They’re front and center in this comedy about tribes of raccoons fighting against the species of man that’s pushing them from their homes. Themes of humanity’s relationship with nature, environmental incursion by technology, and a sense that we’ve lost touch with the natural world are woven through almost all Studio Ghibli films. And it just always looks a little wrong too, with characters that look somehow less expressive and realistic in three dimensions than the rest of the Ghibli characters look in two. As Earwig tries to learn the magic of Bella Yaga and her partner Mandrake - with the help of a talking cat, of course - Goro’s film finds some fun, rambunctious humor, but never gets a rhythm.

It might have helped if Goro had found the heart of this tale of a child named Earwig who is adopted by a witch named Bella Yaga when she is 10. Of course, progress is laudable, but the Ghibli aesthetic is so closely associated with hand-drawn beauty that this one just feels off right from the beginning. It contains several of the themes of Ghibli, but it doesn’t really feel like Ghibli, in part because it’s the company’s first computer-animated fantasy film. We are not counting Castle of Cagliostro, made before that, even though it was directed by Hayao Miyazaki.)Īfter his father’s retirement in the wake of The Wind Rises, Goro Miyazaki took over his legacy and released this adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Diana Wynne Jones. (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 evaluate 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 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 recently introduced Miyazaki’s latest film The Boy and the Heron at TIFF, 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. premiere of Hayao Miyazaki’s new film, The Boy and the Heron, at New York Film Festival. This article originally ran in November 2019.

Ocean waves anime style