On one hand, it is one of the few studios whose name is a quality stamp in and by itself. But unlike Disney and Pixar it doesn't seem like they've managed to foster or acquire talent to continue the studio.
Who is left to continue the legacy?
- Hayao Miyazaki is 80, and likely won't be able to make more movies after this one.
- Isao Takahata (Only yesterday, Yamadas and Kaguya Hime) has passed away.
- Yoshifumi Kondo (whisper of the heart) was set to be a new generation for Ghibli, but tragically died in the late 90s.
- Hiromasa Yonebayashi (When Marnie was there, Arietty) left and started his own Studio.
And then there is Goro Miyazaki, who I think is being overly harshly criticized. I didn't enjoy Earthsea, but its not like other directors don't have misses in their early career[1]. I haven't seen Ronja, but I've heard good things about it and Up on Poppy Hill is as great as any Ghibli film. Earwig and the Witch doesn't look all that great, but it is a strait-to-tv movie being released in cinema. But even so, that isn't a strong contender for continuing Ghibli.
So what is left? Is the studio gonna die out?
[1] I went to see a Makoto Shinkai (Your Name) movie festival, and some of his early work was less than impressive.
Ghibli has always been synonymous with Miyazaki and Takahata. I think it's fine for the studio to fade away or disband after the two founders exit the stage, their legacy will endure.
Goro's story is tragic. By all accounts Miyazaki is far from the perfect father, to put it mildly, and it's difficult enough to live up to the reputation of someone like Miyazaki even under the best circumstances. The only example I can think of where a son matches the reputation of a 1st rate artist father is the Scarlatti family. Although I think Goro has redeemed some of his reputation with Poppy hill.
Speaking of Shinkai, his Children who Chase Lost Voices is the finest Miyazaki/Ghibli pastiche I have ever seen, and very underrated. It may lack the emotional depth of Miyazaki's best works, but then that's something Miyazaki himself sometimes failed to do. As a homage it certainly is more than adequate.
Clint Eastwood is 11 years older than Miyazaki and still directs movies. I wouldn't be surprised if Miyazaki comes back for yet another movie in a few years!
On the other hand, Ghibli owns a bunch of highly valuable IP. When it comes to business, they could easily survive for decades selling stuffed Totoro and Catbus figures.
I don't think Miyazaki will allow his works to be adapted or remade during his lifetime, but once he's gone the new management might find it hard to resist licensing deals with Hollywood. I for one would love to see someone like Denis Villeneuve take a stab at Nausicaa (the manga version, not the anime) one day. Due to time and budget constraints, Miyazaki's own film barely scratches the surface of the epic saga he had envisioned.
Let it die, everything else you list, Disney/Pixar are shadows of their former self.
Things don't have to go on forever and ever, the things they made are still great and at least then they won't be ruined like the great works of Pixar are with sequels.
I'd rather never have another Ghibli movie ever again than have them become what Disney and Pixar are today.
Considering Ghibli hasn't been active in cel-based animation production for a few years in the feature film space, it's entirely possible that after this next movie they won't be doing much cel animation anymore (unless Miyazaki Hayao ends up making another movie when he's 90). Though it would be great if they could use their resources to become an incubator or sorts, to find talent that might be able to keep the spirit alive.
Goro probably needs to find his own niche, he had the pressure on him too early in his career. His work inside Ghibli the last few years also has been computer animation based, so it's clear that Ghibli as a company overall is actually larger and more flexible than what it sounds like in these Miyazaki Hayao-focused articles.
I'm curious of others' thoughts on Shinkai's "Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho" (which was given the unfortunate title of "The Place Promised in our Early Days" ) which was Shinkai's first feature-length work. I actually resonated quite a bit with the characters and their project, though I could see how the angst that develops between them could be construed as overblown. It's not long enough of a movie to fully develop the "what" and "why" but I think it covers the most critical aspects. It's also quite pretty, but that's something shared with everything else he's worked on- the focus in particular on light and reflection, and skies. I met him at a convention a while back and asked about what influenced his style of handling light and color in skies and his answer was basically that he used to spend a lot of time outside (which makes sense, he's from Nagano which is quite mountainous and known for being very scenic).
