#the rain heron

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: THE RAIN HERON by Robbie Arnott.*

The People have Spoken, so I'm reading THE RAIN HERON next! This one's been on my radar for a while, although I'm glad I waited (because I like this cover variant much more than the first variant that I saw).

*Featuring Dye Mad Yarns' Great Lakes Collection moonlighting as a background.

[flourmelon]

“I remembered bloody waves. I remembered the freshening scent of pine trees, the dark height of a mountain, how a gun felt as it erupted in my fingers. Then I looked again at the boy, and approached him the way one should approach a broken child—with concern, a net of safety, and something like love.”

The Rain Heron

—Robbie Arnott

12.26.2022

🌧️🔫🦢🚲🌾

[elliepassmore]

The Rain Heron review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: fantasy, multiple POVs, stories within stories, weird fiction This is a fun, short read that I picked up as a spur-of-the-moment thing. I really enjoyed the book and getting the different POVs and stories throughout it. It's written in a slightly unusual style in that each 'part' tells someone else's story, but they all fit together to create the overarching 'plot'...in as much as there is a 'plot' vs. character arcs that drive the story. We start off with a brief story about a farmer whose luck changes after the rain heron begins stopping by their farm, and how their luck reverses almost as quickly. It seems unconnected from the rest of the book, aside from the rain heron, but it provides some good context into the bird's nature as well as to the theme of the book. Part 1 follows a woman who lives in the woods outside of a town and only ever interacts with a man who she trades with and sometimes the man's son. As the description says, Ren's life is majorly disrupted when the army comes looking for a mystical bird. Ren really gets dealt a bad hand and there's definitely some brutality to what happens in this part. Ren is a good character to follow. She's content in her quiet life and then full of righteous, defensive anger over what the army has done and does. The second part follows a character that seems wholly disconnected from the first part of the story. The inclusion of this part was a clever move on Arnott's part since it generated both a backstory and some empathy for Zoe. I also really liked getting to see some of the other magic in the book's world, and the juxtaposition of the frozen north against the woods of the rest of the book was interesting. Parts 3 and 4 bring us back to the woods where we left Ren, the army, + others, only in the aftermath of everything in part 1. Despite the interruption, things pickup immediately where they left off but follow the army's healer, Daniel, instead. As someone who was meant to be a doctor, he struggles with everything that happened in part 1 and the devolution of the situation at the very end. At the same time, he's loyal to his commander because she's the reason he survived the war. The last part focuses on the army commander, Harker, as she deals with everything that has happened. This is really the strongest character arc of the four parts, and it feels more like an arc vs. a character study, though Ren does get somewhat of an arc in part 1. Harker really considers what she's done and whether it was truly necessary to do it and what she wants to do next. I actually came to like Harker in a complicated sort of way, and I felt sorry about some of the stuff she goes through. Arnott writes in a really interesting manner. I like the prose of the book and how things are worded. It reminds me a bit of the style in Annihilation and Empress of Salt and Fortune. This is a good book if you're looking for a short read set in a magical/dystopian world.

[juniper-clan]

Moon 14: Birth of Venus

(AKA the twins!)

PREVIOUS l NEXT

[dandeyrain]

i've been rotating the "this doesn't make any sense!" response to boy and the heron in my head and i wonder how much of it comes down to like...the kind of audience that engages with ghibli movies vs the kind of audience that mostly only engages with weird art movies vs the kind of audience that only really engages with blockbusters and marvel movies, and the overlap of those groups in the theater.

because, like, the boy and the heron is far and away more straightforward, from a plot perspective, than a lot of other Weird Extremely Personal Art Movies i've seen and love, but it IS a Weird Extremely Personal Art Movie even so. usually the only people seeing Weird Extremely Personal Art Movies, especially in theaters, are people who like that and expect that and have seen those types of films before and are therefore capable of engaging with them even when things aren't as clear as they'd be in an average blockbuster flick. like, nobody who only cares about Cinema to the extent of marvel movies and MAYBE john wick is going to see beau is afraid, and if they did they wouldn't have the tools to engage with such a dream-logicy movie. it would just be a weird thing that doesnt make sense to them, at least until they worked their media engagement muscles with other weird films. there's a lot of self-selection to the kind of person who usually sees these kind of movies.

while boy and the heron is weirder and more complex than a lot of other ghibli movies, as far as weird art films go it is incredibly, INCREDIBLY straightfoward. every weird plot point is explained very clearly to the audience, very little is up for interpretation from a strictly "what was the plot" point of view. boy loses mother. father remarries and moves the family. boy struggles to contend with grief. boy is pulled into a magical world by an old man who wants to use him. time is weird and fucked up in the magical world, but the movie is going to go out of it's way to highlight who's who and make it clear how the time travel works and the characters' relations to one another. the boy refuses to take over the magical world because he wants to live in the real world with the real people he loves. boy leaves the magical world having learned an important lesson about moving on. but the boy and the heron trusts its audience, doesn't handhold, and expects the audience to engage seriously and with focus to its plot and characters and stories.

