Name: "The wind is rising, we must try to live"
Item: The Wind Rises
Rating: 100
Author: Rachellll

"The wind is rising, we must try to live" · Waifora

The wind rises - A mini review of my rewatch -- It may contain spoilers!It's been almost 3 years since i watched this one. I was feeling that i needed to rewatch this and give it another chance, because a 7/10 for a Ghibli movie is for sure something to question coming from me.
The score came up to 10/10 and the next paragraph will be some reasons why, divided in 3 brief topics that i found the most important. (also one of the biggest reason is simply that now im older. I rly feel like life kept showing me new perspectives and I'd grown as a person. As I rewatch some things I gave a high score before, sometimes it turns out I don't understand my interest on it in that time. With this, the opposite also occurs.
Let's proceed!

1-The representation of the old times in Japan and its culture when it comes to love.
--

In this movie, it's a notable thing that love is represented with a pretty retrograde view of what's the pattern for love, relationships and role of each of the partner. However, these two really love each other dispite everything, and I like the way it shows us that back then there were still real and loving relationships on such tough circunstances.
During my rewatch, I marked some relevant moments for this review. In this movie there's a moment after Nahoko's and Jiro's metting on the gif above, where Nahoko's father leads Jiro to the door, and Jiro shows his concern about Nahoko saying "Is it that serious? I wish I could look after her." and he answers "The way to do that is to focus on your work". In MY perspective, this is kind of a realistic reference to what it was like being a couple back in the last century, where the role played by the man is shown. I wish he could look after her closer too. (1h:34min:49seg)
Beyond this, there's this other scene that takes place in the Kurokawa's family house. Nahoko comes back from the sanatorium to rest at home, and Jiro hopes that they can recieve and welcome them two on their house. They do, but they express their concern and disagreement about welcoming a not married couple on their home, living togehter. Later they end up doing the ceremony.
I like the way this showed me a reality I didnt know about. I dont know if this is a japanese thing, but I liked to see this new perspective i didnt know about. Aparently, its no good living together if they're not married. (1h42min24seg)

2-The Anti-war message and the reality portrayed --

Between various messages this movie offers to the viewer to get, we can highlight this one topic. "The wind rises" gives us a perspective of what was happening in Japan and the country's plunge into World War II. (As well as the Great Earthquake of 1923, on the beggining of the movie where Nahoko and Jiro first met, and the Japan's TB epidemic, that composes the big problem of Nahoko's health condition.)
Jiro, an aeronautical engineer, designs planes, wich was his dream. However, he is designing planes that will eventually fight and kill people. And that is definitly not part of his dream. Despite his close ties to the buildup towards the Second World War, I was able to research about it, and getting to know that the real Jiro Horikoshi was strongly opposed to the war.
During the movie, there's this scene where Jiro meets his friend after he tried offering sponge cake to some kids on the streets who where searching for food. They talk about the state of their country. The irony of the government and the difficultes everyone is going trough. His friend mentions that even just one aircraft part would stop the hunger. And yet, Japan wanted planes to fight during the war, so they pay engineers to design them instead of doing what really needs to be done, making a critique to how the people in the power misused their possessions. A bit of their conversation: Jiro-"Why is Japan so poor?"; Honjo-"Jiro, do you know what we're paying the germans for their technology? Enough to feed every kid in Japan, with sponge cake for dessert." (...); Honjo:"Poor countries want planes. So they pay us a lot to design them. Its ironic."

3-Keep living. No matter what. --

And last, but not least, the most important message from "The wind rises", in my opinion.
In this movie, not everything goes as planned. Jiro, that was, in the beggining of the movie, planning to go to the university that day by train, ended up going trough a earthquake. He ended up creating planes that would kill people. He ended up meeting the love of his life, that he had to watch pass away. Nothing went as planned, did it?
But still, the thing that he wishes to do the most is to live.
"The wind rises" is accompanied by the quote “Le vent se lève, il faut tenter de vivre.”, in english: "The wind is rising, we must try to live."--Paul Valéry
...
Life is short. Let's try to live it.

sites visited for my research, writing of the review, images, ideas and more

Spoiler, click to view

https://tenor.com/search/the-wind-rises-gifs https://www.reddit.com/r/ghibli/comments/2rrupn/just_watched_the_wind_rises_how_did_myazaki/?rdt=48650 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2013293/quotes/ https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-wind-rises-2013 https://hanlunn.medium.com/the-life-changing-lessons-of-the-wind-rises-hayao-miyazaki-7f99e7c30ad5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiro_Horikoshi

This was my first experience with writing such an extense review so...thank you for reading till the end!