Studio Ghibli was founded in 1985 by Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki, forever changing the course of animation history. The name ‘ghibli’ coming from the Arabic word for hot desert wind (قبلي,) and the Italian aircraft Caproni Ca.309 Ghibli by aviation enthusiast Miyazaki, the studio intended to “blow a new wind through the animation industry.” Nearly four decades since its founding, Studio Ghibli has been among one of the most influential animation studios.
Animated features under the Ghibli mantle frequently blow audiences away and receive high praise from critics, comparable to another animation giant, Walt Disney Animation Studios, for its cultural and historical significance and influence in the world of film and media. Alongside the high praises the studio garners with the growing accessibility of Studio Ghibli’s filmography through both physical and digital media, “Ghibli films” are becoming widely screened in academic settings such as universities and museums, and at public events like film festivals and public libraries.
While the first official film produced by Studio Ghibli was Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) is often included as a Studio Ghibli film despite being released a year prior to the studio’s founding. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by the late Isao Takahata, much of the groundwork in Studio Ghibli films can be observed in Nausicaä: lush, hand-drawn animation, layered and complex antagonists, overarching environmentalist and anti-war themes to name a few.
In an attempt to appeal to American audiences, Nausicaä was heavily edited and cut in its 1985 adaptation for the United States (under the title Warriors of the Wind), a change that was heavily criticized by Miyazaki. This led to the adoption of a “no edits” clause for foreign releases, something that’s been upheld to this day.
The importance of this clause is evident in such works as My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Pom Poko (1994), Spirited Away (2001), and The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2014), films that are heavily tied to Japanese folklore and myth. Though some changes do still occur (the English version of Pom Poko refers to tanuki or Japanese raccoon dogs as “raccoons” for example) Studio Ghibli films retain much of their Japanese culture and identity without foreign distributors recutting its content for audiences outside of Japan. For films like Princess Mononoke (1997), From Up on Poppy Hill (2011) and The Wind Rises (2013), the additional historical context also remains unimpeded.
Princess Mononoke, while purely a fantasy film, features characters hailing from the Emishi tribe, an ethnic group of people from what is now the Northeast region of modern Japan, often underrepresented in Japanese period pieces. From Up on Poppy Hill is a drama set in 1963, a film about teenagers growing up during post-occupation Japan, touching on historical events and cultural movements such as World War II, Japanese presence in Korea and involvement during the Korean War, and the rise of student activism during the 1960s. The Wind Rises is a historical drama film based on Jiro Horikoshi, an engineer who designed many Japanese fighter planes used in World War II. This preservation in cultural context and meditation of Japanese history in international releases are why many of Studio Ghibli’s films are often shown alongside the works of Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu in Japanese film and media classes. Not only that, but the retroactive inclusion of Nausicaä as a Ghibli film suggests that Ghibli, as a name and marker, is something that transcends the studio itself.
Following the 2002 international release of Spirited Away, Roger Ebert interviewed Hayao Miyazaki and commented on his love for Miyazaki’s use of what Ebert referred to as “gratuitous motion.” Miyazaki explained that a Japanese word exists for this phenomenon: ma (間). Ma, when used in this context, refers to emptiness and in-between moments, both spatially and temporally. As observed by Ebert, animated movies for children in countries like the United States are often associated with high energy and tend to be marketed to the public as “family films” in order to try and appeal to as many people as possible. However, in Miyazaki’s own words, the film Spirited Away, which to this day still captures the imagination of adults from all around the world, was made “just for 10-year-olds.”
Regardless of how fantastical a Studio Ghibli film may be, it is perhaps the presence of ma that attracts filmgoers no matter the demographic. A film like Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) may be a fantasy film for young girls about a 13-year-old witch who bemoans the ugliness of her dress and gets easily annoyed by boys her age, but its themes are universally experienced. At its core, Kiki’s Delivery Service is about the struggle of balancing independence and vulnerability, the rough patches of adolescence and maturity, and finding an identity while dealing with self-doubt and the fear of failure. People may remember the more fantastical moments of Kiki riding on her broomstick accompanied by a talking black cat, but the moments that stick are based in the real experience of human emotion.
Another example is Only Yesterday (1991), a film which focuses on the life of a 27-year-old unmarried woman seeking respite from the city life she’s known her entire life. Unlike Kiki’s Delivery Service, Only Yesterday is not a fantasy movie. It is a film specifically about womanhood, touching on the changes and experiences of growing up, losing the innocence of youth, and dealing with unfulfilled dreams. In The Hopes and Spirits of Contemporary Japanese Girls, a forward to The Art of Kiki’s Delivery Service, Miyazaki says that Kiki’s Delivery Service is about contemporary Japanese girls. However, the emotions and character growth are not necessarily unique to one demographic of people. “We were all young men and women once” he goes on to say, and that summarizes just what it is about films like Kiki’s Delivery Service and Only Yesterday tap into in its appeal to general audiences: the solidarity of transitioning from youth to adulthood.
Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and When Marnie Was There (2014) are film adaptations of English novels of the same name. While these movies do take liberties with adapting the text (Howl’s Moving Castle is a loose adaptation of the original Diana Wynne Jones novel and When Marnie Was There changes the setting from England to Japan), the general public began having a renewed interest in these works. While adapting books to film isn’t a novel idea, the way in which Miyazaki and Hiromasa Yonebayashi adapt these works for the screen marks the fluid nature of storytelling and the similarities and differences between how one may experience a work of art. Adaptations are interpretations, and these reflect the way audiences and creators alike can experience other works: relating it to one’s personal history while potentially gaining new insight from another’s experience.
With its rich history spanning nearly forty years, and continuing dedication to animation as art and storytelling, Studio Ghibli has carved out its own place in cinematic history. The longevity of the studio continues both in retrospective appreciation and academic study, as well as current influence in the world of media. And though there are many contributing factors to why Studio Ghibli remains in high regard, it is the way in which a Ghibli film locks into the core artistry and potential of animation.
In the documentary The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013), Hayao Miyazaki looks out a window, the camera following his direction gazing out over the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. “See that house with all the ivy on it? From that rooftop, what if you leapt onto the next rooftop, dashed over to that blue and green wall, jumped up and climbed up the pipe, ran across the roof and jumped to the next? You can, in animation. If you can walk the cable, you could see the other side. When you look from above, so many things reveal themselves to you. Maybe race along the concrete wall. Suddenly, there in your humdrum town is a magical movie. Isn't it fun to see things that way? Feels like you could go somewhere far beyond. Maybe you can.”