It doesn’t help that this is a very purposefully episodic film, divided into vignettes about modern Japanese family life. Takahata often worked better in a more serious register ( Grave of the Fireflies, Princess Kaguya), and his sparse visual style when compared to Miyazaki makes for a comedy that feels a little slight. Nestled between two of the biggest hits in the history of the company - Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away - is this family comedy from the underrated Isao Takahata, the co-founder of Ghibli, who doesn’t get the attention lavished on his longtime business partner Hayao Miyazaki. It’s a fun diversion, but thinner than the films above it on this list. Themes of identity and embracing, rather than repressing, our gifts are woven through an adventure that works relatively well yet lacks some of the magic in design and character that defines top-tier Ghibli. With echoes of Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Haru ends up in a world of cats, where she slowly starts to turn into herself. Based on the manga of the same name, The Cat Returns gives the magical cat named Baron from Whisper another adventure when he meets Haru, a shy girl who has the ability to talk to cats. Compared to the rest of the Ghibli catalogue, Hiroyuki Morita’s spin-off/sequel to Whisper of the Heart feels a little slight and not just because it runs only 75 minutes. Like all Studio Ghibli movies, it’s got some strong visuals, but it doesn’t hold your interest.Īlready this list is in the “pretty good” category with 20 films to go. At times it’s nearly incomprehensible and so narratively removed from the books that Le Guin was reportedly disappointed. Gorō Miyazaki would go on to direct a much better Ghibli film, but this one got away from him, probably owing to his lack of experience.
The problem was that Hayao Miyazaki was off working on Howl’s Moving Castle and so the project was handed off to his son, Gorō Miyazaki, directing here for the first time. The story goes that Hayao Miyazaki had been interested in adapting these stories since the early ’80s, but the author had been reticent about anyone adapting her books, changing her mind after the international success of Spirited Away.
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We are not counting Castle of Cagliostro, made before that, even though it was directed by Hayao Miyazaki.)Īrguably the only true dud in the Studio Ghibli catalogue is this very loose adaptation of the beloved Earthsea series of books by Ursula K. (A quick note: We are counting Nausicaa, which is technically not a Ghibli film but led to its foundation and has been reclaimed as such over the years. Take the list below with the awareness that nearly all of them are worth your time and differences in position are incredibly minute.
So, how does one begin to compare some of the best films ever made? How does one compare the lyricism of Princess Kaguya with the whimsy of Kiki’s Delivery Service with the world-building of Castle in the Sky? They’re all wonderful. In just under four decades, Studio Ghibli has made arguably a dozen films that could legitimately be called masterpieces.
It makes films that appeal to a wide demographic by refusing to talk down to children and allowing adults to explore their own feelings in unexpected ways. There’s no arguing that Studio Ghibli’s commitment to artistry and empathetic storytelling has transformed modern filmmaking. The work by Miyazaki, Takahata, and their team to blend fantasy and reality can be seen in the films of people as different as Guillermo del Toro, a vocal fan who blends fantasy and reality in his works, and Wes Anderson, who praised Miyazaki when talking about Isle of Dogs: “With Miyazaki, you get nature and you get moments of peace, a kind of rhythm that is not in the American animation tradition so much.” Their reach would extend far beyond Japan: Studio Ghibli influenced animators and live-action filmmakers around the world.
For the next three decades, Studio Ghibli went on to produce some of the most critically acclaimed and financially successful films in its home country of Japan, many of them the highest-grossing films in the country for the years they were released. In 1985, two friends and longtime collaborators - Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, fresh off the success of their recent project Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind - founded a company that would change animation as we know it. We are republishing it on the occasion of the launch of HBO Max, the platform upon which Studio Ghibli’s films are now streaming for the first time in the U.S. This article originally ran in November 2019.
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