Hayao Miyazaki Cried When He Heard Kenshi Yonezu’s The Boy and the Heron Theme Song

The Boy and the Heron theme song artist Kenshi Yonezu revealed that he made Hayao Miyazaki cry with the song in a new interview for the upcoming film. He sat down with the Japanese voice actor for the Gray Heron, Masaki Suda, as he explained his production process for the “Spinning Globe” song, and just how scared he was to eventually play it:
“I really thought that I was going to die the most at the moment,” Yonezu said. “I went, “What do you think of this?” We had burned the song onto a CD, and we met in person. We played the song for him face-to-face. In a way, it felt like I was going to the executioner’s block. That’s how I felt. But, you know, seeing him sitting right there in front of me, listening to it… He even cried. I felt in that moment, I will never forget that sight.“

Kenshi Yonezu – Spinning Globe

Kenshi Yonezu’s “Spinning Globe” peaked at #3 on the Oricon charts and stayed on the charts for 15 weeks. The emotional song has over 17mn views on YouTube and was featured in the recent The Boy and the Heron Korean trailer. Alongside “Spinning Globe”‘s success, “KICK BACK” by Yonezu marked the first Japanese-language song to receive a gold certification by the RIAA. The often-enigmatic director Hayao Miyazaki had many other anecdotes about himself and The Boy and the Heron revealed in an interview with famed animator Toshiyuki Inoue.

GKIDS will distribute Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron in North America and recently revealed the trailer and cast for the English dubbed. The movie will be released on December 8, 2023. They give the film synopsis:
A young boy named Mahito
yearning for his mother
ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead.
There, death comes to an end,
and life finds a new beginning.
A semi-autobiographical fantasy
about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship,
from the mind of Hayao Miyazaki.