--- title: "The Wind Rises" year: 2013 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-wind-rises" fi1m_score: 77 critics_score: 75 critics_reviews: 21 published: "2026-09-17T06:55:16.168491+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T06:55:26.736746+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Wind Rises (2013) Directed by Hayao Miyazaki · 2h 06m · MPA PG-13 · Animation, Drama, History, Romance **Fi1m score: 77** · Critics 75 from 21 reviews *In a sentence:* The prettiest film ever made about a fighter plane, and it would rather you didn’t mention the fighter > Hayao Miyazaki’s fictionalised life of Jiro Horikoshi, who designed the Zero, is as lovely as anything Studio Ghibli has drawn, and its earthquake is its finest sequence. It also keeps being asked what its hero’s planes are for, and keeps changing the subject. ## Synopsis Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. Jiro Horikoshi (Hideaki Anno) is a short-sighted schoolboy who dreams of aeroplanes and cannot be a pilot; in his sleep the Italian designer Giovanni Battista (Mansai Nomura) tells him that building them is the better calling. In 1923 the train carrying him to university in Tokyo is caught in the Great Kanto Earthquake, and he carries a stranger’s injured maid through the burning city, lending his slide rule as a splint and leaving without giving his name. The stranger is Naoko Satomi (Miori Takimoto). Years later Jiro joins an aircraft company under the small, shouting Kurokawa (Masahiko Nishimura), beside his blunt friend Honjô (Hidetoshi Nishijima), and is told to design a fighter for a country that, as Honjô keeps saying, is poor and behind. ## Review Hayao Miyazaki had never made a film about a real person before *The Wind Rises*, and he picked a hard one. Jiro Horikoshi designed the Zero, the fighter Japan flew through most of the Second World War, and Miyazaki, who has spent a career hating war and adoring aeroplanes, puts both into one quiet man. The result is as lovely as anything his studio has drawn. It is also a film that keeps being asked what its hero’s planes are for, and keeps changing the subject. We recommend it, with that reservation kept in view. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 arrives early and is the finest thing in the film. Jiro (voiced by Hideaki Anno) is on a train to Tokyo when the ground lifts beneath it in a slow wave, and the sound is not a rumble but a groan. Roofs slide, the city burns orange under a brown sky, and Atsushi Okui’s photography layers the smoke so thickly that the crowds on the bridges seem to wade through it. We sat still and forgot to breathe. It was the quiet of the first second that did it, the moment before anyone on the train understands. Against the earth Miyazaki sets the sky. Jiro’s dreams are visited by Giovanni Battista (Mansai Nomura), an Italian designer who builds aeroplanes with wings stacked like shelves and flies him over green fields and a warm sea. Joe Hisaishi scores these scenes for accordion and strings, and the theme is the most hummable thing he has written for Miyazaki in years. The Italian knows his planes are impossible. He asks Jiro whether he would rather live in a world with pyramids or without them, and the question hangs over the rest of the film. The waking scenes are harder work, for Jiro and for us. He joins an aircraft company under Kurokawa (Masahiko Nishimura), a small furious man drawn to the height of a filing cabinet, beside his friend Honjô (Hidetoshi Nishijima), who says aloud what Jiro will not: that the country is poor, behind, and buying fighters it cannot afford. Takeshi Seyama cuts all this at a walking pace, and at 126 minutes the middle hour sags. Anno gives Jiro a flat, unhurried voice that suits a man who only comes alive over a drawing, and leaves the rest of the cast to carry him. The second half belongs to Naoko Satomi (Miori Takimoto), the girl from the train, met again at a mountain hotel where she paints in a meadow and he launches paper aeroplanes at her from a balcony. It is a love story, and a sad one, for a reason we will let the film give you. Naoko is drawn with such care that it took us a while to notice she has no faults, no temper and no wants of her own. Jiro’s sister Kayo (Mirai Shida), who scolds him for forgetting his family, is the sharper woman and gets a fraction of the time. At the hotel a German called Castorp (Stephen Alpert) plays an old Werner R. Heymann song on the piano and remarks, between verses, that Japan and Germany are both about to blow up. Nobody argues with him. That is how the film handles the war. Honjô says it, Castorp says it, the Italian asks it, and Jiro never answers, and Miyazaki does not make him. It is a film about a man who makes weapons and would rather talk about the wind. We think Miyazaki meant the sadness. We do not think he meant the evasion; it is the reason we put it below [*Porco Rosso*](https://film.one/film/porco-rosso), which had the same planes and the same decade and the nerve to laugh. It was announced as Miyazaki’s last film, and was widely read as a will. It was not his last; [*The Boy and the Heron*](https://film.one/film/the-boy-and-the-heron) came ten years later. What remains is a middle hour that asks for patience and perhaps twenty minutes, spread across the earthquake and the dreams, that we would put beside anything the studio has made. Watch it subtitled, and notice how often the wind is doing the acting. *Fi1m score 77, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics take The Wind Rises as Miyazaki’s farewell and judge it warmly on those terms: a personal, grown-up film about an aircraft designer that trades his usual fantasy for a sober picture of pre-war Japan. The praise clusters on the hand-drawn animation, which