Hayao Miyazaki has stated that his final film ‘How Do You Live?’, will be coming to theaters in Japan on July 14th, 2023. The legendary director has however stated that little to no promotional push will be put behind it, and he believes that “Deep down, I think this is what moviegoers latently desire.”; according to one of the film’s main producers Toshio Suzuki.

The rather unorthodox manner of announcing his final movie, is a bit confusing to a lot of people, but it’s to be expected if you follow any of his works, and watched his interviews. Miyazaki’s always been a very outspoken figure in the anime and manga world, and has a lot of skin in the game to back it up, too.

The promotion for the movie has indeed been more quiet than most people are used to when viewing news about movies in general. Studio Ghibli has only tweeted out a single movie poster for it, in December 2022, and Miyazaki discussed some details about it in 2017 in an interview, and that’s pretty much it. While fans aren’t completely left holding the bag waiting on info, they’re definitely isn’t an abundance of it either.

Hayao Miyazaki has on record saying that the film is a direct adaptation from a novel from 1937 with the same name, by author Genzaburo Yoshino. Miyazaki’s been working on the movie since 2016 after coming out of his previous retirement announcement, to release his film, The Wind Rises, and a short film named Boro the Caterpillar. He’s stated that the main reasoning behind this change in how he and the studio wants to release his final film, is because he doesn’t care too much for how Hollywood saturates the market every time they make a movie. He went as far as to criticize a recent unnamed mainstream flick that had 3 trailers put out for it, and proclaimed ”what moviegoer will want to go see the movie now that they know everything that it’s about after watching the trailers?”