Somehow, I'm still cringe.

So the first part of the film discussed the effects of war, loss, and acceptance in typical ghibli fashion as Mahito lost his mother and struggled to move on past it. There's also a dash of classism, self-harm, and masculinity when Mahito went to the new school looking obviously like a rich kid, gets beat up for it, then hit himself with a rock in, what i assume, is either an attempt to not go school to avoid the other kids or to look to his father like he actually put up a fight and didnt just got away with light bruises in a misguided attempt to look tough/masculine.

In the second part he went into the tower world and there's the topic of death/life (with the warawara and the noble pelican), taboos, leaving a legacy behind (as the great granduncle wants to leave the world behind to Mahito and let him decide how to build it forward), self-worth (Mahito denying the offer and choosing to go back to the world because the scar was a sign of his "malice" which he thought could affect this new world), and plot thread of loss/acceptance is tied together as Mahito accepts Natsuko as his new mother and choose to return to the world.

And for the life of me I couldn't figure out how the whole thing ties together. It felt like there's a divide in the middle, around when Mahito found Natsuko then blacked out and met his great granduncle, where the films kind of shifts from one set of themes to another.

*mini aside*

(I also felt like the worldbuilding/settings kind of changed around here. Initially the world was an afterlife of sorts with dead people and warawara as reincarnated souls. Human visitors gets attacked by the pelicans unless guarded by the blue heron, a stand in for the reaper/boatman/charon who guides and guards souls to the underworld. Then at the end it turned into a world created by the great granduncle using the power of the stone, with the whole afterlife dealio just being discarded. Like, when the parakeets were first introduced they were at the blacksmith and it was implied they weren't meant to be there - so who occupied the blacksmith in the first place? The dead people? Were there other people there? I assume not since you need to get to the tower and there's the whole bit about the blue heron bringing you in so why would there be other people there? So who was in that house???)

(Also the parakeets were going to use himi to bargain for more power and stuff but the king just brought her up to the great granduncle, told him "yo, mahito did a taboo", then kinda left without asking anything before immediately sneaking back and destroying all the stones??? What was up with that???)

*end of aside*

Anyway, so I couldn't figure out how it all tied together until I remembered the original japanese name for the film.

"How do you live?"

And it clicked.

Mahito was struggling with that very question in the first part. His mother died. There's war. Life sucks. School sucks. How do you live?

And through all his adventures he kind of accepted all that and made peace with it. He made friends. He appreciated the people around them for who they are. He rejected his great granduncle's offer of a perfect world he can control in favour of the real world with all the people he loved, despite the war, the suffering, the evil, and everything. Himi rejected Mahito's offer of going to his time with him despite knowing her fate because she know that, regardless, she will have lived a happy life.

They answered the question - "How do you live?"