The main character of "The Wind Rises" designs airplanes for a living. Jiro Horikoshi is portrayed as a gifted Japanese aeronautical engineer whose lifelong ambition is to create beautiful, efficient aircraft.
The 2013 Studio Ghibli film, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, is a fictionalized account of the real Jiro Horikoshi. In the story, Jiro joins Mitsubishi and works on aircraft designs during the years before World War II. His professional achievements include the development of fighter aircraft, culminating in designs associated with the Mitsubishi A5M and the famous A6M Zero.
The film blends Horikoshi's engineering career with fictional elements, including his romance with Nahoko Satomi and dreamlike meetings with Italian aircraft designer Giovanni Battista Caproni. That mixture can cause confusion: Jiro is not primarily shown as a pilot, mechanic, or ordinary airplane manufacturer. His role is to design aircraft, making "airplanes" the fair quiz answer.
The title comes from a line by French poet Paul Valéry: "The wind rises! We must try to live!"