Bad Export for You: In the US, Walt Disney Home Video never released a Blu-ray of this movie, and instead only sold it on DVD, likely because of its relatively low profile compared to other Ghibli movies. After GKIDS acquired home video rights to most of the Studio Ghibli movies Disney still owned, they finally released it on Blu-ray in 2018.
Box Office Bomb: Budget: ¥2 billion, box office: ¥1.56 billion. Making this one of the only Studio Ghibli films to bomb.
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Creator Killer: The film was such a commercial failure that Isao Takahata didn't direct another film for 14 years.
This is the first film by Studio Ghibli to be animated entirely digitally, with the studio having been stalwart with keeping cel animation their primary technique (alongside the rest of the Japanese animation industry, discounting franchise tie-ins and small-name projects) until Princess Mononoke in 1997. The use of digital animation was primarily to more accurately transfer the manga's highly distinct art style more faithfully to an animated format, but because digital animation techniques became far more accessible to Japanese studios after Princess Mononokenote major western studios like Disney were already using digital ink and paint since 1990, but as Japan entered a lengthy period of severe economic stagnation in 1991 punctuated by the bursting of their real estate asset bubble in 1992, their animation industry wouldn't be able to afford equally extensive use of computer animation techniques until the tail end of the decade, Ghibli ended up making the shift to digital a permanent one. Of note is that most of Ghibli's later films would still use traditional pencil-on-paper sketches, with digital software mainly being used to provide linework and coloring, but never again would a Ghibli movie use actual hand-painted cels.
