By Raz Greenberg. With the release of The Art of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind: A Film by Hayao Miyazaki, Viz has now published all of the art books that document the work on the Studio Ghibli films directed by Miyazaki – sadly, no art book has ever been published on his debut […]
By Motoko Tamamuro. For months after the release of Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), Hirokatsu Kihara waits for news of the next production for Studio Ghibli. The studio suddenly gets lively when the announcement comes that the next film will be Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Isao Takahata. However, nobody says anything to […]
By Motoko Tamamuro. Hayao Miyazaki was initially unaware of the phenomenon of the “Balse Festival” that broke out on social media. The Balse was the spell of destruction, cast by the protagonists Pazu and Sheeta in Studio Ghibli’s first official production, Laputa: The Castle in the Sky. Over the years, fans in Japan began tweeting […]
By Motoko Tamamuro. Yasuko Shibaguchi’s book, The Colour Artisan of Animation, is one of the (currently) untranslated gems of anime history, an account of the career of Michiyo Yasuda (1939-2016), described by Hayao Miyazaki as “three times sharper and more particular than me,” and a mainstay of Studio Ghibli. This biography throws light on the […]
By Andrew Osmond. In the recent book Interpreting Anime, Christopher Bolton quoted a barbed comment by director Isao Takahata about his Ghibli colleague. “With Miyazaki, you have to totally believe in the world of the film,” Takahata said. “He is demanding that the audience enter the world he has created completely. The audience is being […]