several reviews call the most detailed Studio Ghibli has produced, and on the Great Kanto Earthquake sequence, repeatedly named as the film’s high point. The love story and the attention to wind and movement in nature draw almost as much affection. The reservations are about pace and politics. Several critics find the engineering scenes leisurely to the point of drag, and a few think the film skates over what Horikoshi’s planes were built to do. Two reviews dissent outright: the Evening Standard finds the story inert and the romance creepy, and Collider calls it the weakest Miyazaki film, lifeless without the fantasy. Both are outliers, but they name faults the admirers also notice. ### Reviews we read (21) - **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan (90/100, inferred): The critic marvels at Miyazaki's masterful visual storytelling and idiosyncratic take on the romance of flight and personal dreams in what may be his final film, singling out the stunning earthquake sequence and the emotional depth of the characters' pursuits. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-the-wind-rises-20131108-story.html) - **Slant Magazine**, Jesse Cataldo (90/100, inferred): The Wind Rises establishes itself as a bold, startling endpoint to Miyazaki's career, a mature work of bittersweet realism that incorporates ethical contradictions into a mournful worldview without denying them. It singles out the film's precise animation and focus on movement in nature as suffused with immense detail and feeling, even as it presents a resigned distress at the weight of political systems. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-wind-rises/) - **Total Film**, Kevin Harley (85/100, inferred): The critic describes it as a wise, wistful summation of Miyazaki's career that revisits core themes with elegance, standing as a loving testimony to a career well-spent and a fitting farewell. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/the-wind-rises-review/) - **Variety**, Scott Foundas (85/100, inferred): The critic lauds the hauntingly beautiful historical epic for its sober portrait of pre-WWII Japan and masterful blend of visual fancy with social insight, highlighting the earthquake sequence and the personal connection to the director's themes of dreams and technology. [Read](https://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/the-wind-rises-review-venice-toronto-1200592219/) - **Empire**, Dan Jolin (80/100, inferred): The critic calls it Miyazaki's most nakedly personal film and a stunningly wrought farewell from an imaginative master, praising its visual craftsmanship and sly charm despite being less fantastical than his other works. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/wind-rises-review/) - **Film Comment**, Max Nelson (80/100, inferred): The critic views the film as a delicate, rueful, and achingly sad meditation on the power and moral risks of dreams, centering on the life of aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi. It singles out the finely etched details of Jiro's storybook romance for praise. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/article/the-wind-rises-hayao-miyazaki-review/) - **Little White Lies**, David Jenkins (4/4/5): The review calls it a brilliant swansong and complex, swooning melodrama on aviation and the caveats of creativity, unlike any prior Ghibli film. It singles out its earnest, adult-oriented melodrama, lack of contrivance, and morbid curiosity in juxtaposing mechanical dreams with human disintegration. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/the-wind-rises) - **RogerEbert.com**, Sheila O'Malley (80/100, inferred): The critic praises the film's breathtaking images and personal resonance as Miyazaki's likely final work, while noting its mild anti-war stance and the beauty of its portrayal of dreams turning into reality; single out the Great Kanto Earthquake sequence and the poetic wind motifs for praise. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-wind-rises-2013) - **The Guardian** (80/100, inferred): The film is a tribute to aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi with wonderful gentleness and intelligent idealism. It is visually exquisite and emotionally charged, though arguably naive in its treatment of the subject. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/08/the-wind-rises-review-hayao-miyazaki) - **Time Out**, Alex Dudok de Wit (4/5): It describes the film as both a fitting and uneasy swansong, a loose biopic that validates the director’s independent path while skating over wartime politics. The critic praises its glorious, exquisitely detailed animation as the most ravishing yet from Studio Ghibli and calls it a dark, disturbing, deeply moving full stop to a glittering career. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-wind-rises) - **Screen Daily** (70/100, inferred): The review highlights the 2D cine-painting joy and ravishment expected from Miyazaki but notes that the precise historical setting and partial exclusion of fantasy causes some loss of imaginative force. It admires the animation and visual skill while suggesting the mechanical focus and leisurely plot may bore younger viewers. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/the-wind-rises/5059823.article) - **Sight and Sound**, Andrew Osmond (70/100, inferred): The critic views the film as Miyazaki’s most personal and atypical work, a portrait of the artist as a myopic dreamer that abstracts its historical subject into a paean to flight and creativity. It praises the animation and autobiographical resonance while noting some narrative drag in the work scenes and the film’s ambiguous stance on historical responsibility. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/review-wind-rises) - **Radio Times**, Damon Wise (3/5): The review notes it is markedly more realistic than Miyazaki’s usual fantastical films and may not suit newcomers, but praises the high-quality hand-drawn art and personal elements of what the director declared his final film. It finds older viewers and fans will be enchanted by this modest entry in the canon. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-skxhym/the-wind-rises/) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, THR Staff (50/100, inferred): The film is an ambitious special case that will divide audiences, with some finding it an unforgettably beautiful and poetic ode to life while others may find the slow-moving second act wearing. It honestly handles the daring subject of engineering war planes and features amazingly detailed visuals that immerse viewers in the protagonist's dream world. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/wind-rises-kaze-tachinu-venice-619634/) - **Evening Standard**, Charlotte O'Sullivan (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the hand-drawn animation full of life but faults the inert story and lack of dramatic tension in this saccharine biography, calling the romance creepy and the politics clumsily handled. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/the-wind-rises-film-review-9344303.html) - **Eye for Film**, Anne-Katrin Titze (90/100, inferred): The critic praises Miyazaki's poetic and optimistic handling of heavy themes like war, aviation dreams, and personal loss. The film is singled out for its blend of factual biography with dreamlike sequences and a tender love story. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-wind-rises-2013-film-review-by-anne-katrin-titze) - **The Playlist**, The Playlist Staff (A-): The critic calls it a fascinating and beguiling departure, a grounded biopic elevated by animation's visual poetry. It singles out the personal parallels to Miyazaki's own artistry and the delicate love story. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/review-hayao-miyazakis-fascinating-and-beguiling-the-wind-rises-20140219/) - **The Wrap** (85/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a gorgeous, haunting biopic that shows Miyazaki going out on top if it is indeed his last. They single out its rare celebration of the imagination and groundbreaking work of engineers, alongside the director's signature beauty and hopefulness. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/wind-rises-review-miyazakis-soaring-celebration-mans-dreams-flight/) - **Den of Geek**, Ryan Lambie (4/5): The critic calls the film a beautifully animated swansong that blends intimate drama with grand themes, praising its sound design, character work, and poetic eye for relationships and flight. It notes the focus on the beauty of design over the planes' destructive use. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-wind-rises-review/) - **HeyUGuys**, Gary Green (4/5): The critic views the film as a mature, melancholic swan song that explores the pursuit of dreams amid harsh realities. It singles out the engineer's personal drive and the contrast between naive optimism and the weight of history. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/the-wind-rises-review/) - **Collider**, Matt Goldberg (D+): The critic finds it the weakest Miyazaki film, restrained and lifeless without fantasy elements, with only dream sequences providing spark. Praises the attempt at something new but criticizes the lack of emotional impact in the realistic story. [Read](https://collider.com/the-wind-rises-review/) ## Details - **Director:** Hayao Miyazaki - **Director:** Hayao Miyazaki - **Screenplay:** Hayao Miyazaki - **Cinematography:** Atsushi Okui - **Editor:** Takeshi Seyama - **Music:** Joe Hisaishi, Werner R. Heymann - **Producer:** Toshio Suzuki - **Cast:** Hideaki Anno as Jiro Horikoshi (voice); Hidetoshi Nishijima as Honjô (voice); Miori Takimoto as Naoko Satomi (voice); Masahiko Nishimura as Kurokawa (voice); Stephen Alpert as Castorp (voice); Mansai Nomura as Giovanni Battista (voice); Jun Kunimura as Hattori (voice); Mirai Shida as Kayo Horikoshi (voice) - **Runtime:** 2h 06m - **Certificate (MPA):** PG-13 - **Release (the US):** 21 February 2014 - **Genres:** Animation, Drama, History, Romance - **Budget:** $30 million - **Box office:** $118 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_aEaPWELqs ## Where to watch in the US - HBO Max: streaming - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Hulu: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $7.99, sd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, AZ, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 2014: Best Animated Feature (nominated) - Annie Award for Best Animated Feature 2013: Annie Award for Best Animated Feature (nominated) - Critics' Choice Awards 2013: Best Animated Feature (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Porco Rosso* (1992), Fi1m 81: Miyazaki’s other film about interwar aeroplanes, with a pig, a grudge and better jokes. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/porco-rosso.md) - *The Boy and the Heron* (2023), Fi1m 81: The film that followed the farewell; stranger, darker and every bit as personal. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-boy-and-the-heron.md) - *Only Yesterday* (1991): Ghibli without magic: Isao Takahata’s quiet drama of a woman revisiting her childhood. - *The Dam Busters* (1955): British engineers and airmen, a bouncing bomb, and the war this film keeps offscreen. - *Empire of the Sun* (1987), Fi1m 81: Spielberg’s boy in wartime Shanghai salutes a Zero and slowly learns what it costs. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/empire-of-the-sun.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-wind-rises