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Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic here with the Slate Spoiler Special podcast on The Wind Rises, the latest, and if we are to believe him, the last film from the Japanese animation director, Hayo Miyazaki. And joining me from Washington, D.C., Slate office, to talk about the Wind Rises is Dan Koi, senior editor at Slate. Hi, Dan.

Hey, Dana. Okay, so we have a lot on our plate here with the wind rises.

You just told me before we got started that you saw it a second time and had dramatically

different feelings than your first viewing.

So I'm about to hear you unfold those.

Before we get started, though, we should maybe establish you and I are both, we're not getting

a skeptic in the room here. You and I are both essentially venerators of Miyazaki's previous work, correct?

Die-hard Miyazaki fans.

I loved him before I had kids, and then having kids made me love him even more,

both for what having kids revealed about the children in his work

and for the way that my kids sparked

to and fell in love with a bunch of his movies.

Right.

I mean, I think we would both agree, although it doesn't really apply to the wind rises,

because this is not a kid's movie by any stretch, that he has this unique talent for tapping

into some sort of vein of childhood that we don't often see in movies or literature and any

work for children.

I agree. Although I think it maybe has slightly more to do with my reaction to this movie than

you might think. What has slightly more to do? His ability to tap into childhood as one of the

problems I ended up having with this movie was the essential like childlike status of its ostensible

...