Movies from Studio Ghibli

Hi,I couldn't find a recent general topic for Ghibli's films so I thought I'd make one!

Anyway,I'm going through Ghibli's films on Netflix and yesterday I watched My Neighbor Totoro,I basically watched this film with zero knowledge of the plot outside of the parodies of that scene of the bus stop and the Cat bus

Most surprising thing I noticed is that scene with Totoro that's often depicted in artwork(and indeed its even in the poster for the film)has just one the sisters standing next to Totoro

Studio Ghibli films stream on HBO Max in the States. Just watched Porco Rosso about a month ago without knowing much about it. Enjoyed every bit of it.

Edited by ccorb on Apr 10th 2021 at 9:51:42 AM

I've been a fan of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki ever since my mom rented Princess Mononoke for me on a whim. Speaking of which, she really liked one of their movies that I brought along for one of the nights of the vacation I just got back from, Kiki's Delivery Service. :)

Watching Kiki's delivory service,loving the film but it took awhile for my brain to stop thinking of Cat's voice as being Lionel Hutz's

They also initially gave Jiji more lines in that dub (they're edited out in later DVD/Blu-ray releases).

I watched Tales from Earthsea to see how it compared to the novels.

My, it's a bad adaptation and a bad film. It's easy for a sword-and-sorcery film to be bad, but normally they are still entertainingly bad. But this film is boring. After a great opening, it's like a very pretty two hours of nothing happening. Three-quarters of the film is spent on a farm and a castle.

The weird thing is that every change from the novels was for the worse. A straight adaptation would see the cast travel from an academy of magic across several islands to people living on rafts at sea to an island ruled by dragons and then into the afterlife. I would like to know what process went on with that screenplay because it must never happen again.

The only reason to watch it is to take screenshots and appreciate Hayao Miyazaki all the more. He's not just a great animator, he knows how to take advantage of the medium. All his films express story details in a way that only animation can convey.

Tales from Earthsea was directed by by Goro Miyazaki, not Hayao Miyazaki.

I suppose that most people agree that it was not great.

(Since then he directed From Up on Poppy Hill which I think was very good).

Edited by gropcbf on Apr 12th 2021 at 12:00:40 PM

Aw, don't think of him as Lionel Hutz. Think of him as Troy McClure. You may remember him from such animated classics as Christmas Ape and Christmas Ape Goes to Summer Camp. ;P

God damn it Demetrios

Edited by Ultimatum on Apr 13th 2021 at 8:23:46 AM

I agree Tales From Earthsea (for which Goro Miyazaki also wrote the screenplay) is pretty bad, but for a film directed by a guy who, as far as I can tell, outside of his pedigree had absolutely no practical professional experience in animation (he'd worked in construction and landscape architecture prior to directing it) I think it's pretty good.

Since then he's directed From Up on Poppy Hill, the TV series Ronja the Robber's Daughter, and Earwig and the Witch, so apparently he's improved considerably.

Yes, and in fact I also liked Ronja.

I got this idea from a YouTube comment, of all places. XD ^_^;; When I do get married, I want this to be one of the two songs that plays when my wife and I have our first dance together as husband and wife.

Awwwwwwww... Demetrios always knows how to warm my heart.

One thing I do like about Studio Ghibli is the Sakuga and Food. Especially FOOD SAKUGA.

YUM!

EDIT:Holy shit. "I would like to know what process went on with that screenplay because it must never happen again." Is by far the most epic burn ever.

Edited by AegisP on Apr 15th 2021 at 3:21:40 AM

I watched Howl's moving castle today,I watched it on TV awhile back though it was half way through without much context

Got any Isao Takahata fans around? He’s not as talked about as Miyazaki but I think he’s pretty comparable as a filmmaker (admittedly I say this only based on Pom Poko and Kaguya) despite his smaller output.

Miyazaki's popularity seems to drown everyone else out I've noticed

I like Horus: Prince of the Sun (first movie Takahata directed on his own, it's from 1968), Pom Poko, Only Yesterday and the Tale of the Princess Kaguya. Grave of the Fireflies is good, but it's too heavy for me to rewatch and My Neighbors the Yamadas is...well, it's got some good parts but it's one of those movies that doesn't really have much appeal outside of Japan. Apparently it's a very, very good adaptation of a newspaper comic strip that was never translated in any large capacity, so the result is kind of like if someone did a really good animated adaptation of like, the Wizard of Id or a different newspaper comic on those lines. Might be good (...okay, American newspaper comics tend towards not being very good with a few exceptions) but if you aren't at all familiar with the source material, it'll feel kinda weird and hokey.

