June 15 is the day you blow out 36 candles on your Totoro-shaped cake and thank the heavens for Studio Ghibli’s existence. In 1985, a whol...
June 15 is the day you blow out 36 candles on your Totoro-shaped cake and thank the heavens for Studio Ghibli’s existence.
In 1985, a whole decade before Pixar released Toy Story, three filmmakers came together to form the company that would emerge as one of the leading forces in global animation. Set up by Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki, Studio Ghibli’s mostly hand-drawn animated films have consistently broken new ground in terms of narrative, technique and style.
Although Disney is considered the world leader in the field, Japan and to a smaller extent France are among the countries that indicate that there are other ways of treating this lively cinematic form.
Proof that Japan takes its animation industry very seriously was offered in 2020, when the movie version of the Demon Slayer web series emerged as the biggest Japanese hit of all time. The film that Demon Slayer pipped to the post: Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away, directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
In Mami Sunada’s documentary on Studio Ghibli, titled Kingdom of Dreams of Madness (2013), Hayao Miyazaki provides a succinct explanation for animation’s advantage over live-action cinema: “Feels like you could go somewhere far beyond.”
Most of Studio Ghibli’s major features are available in India on Netflix....
