The Boy and The Heron Gets First Full Trailer, Release Date

A new trailer for Hayao Miyazaki’s mysterious new film, The Boy and the Heron, has finally arrived.

You can watch the trailer for The Boy and the Heron, which was released on the GKIDS YouTube channel, below. The epic trailer teases the film’s World War II-setting and the journey of protagonist Mahito. There’s, of course, a lot of the signature Studio Ghibli style and mystery, with some especially disturbing and astonishing imagery. The film is slated to release on Dec. 8 according to the trailer.

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The movie is the latest, and potentially final, outing for Miyazaki, the visionary storyteller who co-founded Studio Ghibli. There’s been a lot of mystery surrounding the plot of Miyazaki’s latest film, though details leaked out following the release of The Boy and the Heron in Japan earlier this year. So far, what I know about the film makes me think that it’s going to have some of the same gut-punch storytelling as Grave of the Fireflies, Isao Takahata’s 1988 animated film for Studio Ghibli. Frankly, I couldn’t be any more excited to get to watch The Boy and the Heron, as I’m a massive fan of Miyazaki and his films. There’s a real chance that this may actually be Miyazaki’s final film, since the auteur is now in his 80s.

Known in Japan as How Do You Live?, The Boy and the Heron is slated to release in North America on Dec. 8