Anyway, Shinkai has only ever treated one subject- distance between people- from various angles, and has only directed films he also wrote himself.
Not surprising, but sort of disappointing that the writer thinks that modern Japanese culture so heavily defined by its interactions with the West, esp. from WWII. It's not that it's untrue or incorrect, it's just that Japan is more complicated than that. Lots of old paradoxes and influences that don't really lend themselves to a neat thesis. You're doomed to fall short, like when you try to explain a beautiful dream to someone who didn't see it.
A lot of USA's current culture is from our interactions with Japan and Germany from WW2. I mean... Capt. America, Superman, Wonder Woman to name a few... but also Rosie the Riveter, Baby Boomers (and their children: the Echo Boomers), etc. etc...
It turns out that WW2 was a big cultural event, no matter what side you fought on.
>that modern Japanese culture so heavily defined by its interactions with the West
It's maybe a small detail: The hero picture of the article shows Miyazaki in front of his atelier near Studio Ghibli with an old German mailbox ("Postkasten") next to him.
Princess Mononoke changed my life. It was the first Ghibli film I saw, and I only saw it for the first time about a year ago (yes, I'm aware I'm rather late to the party). Every preconception I had about how a movie had to be made, or how stories ought to be told, was completely swept away. One of those moments where I can clearly delineate the person I was before watching from the person I was after.
Miyazaki is a master of his craft. I aspire to tell stories like him one day.
The film had a profound impact on my teenage years as well after watching it late one night on satellite HBO. I had the soundtrack on my pre-iPod Archos and torrented all of Ghibli's other films on 56k dialup.
It kept me involved in learning Japanese and eventually teaching English in Hokkaido. I even tried building a film and video startup contemporaneously with YouTube, but without the skills and VC connections.
I also made a bunch of dumb films with my friends that would embarrass me if I found them today. The memories are good, though.
I bought Miramax's (the US distributor) old marketing website for Princess Mononoke when they let it expire in 2002, and I kept it online (mostly) :
This year I find myself building a film-related startup yet again, but now with 15+ years of experience at my back and funds from an IPO exit. Maybe I'll succeed. If I do, I'll have to credit Miyazaki and Mononoke Hime in part for inspiring my journey.
I think I can say the same, although I first watched it in an artsy downtown theater at a live screening 20+ years ago when it was first released in the US with English dubbing.
His son Goro Miyazaki's movies haven't been as well-received as his own movies, I guess he can't let his baby go knowing it won't do as well without him.
That's in itself a very Japanese thing - making a big declaration, that you "will retire for good, no coming back, ever", but let 3-4 years pass and you're back as if you've never made the declaration.
Also happens a lot with Japanese pop bands, they do huge "farewell" shows, there is monthlong talk about how they'll split and pursue other careers, but what actually happens they just take a 1-2 year break.
I've come to the conclusion that the "we retire" trick is simply a marketing ploy because it gets the attention of the Japanese domestic audience like nothing else.
I just don't get articles like this. Whatever content there is - interview, biography and essay about his work - is blown into a thousand pieces and smeared across 10 pages. How is this enjoyable to anyone?
it's based on a novel, "How Do You Live?" by Genzaburo Yoshino. this link is provided in the article, a translation was apparently published in anticipation.
Neither Miyazaki nor Suzuki will share much about the forthcoming film, beyond the fact that it is based on a 1937 novel by Genzaburo Yoshino. The story concerns a 15-year-old boy in Tokyo, small for his age and fond of mischief, whose father has recently died. In the English translation by Bruno Navasky, published in October, the boy gazes out at the city and is overwhelmed: “The watching self, the self being watched, and furthermore the self becoming conscious of all this, the self observing itself by itself, from afar, all those various selves overlapped in his heart, and suddenly he began to feel dizzy.” The actual content of the film could be anything — Suzuki has described it as “fantasy on a grand scale” — since Miyazaki doesn’t so much borrow stories as liberate them from their origins. (In the pseudobiographical “The Wind Rises,” he gives the real-life Jiro Horikoshi a fictional wife dying of tuberculosis.) All Suzuki will share is that he recognizes himself in one of the characters, who is not human.
