The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Animation, Fantasy, Drama
The Kernel take
A 91 Kernel Score ("Universal Acclaim," 95/5/0 spread) makes The Boy and the Heron one of the best-reviewed animated films in this catalog. Its reported $50M budget is genuinely uncertain — sourced from a single listing rather than independently confirmed — but even taking that figure at face value, its $289.8M worldwide gross is roughly 5.8× that number, a strong result for a subtitled, arthouse-adjacent anime release.
Director track record: Hayao Miyazaki
The Boy and the Heron's 91 is comfortably above Hayao Miyazaki's 82.5-point career average across these ten films, though not far ahead of his other late-career high points like My Neighbor Totoro (87) and Ponyo (86).
Lead track record: Soma Santoki
Soma Santoki's filmography in this sample begins and ends with The Boy and the Heron itself, so there's no prior or later role to compare its 91 score against — this was his screen debut.
Box office
Budget $50M · Box office $289.8M
A steep -57.6% second-weekend drop is a normal falloff for a big wide-release opening; The Boy and the Heron's $13.01M opening weekend led to a 3.6× domestic multiplier and a $47.3M final domestic total — solid, unremarkable legs for a major theatrical anime release.