Baffled.
I mean the guy made a film about how awesome the guy who created the zero fighter was and how japan should take pride in that despite the fighter being used as a tool of Japanese imperialism. I'm not saying he is a nationalist but like it's kinda obvious he still has stuff he needs to work on
The entire point of the movie, like, its whole message, was how the guy who created the zero fighter was a misguided artist who ended up causing more harm than good. His entire story follows him repeatedly ignoring signs of poverty and war and death and oppression to follow his dream of designing airplanes. The Wind Rises is not about how awesome this guy was, it’s about how selfish and complicate he was in a war he benefited from, despite his “goodness.” There’s literally a scene where his best friend calls this out. “Poor countries want airplanes. And they pay us a lot to design them. It’s ironic.”
The movie ends with the guy watching his zero fighter—the thing he’s been working on for the entire film—succeed. Everyone’s cheering, but he’s lost looking across the countryside of Japanese because he’s just realized he’s lost everything. His wife, his country, his passion. It’s not a victory, it’s a tragedy. The next scene is the bombing of Hiroshima as he walks amongst a graveyard of warplanes; his legacy. He watches his zero fighters fly away and sadly says, “Not a single one returned.”
Also, Japanese nationalists famously hated this movie.
This is literally the guy who gave us the quote "Better a pig than a fascist." (Porco Rosso)
Saving this thread as one of my favourite examples proving that no matter what good intentions and beliefs a person (creator most often) holds, there will always always ALWAYS be idiots that completely misinterpret them (in full 180 degrees) and jump to the worst conclusions about their character ignoring all the facts that redeem this person. I mean LOOK at this, some people are ridiculously confident to judge a very anti-nationalist guy as a nationalist all because they've missed the undertones of his creation and did not do any research on him. Never let someone's idiocy become your, or anyone else's, problem.
This is merely your interpretation of the movie, I've seen criticisms of it describe the supposed war commentary as milquetoast, wishy-washy.
On the other hand, Miyazaki made a fan manga about Otto Carius, a nazi, for his "prowess" as a tank commander, while simplifying the nazis as cute little pigs (so much for that quote!)
(From translation uploaded on imgur.)
He also named the manga based on the man's autobiography and, personally visited him and got his picture taken with him.
Source: http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/manga/otto.html
I don't think there's anything wrong with liking technology, planes, guns and tanks, but writing a manga based on a nazi's propaganda biography and then personally visiting him because he did such a "brave thing", speaks for itself. Miyazaki shows us the individual involved in, having a hand in the technological part of war, without -actually- diving into its horrors.
This article describes it better than I could:
In today’s era of global box offices, few studio films are made for just one country, especially by a director of Hayao Miyazaki’s internati
"In The Wind Rises, Miyazaki uses real-life aircraft engineer Jiro Horikoshi as an extreme example of ordinary Japanese citizens’ indifference to the atrocities committed in their name. Jiro, as he’s referred to in the film, finds such beauty in airplanes and flight that he feverishly pursues the next level of killing machines for Mitsubishi, justifying his work by comparing his planes to the pyramids. The reference to the pharaohs might allude to the fact that Mitsubishi used Chinese and Korean slave labor to build Jiro’s Zero planes..."
"We see Japanese planes downed by a Chinese foe in a mid-film reverie — a shockingly insensitive image given that Japan was invading China during this time, not the other way around. Later, an American bomber floats above a graveyard of burned-out aircraft over the defeated Japanese empire. In contrast, no Japanese pilot is ever seen shooting at an enemy, even though Jiro’s most famous invention, the Zero plane, was designed and used solely for military purposes. The consequences of his work — that is, corpses — are likewise absent. In the film, Jiro never expresses sympathy for the people his people killed. His grief is strictly reserved for the deaths of his planes. His preference to mourn his Zeros, rather than the planes’ victims, illustrates his soft-handed callousness...."
Some excerpts from the above linked article.
Replies cite ultra-right nationalists attacking Miyazaki for not making a ultra-right, nationalist movie, but leave out Korean voices, as highlighted by the article.
The way mysteriouslypleasantcat is shot down above for stating the obvious because -supposedly- critics completely misunderstood the message, is looking at this from a one-sided, biased, perhaps even nostalgia painted lens.
