The Wind Rises (2013)

Academy Awards, USA 2014

Nominee Oscar

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year Hayao Miyazaki Toshio Suzuki

Toho
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb Wikipedia
(Blu-ray, Touchstone)

Animated biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the famous Japanese Zero fighters used in WWII. Rejected as a pilot in his youth because of his eyesight, he instead pursues engineering, inspired by his hero Italian designer Giovanni Caproni, who appears to him in dreams. As a college student, he experiences and earthquake and personally saves a young girl and her maid, carrying one on his back to safety, then leaves without so much as leaving his name. After a few early failures in aircraft design, he is sent to Germany to get details on their new planes. He is promoted back home to chief designer, but that plane also fails. The dejected Jiro goes to rest at a resort, where he meets and falls in love with the girl he saved years earlier in the earthquake. However, she has tuberculosis and is in frail health. A German at the resort tries to help their romance, but his association causes Jiro to go into hiding. Jiro diligently works on a new design, while his fiance struggles with her health at home. He eventually finds success with the Zero, while she returns to the resort, apparently to die. A strange choice by Miyazaki for an animated film, it plays more like the storyboard for a much better live action film. The animation is crude, though the backgrounds do occasionally come to life. The legions of Miyazaki fans around the world will love it, the rest of us just scratch our heads and wonder why.