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Japanese company marks four decades of animated magic

JAPAN’S Oscar-winning anime house Studio Ghibli turns 40 this month. Here are the studio’s top five films that have delighted fans over the decades: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) Studio Ghibli was founded in 1985, but this post-apocalyptic story featuring a young, independent princess curious about giant insects is considered its first film. It was based on a comic strip series that Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki wrote for a magazine targeted at anime fans. Set 1,000 years after a war that destroyed human civilisation, the story takes place in a valley protected from toxic air emitted from poisonous forests. Miyazaki won critical acclaim and a J APAN’S Studio Ghibli turns 40 this month with two Oscars and legions of fans young and old won over by its complex plots and fantastical hand-drawn animation. But the future is uncertain, with latest hit The Boy and the Heron likely – but not certainly – the final feature from celebrated co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, now 84. The studio behind the Oscar-winning Spirited Away has become a cultural phenomenon since Miyazaki and the late Isao Takahata established it in 1985. Its popularity has been fuelled of late by a second Academy Award last year for The Boy and the Heron , starring Robert Pattinson, and by Netflix streaming Ghibli movies around the world. In March, the internet was flooded with pictures in its distinctively nostalgic style after the release of OpenAI’s newest image generator – raising questions over copyright. The newly opened Ghibli Park has also become a major tourist draw for central Japan’s Aichi region. Julia Santilli, a 26-year-old from Britain living in northern Japan, “fell in love with Ghibli” after watching the 2001 classic Spirited Away as a child. “I started collecting all the DVDs,” she said. Ghibli stories are “very engaging and the artwork is stunning”, said another fan, Margot Divall, 26. “I probably watch Spirited Away about 10 times a year still.” Whiff of death Before Ghibli, most cartoons in Japan – known as anime – were made for children. But Miyazaki and Takahata, both from “the generation that knew war”, included darker elements that appeal to adults, Miyazaki’s son Goro said. “It is not all sweet – there is also a bitterness and things like that which are beautifully intertwined in the work,” he said, describing a “whiff of death” in the films. o Can Studio Ghibli still flourish without ageing co-founder?

For younger people who grew up in peacetime, “it is impossible to create something with the same sense, approach and attitude”, Goro said. Even My Neighbour Totoro , with its cuddly forest creatures, is in some ways a “scary” movie that explores the fear of losing a sick mother, he explained. Susan Napier, a professor at Tufts University in the US and author of Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art , agreed. “In Ghibli, you have ambiguity, complexity and also a willingness to see that the darkness and light often go together” unlike good-versus-evil

spirit world. A case in point was 1997’s Princess Mononoke, distributed internationally by Disney. The tale of a girl raised by a wolf goddess in a forest threatened by humans is “a masterpiece – but a hard movie”, Napier said. It is a “serious, dark and violent” film appreciated more by adults, which “was not what US audiences had anticipated with a movie about a princess”. Ghibli films “have an environmentalist and animistic side, which I think is very appropriate for the contemporary world with

US cartoons, she said. The post-apocalyptic Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind – considered the first Ghibli film despite its release in 1984 – has no obvious villain, for example. The movie featuring an independent princess curious about giant insects and a poisonous forest felt “so fresh” and a change from “a passive woman... having to be rescued”, Napier said. Natural world Studio Ghibli films also depict a universe where humans connect deeply with nature and the

climate change”, she added. Miyuki Yonemura, a professor at Japan’s Senshu University who studies cultural theories on animation, said watching Ghibli movies is like reading literature. “That is why some children watch Totoro 40 times,” she said, adding that audiences “discover something new every time”. French connection Miyazaki and Takahata – who died in 2018 – could create imaginative worlds because of their openness to other cultures, Yonemura said. Foreign influences included writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery and animator Paul Grimault, both French, and Canadian artist Frederic Back, who won an Oscar for his animation The Man Who Planted Trees . Takahata studying French literature at university “was a big factor”, Yonemura said. “Both Miyazaki and Takahata read a lot. “That is a big reason why they excel at writing scripts and creating stories,” she said Miyazaki has said he was inspired by several books for Nausicaa , including the 12th-century Japanese tale The Lady who Loved Insects and Greek mythology. Studio Ghibli will not be the same after Miyazaki stops creating animation, “unless similar talent emerges”, Yonemura said. Miyazaki is “a fantastic artist with such a visual imagination” while he and Takahata were “politically progressive”, Napier said. “The more I study, the more I realise this was a unique cultural moment,” she said. “It is so widely loved that I think it will carry on,” said Ghibli fan Divall. “As long as it does not lose its beauty, as long as it carries on the amount of effort, care and love,” she said. – AFP beliefs and traditions, Chihiro gains confidence through her work and solves the boy’s curse before rescuing her parents. The Boy and the Heron (2023) Miyazaki’s second Oscar-winning film – and likely the 84-year-old’s last feature – follows a boy struggling to accept his new life after his mother dies in the haunting fire-bombing of Tokyo during World War II. Everything changes when he meets a talking heron and embarks on a journey to an alternate universe, shared by the living and the dead, to find his missing stepmother. In a documentary, Miyazaki, visibly affected by the 2018 death of Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata, said the pair had had a “love-hate relationship” and that he had based the character of the grand-uncle on him. – AFP

Top five films by legendary animation house The studio behind the Oscar-winning Spirited Awa y has become a cultural phenomenon since Miyazaki and the late Takahata established it in 1985. – ALL PICS FROM AFP

My Neighbour Totoro (1988) This beloved Ghibli classic is set in the 1950s Japanese countryside where two young sisters with a sick mother move from the city. They encounter the cuddly yet mysterious forest spirit Totoro and Catbus, a 12-legged grinning cat with a hollow body in the form of a bus – two characters who have become the Studio Ghibli mascots. The film was turned into a play for the first time by Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company in 2022. Princess Mononoke (1997) The tale of a girl raised by a wolf goddess in a forest threatened by humans was a smash hit in Japan and raised Miyazaki’s profile internationally. A young prince on a journey to find a cure for his curse meets San, also known as Princess Mononoke –

cult following for the film about Nausicaa, who discovers the forests’ secrets after getting embroiled in conflicts between countries trying to revive a lethal “giant warrior”.

meaning a spirit or monster in Japanese. The prince sets out to find ways to avoid wars between destructive humans and animal gods, centred around the ultimate god which is nature itself. Ghibli expert and Tufts University professor Susan Napier described Princess Mononoke as “serious, dark and violent”. Spirited Away (2001) Miyazaki won his first Oscar with this film about a girl who gets lost in a mystical world of gods and spirits where she tries to save her parents, who are turned into pigs. In order to survive, 10-year-old Chihiro is told by a mysterious boy to get a job at an enormous Japanese bathhouse run by a witch. In a story infused with Japanese

Oscar-winning Japanese animator Miyazaki in 2015.