The name Hayao Miyazaki is almost synonymous in many people’s minds with Japanese anime because of the many high-quality films that he and his Studio Ghibli have put out over the last few decades. (There is lots more anime than they have produced, but it’s not all as exemplary as theirs.) Revisiting some of his best films is always a rewarding experience, especially Spirited Away, for me.
Hey, Rocky, watch me pull movie reviews out of my hat! This week Steve goes back to the subject of a 2015 column: Studio Ghibli, which has continued releasing movies without even asking him! Are they good movies? Good?—just watch (er, read)!
Steve looks at a Japanese anime film by master storyteller and animator Hayao Miyazaki.
As we grow older, we are forced to accept the fact that those people who helped to form our childhood are also getting older. We are made to understand that being influential does not make one immortal, at least not in a literal sense. And so, thousands of people the world over are slowly coming to terms with the fact that Hayao Miyazaki is truly, truly retiring this time.
Whenever discussing animation, the name that always springs to mind is Ghibli and man behind it all, Hayao Miyazaki. Over the past many decades, he has created masterful films for audiences across the globe. Beginning […]
Every culture has its ghost stories. Here in the West, ours tend toward narratives depicting souls who died violent deaths and have returned to take revenge. Or perhaps we tell tales of those who have died too soon and only wish for eternal playmates. As I briefly mentioned in my post last week, the Japanese have a very rich and far-reaching pantheon of spooks. The majority of these ghosts and their stories grew out of the Edo period (1603-1867; thus why a show like Mononoke asserts itself as particularly Japanese horror), and ghost stories with a certain antiquated style to them, or an air of the past, are usually referred to as kaiden (mysterious or strange recited narrative), whereas more modern horror stories would simply be called hora (a Japanization of “horror”).
There are some artists who leave a lasting impression on every life their work touches. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Hayao Miyazaki is one of those artists; I know that his […]
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