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Well their top directorial talent is retired (and even if it's another fake retirement like his last two, he's too old to do too much more) or dead. Miyazaki's films seem to be more popular and well known than Takahata's (personally Grave of the Fireflies and The Cat Returns are the only Takahata films I've seen), but both men were the heart of the studio. Goro Miyazaki has improved since his debut but is still nowhere as talented nor as visionary as his father.
Also The Boy and the Heron was quite a letdown for me for Miyazaki's final film. I understood the point he was trying to make, that the films he made were his attempt at creating a perfect world, but the malice in his own heart made him unable to accomplish his vision. But the rest of the film didn't really seem to be built around that message, it seemed like an afterthought for the final scenes where the great-uncle is trying to pass the mantle on to him.
In any case, Princess Mononoke is my favorite film of all time, and the closest that Miyazaki (and Studio Ghibli) ever got to perfection. If you haven't seen it you should absolutely check it out.
> personally Grave of the Fireflies and The Cat Returns are the only Takahata films I've seen
You owe it to yourself to watch the Tale of Princess Kaguya (かぐや姫の物語). It might be his best film, and quite possibly one of the best ever produced by Ghibli.
Takahata was robbed of the Oscar that year which went to...Big Hero. Ugh.
Between Kaguya and Grave of the Fireflies, Takahata had two of the best films ever made, in any category, and never got an Oscar.
I know the Oscars are prestigious, but I can’t think of a single film in my top fifty favorites that won one.
For me, they are a contrarian indicator.
It's either Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Lauputa, or Kiki's Delivery Service for me. Depending on the phase of the moon.
But yeah, there are not many directors like Miyazaki or Kubrick left.
Maybe I could count Céline Sciamma to the same company. I wish she would make a new movie soon.
Nausicaa for me, I feel like that movie is criminally underrated among his catalog.
Totoro is certainly a close second though.
Porco Rosso is my favorite Ghibli/Miyazaki film.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Balconettes
2024.
She's been at it nearly 20 years. True creativity has limits.
As I've gotten older, I have grown to understand that while a lot of these films are popular for good reason (and are extremely good!) some of the best films, objectively to me, are some of the 'quietier' ones.
I'd say that Up On Poppy Hill is probably my partner and I's favorite Ghibli film. It's 'small' and 'quiet' in that the scope is a single town, and there's nothing super fantastical about it. Every time I watch it I see and hear something new. This is definitely Goro's best film as a director at Ghibli.
The film that hit me the hardest though is The Wind Rises. If you are a married man this is a film that will absolutely effect you emotionally. There are some films that are targeted as extremely specific audiences and this is one of those. I think everyone can enjoy it, but there's a handful of scenes that are so specific that I connected with so directly that I could feel every moment that Miyazaki was trying to convey at that exact time.
There's another film that is definitely more biased to adults, that is Only Yesterday. It's probably the slowest paced film that Ghibli has made, however it's one that's stuck with me so thoroughly. Especially the final few scenes, which only when they're over do you realize was something like 15-20 minutes with maybe a handful of dialogue lines. This is also another non-Miyazaki film that is extremely good.
I completely agree. I adore the Ghibli classics, but the three you mentioned are my personal favorites for much the same reason.
Mononoke is also my favorite film. It's also (imo) one of the few animes that is equally good both in sub and dub.
> Mononoke is also my favorite film.
How are there that many of us? It really is a spectacular film.
> equally good both in sub and dub.
The dub has decent voice acting, but is plagued with changing the meaning of several scenes. Kaya is Ashitaka's little sister, not betrothed. They inserted fart jokes. Moro's voice is significantly different [1]. Also, Neil Gaiman was involved in the localization. I've never been a fan of his.
There was also a really great anecdote about Miyazaki winning out over Harvey Weinstein [2]. "No Cuts!"
Back when I was a kid, I bought Miramax's old Princess Mononoke marketing site [3]. I still have it floating around, I think.
[1] https://www.out.com/film/2022/8/24/meet-japanese-drag-queen-...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/f4BgE1kdTGQ
[3] http://www.princess-mononoke.com/ (not SSL, whoops!)
