The Wind Rises is a beautiful (both visually and narratively) film that exemplifies the results of a well crafted protagonist with a strong and clear need.

Jiro idolizes planes of all types, sizes and origins, and equally so those who fly, design and create them. However his poor eyesight means he’ll never fly one, leaving him with the burning desire to create the greatest plane in existence.

Through snapshots of Jiro’s life, from a young man to an established engineer, we see how this burning dream develops (established quite cleverly through his actual dreams, in which visits and discusses his love for air crafts with his hero, the greatest aerospace engineer of the age, Caproni) and we see how nothing will get in the way of him realizing this dream. 

He travels the world, works with different teams and with different resources to. Along the way he falls in love, gets engaged and eventually marries Nahoko, a terminally ill young woman. Yet Jiro still spends all of his time working on his plans. Jiro’s plans and designs for his planes are too ambitious to match the resources and abilities of the current day’s engineering capabilities, which results in failure after failure. Yet he persists.

When the moment finally comes that Jiro creates the greatest plane of his time, we feel the success as if it was our own. We've seen the literal lengths he goes to, as he travels the world for this dream. We’ve witnessed the years in which he continuously failed. We’ve cursed him as he sacrificed his own happiness, precious time with his wife, all to achieve his dream. We understand and in fact witnessed how burning his dream or need is.

In many ways this film exemplifies the the first two portions of Dan Harmon’s story circle perfectly: You and Need. The establishing of the protagonist(s) who’s perspective the audience is to take and the exposition of the problem that this character needs to solve. 

As the early building blocks of the film are established well, the proceeding pieces fall into place effortlessly. Because the need is robust and excellently designed, the return (or resolution), is equally so. 

Jiro’s journey teaches us the spectacular results of establishing well crafted characters whose’s  needs and desires are well established, understood and built upon through out the story. The Wind Rises: a truly masterful narrative with much to learn from.