This page contains unmarked spoilers. You Have Been Warned!
Film
- When Jiro is on the train after learning that Naoko is sick, he has tears falling down his cheeks onto the calculations he's writing.
- Kayo chewing out Jiro for being away from his wife to design his plane before breaking down crying saying that she sees Naoko as a sister and will eventually perish from TB, for she has seen the tragedy firsthand, being a doctor and all.
- The scene where Kayo fails to realize it was Naoko she saw walking down the road, only to find out moments after arriving at the house, and then finding a letter saying she's going back to the sanatorium to spare Jiro and the others the pain of watching her slowly succumb to her TB.Kayo: (sobbing) She wants us to remember her as she was.
- Jiro sensing the changing wind after the successful test flight, realizing that his wife is gone. He is unable to respond to the praises of the test pilot and his bosses.
- Jiro's last dream, where in the ashes and rubble of the war in which his planes were used, he meets with Caproni to discuss how his dreams were realized before seeing Naoko one last time.
- Naoko's death from tuberculosis becomes that much more moving after Isao Takahata, Miyazaki's friend and frequent collaborator, died five years after the film's release due to lung cancer. The disease caused him to have an Incurable Cough of Death not unlike Naoko.
- The English translation for the lyrics to "Hikoki Gumo"
, which plays during the end credits, is a massive tear jerker, it is extremely fitting song relating how Naoko lived her life and her eventual death.
