I’m finally doing a resolution I’ve had for ten years, which is to watch through the currently available Studio Ghibli and/or Hayao Miyazaki filmography.
I didn’t do it earlier because, until recently, YouTube made me buy the movies rather than rent them.
I’d probably rate Whisper of the Heart highest so far, since it’s a pretty straightforward and grounded portrayal of loss, even if it doesn’t fully commit to it by the end. It has just the right amount of fantasy for my taste…which is a little bit for flavor and not much else.
I watched Howl’s Moving Castle last night and it’s a close second, but it’s a lot more scattered. It’s themes of age, change, and selfishness are portrayed really well … but not perfectly. I can ignore the fact that it doesn’t explain its plot points fully, but Howl’s character is over the top at times in a way that isn’t really redeemed or resolved by the end.
The variety of visual styles and character designs in Howl is really impressive too … just Google the posters and look at how different each one is.
Castle In the Sky is an interesting story about destroying something to save it. Not totally convincing, based on some people’s reviews, but I’ll buy it. It has one of the best Ghibli characters (Dola) because she changes radically over the film, from “bad” to “good,” but it’s mainly characters changing in relation to her rather than an actual shift in her personality.
I’ve watched several others over the past few months. The only one I’ve disliked so far is The Wind Rises, which I found boring and not really as pretty as you’d expect, since the nicest looking parts are basically the Windows XP wallpaper over and over again. The earthquake scene is really impressive though … it gave me the gut-churning feeling that you get even from small earthquakes.
From Up on Poppy Hill and Ocean Waves are a bit similar. Both are totally grounded in reality with zero fantasy, both are coming-of-age stories, and they have only a 20-minute difference in runtime. The former has higher production values but both feel like small-scale stories.
The Secret World of Arietty is a perfectly good movie, but it’s a really weird choice for a mostly straight adaptation because the source material was an elementary school required reading when I grew up.
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It’s a weird choice in the same way that The Rescuers and Meet the Robinsons are weird choices for a Disney animation, but Bambi and The Fox and the Hound aren’t, despite them all being based on relatively recent novels or books.
Maybe this is only clear in hindsight when the adaptation has definitively surpassed its source material, à la Shrek. I think Howl’s Moving Castle has transcended the novel in terms of public perception, but I don’t know for sure. There are at least two other Ghibli films with this challenge. Not to mention Lupin and Sherlock Holmes/Hound, but those are both classic characters.
I’ve seen other movies in the Ghibli/Miyazaki catalogue a while ago or longer: Lupin III last year, Princess Mononoke about three years ago, Nausicaa about ten years ago, and Spirited Away when it first came out in 2001. I guess some I’ll rewatch, eventually.