Yamadas is kinda like that to me. The art style is interesting and it's got some good parts, but it's basically just a string of vignettes with no overarching plot, and I find stuff like that a little hard to sit through.

I feel a little bad for Hiromasa Yonebayashi though. He only did two movies for Ghibli (Secret World of Arietty and When Marnie Was There) and it sounds like he had been pitching other stuff for ages before Ghibli announced they'd be dialing down. Arietty is...okay. It's very pretty, but it doesn't have much substance (the original book is pretty substance free too) and Marnie works better but it still has some flaws. It feels like Ghibli could have pivoted to younger directors, but they barely put any effort into that and essentially gave up.

Edited by Zendervai on Apr 26th 2021 at 4:25:11 AM

I think that they tried getting fresh blood into the studio but as Mamoru Oshii talks about here; http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/oshii_on_mt.html Working in Ghibli is really rough and people are afraid of working there. They did attempt in the 90’s to promote Yoshifumi Kondo (Whisper of the Heart) as their next big director but he died after only directing one movie.

I just find it kind of odd because they had a candidate in Yonebayashi (I'm not exactly sure I'd count Goro Miyazaki as them promoting younger directors) and decided to dial down instead. I'm pretty sure the reasoning was that Marnie didn't do that well, but Arietty did really well. And now they have Earwig and the Witch and the one Hayao Miyazaki's working on.

Miyazaki's two retirements have really had back knock-on effects on the rest of the studio, huh. The first one lead to Earthsea being made by Goro Miyazaki, Hayao refusing to help him, and then walking out during the premier. Which, holy crap is that incredibly mean. And then the second one lead to Ghibli almost shutting down until he decided to come back and work extremely slowly on a movie.

I do want to talk about Earwig a little bit. It's not really that good but I noticed a lot of the talk about it seemed to miss something about it. There was a lot of stuff about how it doesn't really measure up to Ghibli's previous fantasy movies, but it was a TV movie. That doesn't really give it an excuse, it's just odd to hear reviewers compare a TV movie to Disney and Pixar and I think Gkids giving it a huge push and a theatrical release kind of messed with people's expectations. I think the big flaw is mostly just that the source book is pretty slight and there's not much substance to it, which got accurately transferred over to the movie.

I keep forgetting that Earwig even was a tv special. Makes me think that Goro was just testing the grounds with cg animation. I do hope he gets the same level of acclaim he got for From Up on Poppy Hill again in the future.

Ghibli was defined by its founders, and now finds it difficult to move beyond them. Ocean Waves was made to give a chance to junior animators, but clearly had no vision behind it. It's isn't bad, just dull, with muted colours, unimaginative storyboarding and nothing of note visually or in the music. It should have been done live action, then at least the actors could give the characters some nuance and presence.

I just remembered something funny. :)

Even though my mom isn't a very big fan of horror movies, the movie she rented for me and thus made me a fan of Hayao Miyazaki was Princess Mononoke, which may be the darkest and edgiest movie he ever made. So in (inadvertently) making me a fan of Miyazaki, you could say my mom threw me in at the deep end.

At least it wasn't Grave of the Fireflies.

So, I discovered that some of these voice actors that were on Hayao Miyazaki's Ghibli films were involved in several other films produced by Ghibli and Ponoc in some form:

• Sumi Shimamoto (major on Nausicaä, played minor roles in Totoro and Princess Mononoke)
• Minami Takayama (in Kiki's Delivery Service and Whisper of the Heart)
• Yoji Mitsuda (major in Nausicaä and Princess Mononoke)
• Akihiro Miwa (in Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle)
• Yuriko Ishida (in Princess Mononoke, minor in From Up on Poppy Hill)
• Akio Otsuka (in Porco Rosso and Howl's Moving Castle)
• Tsunehiko Kamijo (in Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away)
• Rumi Hiiragi (major in Spirited Away, minor in Ponyo and From Up on Poppy Hill)
• Masahiko Nishimura (in Princess Mononoke and The Wind Rises)
• Tatsuya Gashuin (in Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle)
• Yo Oizumi (also in Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle)
• Takeshi Naito (in Spirited Away and From Up on Poppy Hill)
• Bunta Sugawara (in Spirited Away and Tales from Earthsea)
• Ryunosuke Kamiki (in Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and Mary and the Witch's Flower)
• Yuki Amami (in Ponyo and Mary and the Witch's Flower)
• Keiko Takeshita (major in Arrietty, minor in The Wind Rises)
• Shinobu Otake (in Arrietty, The Wind Rises and Mary and the Witch's Flower)
• Hideaki Anno (animator on Nausicaä, major in The Wind Rises)

Is there anywhere where Gauche the Cellist can be legally streamed?