It is time. Miyazaki rubs the top of his head and lights a cigarette, one of his signature king-size, charcoal-filtered Seven Stars. I am allowed one last question. “The title of your next film is ‘How Do You Live?,’” I say. “Will you give us the answer?”
The smile comes only after he speaks: “I am making this movie because I do not have the answer.”
It was a magical and surreal experience when I was first introduced to Miyazaki's work.
Shortly after arriving at my duty station in Okinawa I pushed to be assigned to the 31st MEU. Pretty soon I found myself in mainland Japan at the Sasebo naval base. A Marine friend of mine had the initiative to sign a bunch of us up for a bus trip to Nagasaki for the day. The drive was about an hour and a half and the entertainment during the trip was Castle in the Sky. I was deeply moved watching both the film and the picturesque hilly southern Japanese country side roll by. I still feel moved by the experience today.
> Miyazaki’s movies, with their warplanes and intrusions of Western décor and dress, keep circling back to the traumatic moment when Japan, which until the mid-19th century had kept itself closed off to the outside world, was forced to embrace the West and Western values.
This is downright wrong, the Meiji Restoration was when Japan absorbed westernization, not to mention their partial acceptance of Christianity during Imjin War, they were said to be the most open to conversion before suddenly persecuting the Jesuit priests, yet one of the daimyo (renamed Augustine) who was instrumental in the Korean invasion was a devout Christian and was said to have adopted a devout Korean Christian woman, who was certainly Christian enough to be persecuted and is worshipped in both Korea and Japan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Ota
It is not outright wrong, just incomplete, and refers to the period of seclusion between 1639 and 1853.
In all, 16th century European Jesuits (and to a much lesser extend: Franciscians) in Japan are a footnote in history, with Daimyo's specifically adapting Christianity in order to have better trade relations (and thus easier access to firearms) with the Portugese (and later Spainards). Stories of high daimyos exclusively converting to Christianity were great success story fodder for the Jesuits to write home to European courts and ask for more money for their mission (and in fact: such tractats and letters have survived, and are available in university libraries today. The most colourful of these writings come from Luís Fróis).
Japanese common-people understanding of Christianity was highly syncretised even back then (as Jesuits adapted Christian stories into plays, and matched story tropes and experiences of their Japanese audience, one famous example is Jesus' apostels morphing into samurai serving their daimyo Jesus). These religious ideas became even more intertwined when Jesuits were not around (e.g. Mary often was fused with Amida Buddha), and when Christianity was banned and Christians were persecuted, several tiny groups were able to survive in hiding (hanare kirishitan) and develop their own dogma which eventually diverged so much from original Christianity that when they resurfaced in the late 1800s, Western Christians did not accept them as compatible. These hanare kirishitan were at risk of extinction in the 1990s.
There is no indication of widespread adoption of Christianity, especially exclusive Christianity even in original Jesuit sources. What did happen was that Christianity was mostly understood as yet another Buddhist sect for most of its 16th century presence. When the Shogunate decided that they weren't (and the Franciscians demanded Spanish military fortifications in Japan, among other incidents), Japanese authorities decided to shut down Christianity.
The Tokugawa era is sometimes described as "Japan's second medieval age", which ended - abruptly so - with Perry's show of force. The assessment that Japan only started westernisation in the aftermath of a traumatic event (the landing of Perry's steam-powered warships in a quasi-medieval society is described by then-living Japanese authors much like we today would write about extraterrestial invasion) is pretty fair.