a lot of people never watch movies like that! a lot of people are used to uncomplicated superhero movies and romcoms and that's it. the difference is that those people were never going to see beau is afraid, so the discussion about that movie instead comes from people who have the tools to engage with it. but because of the aesthetic-ification of ghibli, a lot of people who don't Do art films but are really into the aesthetics of cute little guys and girls in pretty dresses went to this art film and were confused that it was weird and dream-like and dark and strange and requires more of its audience than just passively watching.

anyway there's nothing wrong with not having the muscles to engage with weird art films, though i do think everyone should challenge themselves with the kind of stuff they watch. there's nothing wrong with preferring simple straightforward uncomplicated plotlines. but it is really interesting seeing people talk about the movie like it's insanely weird and doesnt make any sense meanwhile me and the friends i've chatted with about who DO have experience with this kind of film all feel insane because the movie is SO clear and SO straightforward by the standards we're used to. its just a neat crossover re: the kinds of movie fans that exist

[chiropteracupola]

yes that's right it's a

TINY KEITH AND EWEN ACTUAL REAL SCOTLAND ADVENTURE!

Keith at what remains of Fort William

2. Keith in Fort Augustus (with a thematically appropriate rose branch)

3. Ewen in the woods somewhere outside Fort Augustus

4. Ewen at Holyrood Palace

5. Keith in the woods somewhere outside Fort Augustus

6. Ewen in the woods somewhere outside Fort Augustus

7-9. Keith at Edinburgh Castle

10. Ewen at Edinburgh Castle

[faultsofyouth]

I did not realize the boy and the heron was the new ghibli film, I thought that short story where that boy leaves his disabled younger brother to die in a thunderstorm just went viral for no reason at all

[sundial-girl]

Have a frog

[graveyardrabbit]

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

hello fellow denizens of our beloved hellsite, please help me select my next book to read based on ZERO propaganda, only titles and cover vibes. here are The Options:

and here they are, all lined up and waiting:

help me, button-pressing site, you're my only hope!!

[birdmenmanga]

umbrella

@omo321 actually asked the same thing! Here it is:

It's a birdmen drawing of my two favorite guys, karasuma and sagisawa... sagisawa's heraldic bird is a heron, and his big narrative motif is rain, and that's tied to depression and PTSD... I also saw pictures of black herons doing their canopy feeding at the time and everything clicked together for me you know. Using darkness to lure others to you...

The thing about Sagisawa is that he tends to isolate himself from others when he needs it the absolute most, and when he was going through it Karasuma was put in this strange situation where he was one of the two people with Sagisawa's phone number in his time of need, and could actually reach him in the depths of his depression. (Umino, who was the other person with Sagisawa's number, professed that she was no good at serious conversations and tended to avoid these topics because she felt she couldn't navigate them properly.)

At the same time, balloon released another vocaloid song called Hana ni Kaze. Really this whole illustration is a love letter to that song, if I'm being perfectly honest.

Besides being a regular balloon banger, I really love the video that avogado6 did for it (avogado6 also never misses tbh). The idea of parallel tracks, saying one thing while meaning another, is definitely not new. You see it a bunch of times with the kanji saying one thing but kana reading as something else in manga, for example. But I think it's so fascinating that the parallel tracks in this song is the lyrics saying one thing, and then the sign language saying another.

Like I think this is just crazy... you're going to SAY "we escape from this empty town" out loud, this detached statement, while your actions are telegraphing the personal and emotional "I want to be with you forever"???? I dunno how anyone expects me to be normal about this.

Anyways the part of the lyrics in this song that REALLY made it click for me was this:

As happy as I am that Sagisawa got his shit together in birdmen, I do really enjoy thinking about like. well. what if he didn't though. what if he knew that he could use his depression to pull karasuma back to him, and with that knowledge stopped himself from walking towards the light? what if karasuma knew that too and was consigned to that? what if they had a toxic yaoi thing going on basically. I am stuffing olives into my mouth in the back of the kitchen btw. nobody else thinks this about these two characters much less ships them together except the like. 4 people I convinced but well if you read birdmen I'm sure you'd see my vision

[ WIP game! ]

[dk-thrive]

Don’t be fooled, these lines were not written by me but, one day by a heron or a shower of rain, another by an aspen. A hint of love was enough to set them alight.

— Phillippe Jaccottet, from “Windblown Fragments,” trans. C. K. Snead, Sport 38 (Winter 2010) (via Vale of Soul Making)

[waitineedaname]

been listening to a lot of ghibli soundtracks lately and tbh i think the boy and the heron might have the best all around soundtrack simply by virtue of having the most songs that give me chills

[onepieceanimals]

Bye bye to all these amazing animals 😭😭

[dandeyrain]

i genuinely don't mean this in a like. condescending way. but reading people talk about how Confusing and Nonsensical and Overpacked boy and the heron is make me feel insane. every single plot point is clearly spelled out; frankly, one of my only critiques of the movie is that i wish they'd left some of it LESS clear. yes, the second half is rich in dreamlike fantasy, but the story never breaks its own rules, and before every major reveal in the fantasy world theres an extremely obvious explanation — almost too on the nose to even call it foreshadowing — from somebody. like i just don't understand how anybody finds it impossibly confusing and weird and bad to engage with

[kigisu]