Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
The Boy and the Heronis many things.
Its a horror film about a haunted house and a grotesque avian gatekeeper to a land of the dead.
Its a silly film about hungry, hungry parakeets andweird little guys.
Its alsocoveredin bird shit.
As the name of the movie suggests,The Boy and the Heroninvolves birds.
A lot of them, actually.
Despite the strange abilities of these fantastical birds of varying levels of anthropomorphism, they do what birds do.
There are two more big poop scenes, both courtesy of the parakeets cloacas.
The pursuing parrots pour through the door and charge en masse towards Shoichi, who draws his sword.
Theres poop inside the tower, too.
All of this bird poop is clearly intentional.
Its not like the poop was just the consequence of a bunch of real birds doing what birds do.
This is an animated film, so each splatter needed to be deliberately drawn.
More than that, Miyazaki is famously attentive to details and prolific in his use of symbolism.
So whats to be made of all this bird poop?
Does Miyazaki just hate birds?
We know he loves airplanes (theyre hisproblematic fav).
Does he just prefer things that fly anddontpoop?
Planes drop bombs, but at least they dont drop a deuce?
The birds relieving themselves is comic relief.
Poop, meanwhile, is extremely natural.
To paraphrase another seminal Japanese text,everybody does it.
Far from the parakeets uncanny facsimile of fascism, shitting everywhere is what birds are supposed to do.
Nature, in Miyazakis films, is to be regarded with awe, but its not perfect.
Its dangerous and messy.
Thats what nature is, and its beautiful.
(And, also, funny.)
