https://www.thewrap.com/boy-heron-miyazaki-box-office/
Hayao Miyazaki's film "The Boy and the Heron" is the first original anime title to open wide to No. 1 at the U.S. box office.
It’s beautiful, but I found it much harder to follow than other Ghibli films. The story isn’t linear and often raises more questions than answers. New concepts are brought up without explanation and then moved past (spoiler: why can’t the ghost people kill fish? It seemed really important but is just brushed past, and that’s just one example of many).
Overall it leaves a fantastic impression of loss, grief, the loss of reality that comes with those, growth and finally acceptance. But the actual story felt lacking.
Stunningly beautiful, but the story pacing wasn't great, and there's some questionable line reads in the dub. It left me wondering what got left on the cutting room floor.
Like other's have the pacing was off and it felt like there were missing parts.
What I'll add is that it felt mismatched tonally. They had this goofy comedy bit in the middle of the film that felt like it didn't fit in well the rest of it. It was really jarring and it felt like a bit of the magic disappeared after that.
Still a very beautiful film with interesting ideas. Love the main character and his willingness to throw hands. Wish it was 3 hours long instead of 2.
It really felt that there were missing pieces to the story. Beautiful animation but it seemed so close to being great. I was also surprised at how uneven Bale's dub was.