My understanding is that during the Meiji period Japan imported wholesale those aspects of Western material and political culture that would allow them to achieve some level of parity with Western powers. This is not quite the same thing as “embracing Western values”. And even on that note, I’d question the extent to which postwar Japan has actually adopted Western liberalism as its own value system.
I’ve been watching these movies recently simply because they are so popular — I feel obligated to see them. I was bored by my neighbor totoro. But kikis delivery service absolutely blew me away and I would call it one of the best movies ever made. It astounded me. The story is perfectly paced and the characters mesh with each other, the setting and the story absolutely perfectly. It’s extremely beautiful visually. It should be mandatory viewing in the way that to kill a mockingbird is mandatory reading.
He has said multiple times that the movie that he has been working on will be his "Final Fantasy" only to make another movie because unless Hayao himself works on the movie no one will watch it. This makes his Studio have an incredible risk if he stops making movies.
Long read, but some real gems in there. The ideas that seem to animate Miyazaki’s movies, if you’ll pardon the pun, feel a lot like the ideas that animate most of Jordan Peterson’s lectures. Life is a relentless and unmitigated tragedy, and yet we manage to find (or create!) beauty and wonder all over the place. The author seems to think this acute awareness of the paradox that is life comes from growing up in postwar Japan; I can see how that experience might have been a major influence.
[+] [-] lvass|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wodenokoto|4 years ago|reply
On one hand, it is one of the few studios whose name is a quality stamp in and by itself. But unlike Disney and Pixar it doesn't seem like they've managed to foster or acquire talent to continue the studio.
Who is left to continue the legacy?
- Hayao Miyazaki is 80, and likely won't be able to make more movies after this one.
- Isao Takahata (Only yesterday, Yamadas and Kaguya Hime) has passed away.
- Yoshifumi Kondo (whisper of the heart) was set to be a new generation for Ghibli, but tragically died in the late 90s.
- Hiromasa Yonebayashi (When Marnie was there, Arietty) left and started his own Studio.
And then there is Goro Miyazaki, who I think is being overly harshly criticized. I didn't enjoy Earthsea, but its not like other directors don't have misses in their early career[1]. I haven't seen Ronja, but I've heard good things about it and Up on Poppy Hill is as great as any Ghibli film. Earwig and the Witch doesn't look all that great, but it is a strait-to-tv movie being released in cinema. But even so, that isn't a strong contender for continuing Ghibli.
So what is left? Is the studio gonna die out?
[1] I went to see a Makoto Shinkai (Your Name) movie festival, and some of his early work was less than impressive.
[+] [-] Aidevah|4 years ago|reply
Goro's story is tragic. By all accounts Miyazaki is far from the perfect father, to put it mildly, and it's difficult enough to live up to the reputation of someone like Miyazaki even under the best circumstances. The only example I can think of where a son matches the reputation of a 1st rate artist father is the Scarlatti family. Although I think Goro has redeemed some of his reputation with Poppy hill.
Speaking of Shinkai, his Children who Chase Lost Voices is the finest Miyazaki/Ghibli pastiche I have ever seen, and very underrated. It may lack the emotional depth of Miyazaki's best works, but then that's something Miyazaki himself sometimes failed to do. As a homage it certainly is more than adequate.
[+] [-] kijin|4 years ago|reply
On the other hand, Ghibli owns a bunch of highly valuable IP. When it comes to business, they could easily survive for decades selling stuffed Totoro and Catbus figures.
I don't think Miyazaki will allow his works to be adapted or remade during his lifetime, but once he's gone the new management might find it hard to resist licensing deals with Hollywood. I for one would love to see someone like Denis Villeneuve take a stab at Nausicaa (the manga version, not the anime) one day. Due to time and budget constraints, Miyazaki's own film barely scratches the surface of the epic saga he had envisioned.
[+] [-] whywhywhywhy|4 years ago|reply
Let it die, everything else you list, Disney/Pixar are shadows of their former self.
Things don't have to go on forever and ever, the things they made are still great and at least then they won't be ruined like the great works of Pixar are with sequels.
