The Wind Rises is another of Ghibil’s amazing work which even made it to the Oscar nominations. The last film by director, producer and screenplay writer Miyazaki Hayao is quite the shining star among his other eye-catching titles. This being his last movie, he put in all his efforts and lifetime’s work into making it. Based on a true story of a boy named Jiro Horikoshi who grows up to become an aeronautical engineer. Jiro gets employed in Mitsubishi Motor Works and his job is to design aircraft. From childhood he dreamt of famous Italian aircraft designer Caproni, who in his dreams shows him his newest creations of aircraft. Caproni drives interest in him to strive to become an aeronautical engineer.

During the early days of his career, he travels with his friend Honjou who also designs aircraft alongside him. Their boss sends them to Germany to learn about German aircraft design of a man named Hugo Junkers. Unfortunately, he has to flee from the country as the secret police start arresting his team members. As he travels around the world he meets Naoko, the girl he had rescued when he was still a teenager (Yeah, the timeline in my review is all messed up). She is suffering from tuberculosis and does not have many days left. He gets engaged to her and due to her worsening condition, she starts living in a sanatorium. As Jiro returns from his trips to Japan, she returns from her sanatorium and lives with him after getting married to him. Despite her deteriorating health, she supports Jiro as he strives to work on the design of his aircraft. The day the aircraft is built and ready to fly, she decides to return to the sanatorium so that Jiro can remember the way she was. As the Japanese Zero flies, Jiro senses something bad. This is probably that his wife passed away.

The animation is fantastic, the amount of attention given to detail is fabulous and the romance was so light and heart warming and I absolutely loved it. Even the war time music sounded great. Good character design, although the movie wasn’t focused on character development. They wanted to highlight the historical part. Jiro’s dreams weere very inspirational to him, and they really drove him toward achieving his goals. Everyone had determination in their actions and I really loved that, because that’s what made the film so inspirational. At times, I did feel that this was a little mature compared to the older Ghibli movies I have seen like My Neighbour Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies in a sense that it is packed with historical facts and rarely shows drama. I loved this film because this was a different atttempt made by Ghibli and they really made it successful. I would love to see movies like these made in the future. My regards to Miyazaki Hayao, who has been doing an excellent job for all these years and pleasing viewers all over the world.