The Wind Rises: A very gentle, beautiful film which doesn’t seem to know what it’s trying to be: a doomed love story between a man and a woman, a doomed love story between a man and an aeroplane, or a doomed love story between Japan and militarism. Like Porco Rosso, it’s a paean to aviation pioneers and the lost world between the wars, but much more serious and realistic – and so, much more maudlin. It’s set in the real world, which is still full of wonders (the mad 1920s behemoths like the Caproni Ca.60 and the Junkers G.38, realised in perfect Ghibli animation with that obsessive anime eye for detail) but, far more so, horrors: the Great Kanto Earthquake (again, realised in perfect Ghibli animation with that obsessive anime eye for detail), the inescapable knowledge that everything our quiet, unprepossessing protagonist is working for and obsessed with will serve only to help a monster do more damage before it is finally killed.

I am, of course, biased, but I don’t see much romance in Japanese aviation design. They built fragile, boring deathtraps, refined but in no way inspired, that were kings of their theatre for a year or two but failed to keep pace – and then they renounced the art forever, just when things were getting interesting.

Still, I’m very glad I watched it.