The Wind Rises (2013) (with Esther Leslie)

Chris and Alex return to Japanese anime and Studio Ghibli for this reflection on The Wind Rises (2013), Hayao Miyazaki’s then-final animated feature that plots the life of Japanese aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi, and which also offers a quasi-autobiographical tale of Miyazaki’s own animated career and the spectacle of his ‘last designs’ along the way. Joining in the discussion is very special guest Esther Leslie, who is Professor of Political Aesthetics in the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication at Birkbeck. Esther’s interests are largely related to political theories of aesthetics and culture and the poetics of science and technology, alongside an interest in expanded forms of animation, with publications that include the influential Hollywood Flatlands, Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (Verso, 2002). Topics for this episode include the film’s reflexive register and status as a commentary on Ghibli animation; Japanese political history, representations of violence, and the plane as a historical figure of beauty; what the film does with its portrayal of fantastical worlds and the certainty of dreams; The Wind Rises’ impressionistic visual style and its more ambivalent handling of the modernity/tradition division familiar from Studio Ghibli’s earlier work; and how discourses of fatalism allow Miyazaki’s film to be secure in showing us what we carry in our head, and how and when we fantasise.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**