In Studio Ghibli’s The Wind Rises, Hideaki Anno voices the aircraft designer Jirō Horikoshi.
Jirō is a fictionalized version of the real Japanese aeronautical engineer who designed the Mitsubishi A5M fighter and later the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. The film follows Jirō’s lifelong fascination with aviation, his engineering career, and his relationship with Nahoko Satomi.
The title comes from a line associated with Paul Valéry’s poem “The Graveyard by the Sea,” also used in Tatsuo Hori’s 1937 novel that inspired the film. Miyazaki combines this literary material with Horikoshi’s biography, so the result is historical fiction rather than a strict documentary.
Hideaki Anno is best known internationally as the creator and director of Neon Genesis Evangelion. His casting surprised some viewers because he is primarily an animator and director, not a conventional voice actor.