I'd rather never have another Ghibli movie ever again than have them become what Disney and Pixar are today.
[+] [-] jinto36|4 years ago|reply
Goro probably needs to find his own niche, he had the pressure on him too early in his career. His work inside Ghibli the last few years also has been computer animation based, so it's clear that Ghibli as a company overall is actually larger and more flexible than what it sounds like in these Miyazaki Hayao-focused articles.
I'm curious of others' thoughts on Shinkai's "Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho" (which was given the unfortunate title of "The Place Promised in our Early Days" ) which was Shinkai's first feature-length work. I actually resonated quite a bit with the characters and their project, though I could see how the angst that develops between them could be construed as overblown. It's not long enough of a movie to fully develop the "what" and "why" but I think it covers the most critical aspects. It's also quite pretty, but that's something shared with everything else he's worked on- the focus in particular on light and reflection, and skies. I met him at a convention a while back and asked about what influenced his style of handling light and color in skies and his answer was basically that he used to spend a lot of time outside (which makes sense, he's from Nagano which is quite mountainous and known for being very scenic). Anyway, Shinkai has only ever treated one subject- distance between people- from various angles, and has only directed films he also wrote himself.
[+] [-] vatotemking|4 years ago|reply
How I wish Satoshi Kon is still around making great films...
[+] [-] de_nied|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aeolun|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] busterarm|4 years ago|reply
whaaaaa? Everything that he's written (which is everything except his first two and fifth short film) has hit.
[+] [-] nihonde|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragontamer|4 years ago|reply
It turns out that WW2 was a big cultural event, no matter what side you fought on.
[+] [-] Sophistifunk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tauchunfall|4 years ago|reply
It's maybe a small detail: The hero picture of the article shows Miyazaki in front of his atelier near Studio Ghibli with an old German mailbox ("Postkasten") next to him.
[+] [-] mkaic|4 years ago|reply
Miyazaki is a master of his craft. I aspire to tell stories like him one day.
[+] [-] echelon|4 years ago|reply
It kept me involved in learning Japanese and eventually teaching English in Hokkaido. I even tried building a film and video startup contemporaneously with YouTube, but without the skills and VC connections.
I also made a bunch of dumb films with my friends that would embarrass me if I found them today. The memories are good, though.
I bought Miramax's (the US distributor) old marketing website for Princess Mononoke when they let it expire in 2002, and I kept it online (mostly) :
http://www.princess-mononoke.com
This year I find myself building a film-related startup yet again, but now with 15+ years of experience at my back and funds from an IPO exit. Maybe I'll succeed. If I do, I'll have to credit Miyazaki and Mononoke Hime in part for inspiring my journey.
[+] [-] iSnow|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkhdigital|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] me_me_me|4 years ago|reply
I think I know what you mean, for me it was Kill Bill.
Its like something clicked in my head and I have understood what a good movie/story is. And I never just mindlessly watched a movie again.
[+] [-] chairhairair|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] confidantlake|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Andrew_nenakhov|4 years ago|reply
(Not that I mind, we don't have enough Ghibli movies.)
[+] [-] a_bonobo|4 years ago|reply
I found this exchange between a then-retired Hayao Miyazaki and a Japanese tabloid reporter very funny: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/11/hayao-miyazaki-asked-about...
[+] [-] suction|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] baby|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ruined|4 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/books/review/how-do-you-l...
[+] [-] WantonQuantum|4 years ago|reply
Info about the movie is right at the bottom:
Neither Miyazaki nor Suzuki will share much about the forthcoming film, beyond the fact that it is based on a 1937 novel by Genzaburo Yoshino. The story concerns a 15-year-old boy in Tokyo, small for his age and fond of mischief, whose father has recently died. In the English translation by Bruno Navasky, published in October, the boy gazes out at the city and is overwhelmed: “The watching self, the self being watched, and furthermore the self becoming conscious of all this, the self observing itself by itself, from afar, all those various selves overlapped in his heart, and suddenly he began to feel dizzy.” The actual content of the film could be anything — Suzuki has described it as “fantasy on a grand scale” — since Miyazaki doesn’t so much borrow stories as liberate them from their origins. (In the pseudobiographical “The Wind Rises,” he gives the real-life Jiro Horikoshi a fictional wife dying of tuberculosis.) All Suzuki will share is that he recognizes himself in one of the characters, who is not human.
