had to ask a question, he was very quick in responding. He was very close to me, which is not very usual protocol in an animation studio. I mean, you don’t usually get to have so many conversations with your director. 

DEADLINE: Can you speak about animating a darker style? 

HONDA: There is a more somber and serious tone to this film in comparison with the previous films that we’ve done, or that he’s done. The acting of the characters is a little more set in reality. It’s a little more real. And also, we were quite meticulous about how we do the fire and flames that are in this film, and the sea and the waves, and the way that the birds fly and the fluttering of their wings. We really wanted to ground that in reality. We have a lot of crowds with birds. Those are all challenging scenes to create.

DEADLINE: What were some highlights for you of your time on the project

HONDA: I could list scene after scene, and it would be an endless list, but let’s stop it at three. The scene where Mahito is carving the bamboo to make his bow and arrow, and the way he’s trying it out. That was quite something, a scene that we’d like to give special mention to, and also as was mentioned previously, the fire at the beginning of the film, that was also quite a challenge. Also, the scene with all these Shinto ritual papers that are on the ring and flying about. That was quite a scene for us to work on because we have closeups throughout the scene of these characters. So, we wanted to make their expressions grounded in reality for that particular scene.