Review: Studio Ghibli's THE BOY AND THE HERON Home Release

Earlier this year, GKIDS and Studio Ghibli released the Academy Award winning film The Boy and the Heron on physical and digital formats. Since then, the movie has also been added to Max for your streaming convenience.

GKIDS was kind enough to send me the 4K UHD + Blu-Ray package to check out and review, but all thoughts below are my own. I do want to also make it clear that this will not be a review of The Boy and the Heron. For that, check out the review that our team wrote back in November.

THE BOY AND THE HERON “follows young Mahito, who, after losing his mother during the war in a hospital fire, moves to his family’s estate in the countryside. There, a series of mysterious events lead him to a secluded and ancient tower, home to a mischievous gray heron.

“When Mahito’s new stepmother disappears, he follows the gray heron into the tower, and enters a fantastical world shared by the living and the dead. As he embarks on an epic journey with the heron as his guide, Mahito must uncover the secrets of this world and the truth about himself.”

The first, and arguably best, reason for wanting to buy a physical copy of this film (and any piece of media) is that you own that copy and no one can just de-list it and remove it from your library.

I feel as though in recent years, this has become a bigger and bigger deal and I fully support and encourage owning physical media. It also is great to have physical media for when you don’t have access to streaming for any reason such as just moving to a new place before you get the internet set up.

Another top reason for wanting to buy any movie is to access the bonus features included in the home release. For The Boy and The Heron, there are about seven bonus features although two of them are just a music video and trailers so not all that remarkable.

However, the other five will appeal to a variety of people. First, you have “Feature-Length Storyboards.” From what I could tell (I didn’t watch the whole thing) this is literally the entire movie but using the storyboards instead of animation. This is cool, although definitely not my kind of thing.

I could definitely see how people more into the process of animating/storyboarding/filmmaking/etc. would be really interested by this.

Another special feature is “Drawing with Takeshi Honda” which I didn’t finish watching because it ended up being longer than I thought. Essentially, this special lets you watch supervising animator Takeshi Honda draw key characters from the film and he’ll throw little tidbits out while doing it.

This was a little interesting to watch, although its shortcoming derives from the fact that Honda doesn’t talk a lot (and he even mentions that he doesn’t usually talk while drawing and so he might not have been the best choice for this) and so there’s just a ton of silence just filled by gorgeous music.

The last three special features are separate interviews with Honda, producer Toshio Suzuki, and composer Joe Hisaishi. I personally found the interview with Hisaishi to be the most interesting.

He talked a little about how he and Hayao Miyazaki have worked together for about 40 years. He also shared how a small song he composed as an unrelated present for Miyazaki ended up as the main theme for The Boy and the Heron.

The interviews with Honda and Suzuki were fine, but didn’t stick out to me personally. Honda’s interview seemed to be more focused on how he ended up working on the film and what it was like doing art next to Miyazaki. Meanwhile, my biggest takeaway from Suzuki’s interview was that the Gray Heron seemed to be based on him.

At the end of the day, I think that purchasing a copy of The Boy and the Heron is not a bad move. The animation is gorgeous, the movie is interesting, and at the very least you can own a copy that can’t just be written off for tax purposes.

If you like watching interviews with members of the production crew or want to watch the movie via storyboards, I think the special features will definitely give you some added value. If you like The Boy and the Heron, I would always recommend purchasing a physical copy.

You can purchase it now from your favorite outlets with digital copies costing around $9.99 and physical copies starting around $27.