It is time. Miyazaki rubs the top of his head and lights a cigarette, one of his signature king-size, charcoal-filtered Seven Stars. I am allowed one last question. “The title of your next film is ‘How Do You Live?,’” I say. “Will you give us the answer?”
The smile comes only after he speaks: “I am making this movie because I do not have the answer.”
[+] [-] rodgerd|4 years ago|reply
He won't really retire until he's dead, I suspect, or so ill he's no longer capable of working. He can't not tell stories.
[+] [-] fouadf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|4 years ago|reply
Shortly after arriving at my duty station in Okinawa I pushed to be assigned to the 31st MEU. Pretty soon I found myself in mainland Japan at the Sasebo naval base. A Marine friend of mine had the initiative to sign a bunch of us up for a bus trip to Nagasaki for the day. The drive was about an hour and a half and the entertainment during the trip was Castle in the Sky. I was deeply moved watching both the film and the picturesque hilly southern Japanese country side roll by. I still feel moved by the experience today.
[+] [-] Aeolun|4 years ago|reply
I feel like Miyazaki has as much chance of not making any films any more as I have of stopping to program.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] GhettoComputers|4 years ago|reply
This is downright wrong, the Meiji Restoration was when Japan absorbed westernization, not to mention their partial acceptance of Christianity during Imjin War, they were said to be the most open to conversion before suddenly persecuting the Jesuit priests, yet one of the daimyo (renamed Augustine) who was instrumental in the Korean invasion was a devout Christian and was said to have adopted a devout Korean Christian woman, who was certainly Christian enough to be persecuted and is worshipped in both Korea and Japan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Ota
[+] [-] DocTomoe|4 years ago|reply
In all, 16th century European Jesuits (and to a much lesser extend: Franciscians) in Japan are a footnote in history, with Daimyo's specifically adapting Christianity in order to have better trade relations (and thus easier access to firearms) with the Portugese (and later Spainards). Stories of high daimyos exclusively converting to Christianity were great success story fodder for the Jesuits to write home to European courts and ask for more money for their mission (and in fact: such tractats and letters have survived, and are available in university libraries today. The most colourful of these writings come from Luís Fróis).
Japanese common-people understanding of Christianity was highly syncretised even back then (as Jesuits adapted Christian stories into plays, and matched story tropes and experiences of their Japanese audience, one famous example is Jesus' apostels morphing into samurai serving their daimyo Jesus). These religious ideas became even more intertwined when Jesuits were not around (e.g. Mary often was fused with Amida Buddha), and when Christianity was banned and Christians were persecuted, several tiny groups were able to survive in hiding (hanare kirishitan) and develop their own dogma which eventually diverged so much from original Christianity that when they resurfaced in the late 1800s, Western Christians did not accept them as compatible. These hanare kirishitan were at risk of extinction in the 1990s.
There is no indication of widespread adoption of Christianity, especially exclusive Christianity even in original Jesuit sources. What did happen was that Christianity was mostly understood as yet another Buddhist sect for most of its 16th century presence. When the Shogunate decided that they weren't (and the Franciscians demanded Spanish military fortifications in Japan, among other incidents), Japanese authorities decided to shut down Christianity.
The Tokugawa era is sometimes described as "Japan's second medieval age", which ended - abruptly so - with Perry's show of force. The assessment that Japan only started westernisation in the aftermath of a traumatic event (the landing of Perry's steam-powered warships in a quasi-medieval society is described by then-living Japanese authors much like we today would write about extraterrestial invasion) is pretty fair.
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