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When The Wind Rises opened in 2013, Hayao Miyazaki once said that it would be his swan song. The same can also be said about the time when Miyazaki said he planned to retire after Howl’s Moving Castle, but it’s a bit too clear that every time he’s said this, it’s clear he loves the medium so much for him to truly retire from filmmaking. But the pause in between The Wind Rises and this film, The Boy and the Heron, makes it feel like Miyazaki is using the medium to look back at his own journey into adulthood. And given how late into his career he is right now, it also gives The Boy and the Heron a bittersweet angle just as he’s accomplished in all his best films.

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