The dub is good, but Moro's Japanese voice actor makes the subs superior every time.
Cat return isn't directed by Takahata. Neither is the predecessor Whisper of the Heart, so I'm not sure which film you are thinking of, or if you've only ever watched one of his films.
I agree that The Boy and Heron wasn't a very good film. It honestly felt like an imitation.
For some reason my brain was remembering The Cat Returns as being directed by him, my bad
Studio Ghibli is Miyazaki.
It goes with him. Maybe not as a business name, but as an ethos and artisty, yes.
I'm the same vein, though, wasn't Disney essentially Walt (and Roy) as well? Disney (the animation studio) went through a nadir between the death of Roy in 1971 before the start of the "Disney Renaissance" with The Little Mermaid in 1989 brought them back to form. I see no reason that Studio Ghibli couldn't eventually find outsized success after the death of Miyazaki.
It did die with Walt. They walked back a lot of his plans for the parks. They don’t make movies like they made in his era any longer. It is all CGI and live action lately. And after a certain point you have to wonder if there has been a significant loss of institutional knowledge on how to make a lot of those old hand made animations.
Yes, it was. But Disney was always much more dilluted and commercial anyway. And modern Disney is nothing like Walt's era Disney, it's similar to the post-Miyazaki Ghibli decline I predict - those few films from back in the 90s aside.
>I see no reason that Studio Ghibli couldn't eventually find outsized success after the death of Miyazaki.
Oh, it's not success I fear they wont find.
There are notable Studio Ghibli films that were not made by Miyazaki such as Grave of the Fireflies, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and When Marnie was There.
All of those were in my opinion excellent films and similar in style to ones made by Miyazaki, and I think fans of Miyazaki's work will also enjoy them.
I adore "The Secret World of Arrietty" and "When Marnie Was There". I hope Hiromasa Yonebayashi gets to direct more of Ghibli's movies.
Yes, but they were under the Miyazaki era
Miyazaki is not unique. Shinkai for example is part of a younger generation that does not fall behind and he has even been called the new Miyazaki (although he dismisses it). Talent per se does not die with a single person, especially not in a field with so many enthusiastic followers. And Ghibli in particular already has access to a lot of talent in other domains beyond writing and directing.
It's such a shame that Satoshi Kon died so young. Crazy it's almost 15 years already.
Oh, I'm going to say something which will rustle even more feathers than this!
Don Bluth was far superior to Miyazaki. Also, Miyazaki was a poor father and his kids movies sucked (i.e. tales of the earth sea) because he was basically forced into following in his dads footsteps.
I like both Miyazaki and Shinkai, but they are really quite different both visually and thematically, and each unique in their own way.
Sure, it’s conceivable for Ghibli to be successful again with a new talented director, but it won’t be Miyazaki’s nor Takahata’s Ghibli anymore.
Shinkai is an one trick pony whose one and only plot is teenage longing and whose one and only visual language is coating everything in a shiny glittery glow so he can hide the emptiness of his movies under it. His works are nothing but one aesthetic remade and remastered over and over, but sadly plenty of people do not engage with works of art beyond their aesthetics and here we are. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not talent (I wouldn't take the words ethos and artistry to describe talent). Miyazaki is known to be a control freak. For better or worse, as long as he's involved, it's his way or the highway.
Talent per se, no. Stubborness to a vision and resistance to commercial dillution, however, often does.
I do wonder why Hosoda isn't in the same conversation. His themes are sometimes a bit less... decisive than Miyazaki's, but the animation quality and passion for exploring intimate, interpersonal stories is there.
Edit: The downvote is a lot less helpful than an explanation.
Just like, I guess, Pixar is gone for all practical purposes - IMHO of course.
largely seems driven by a somewhat relentless case of perfectionism, like many renown artists
Some comments here are kind of weird.
Ghibli is a production vehicle which was put in place to allow Takahata and Miyazaki to make and release their own movies.
The studio also coproduced an interesting movie of Dudok de Wit and produced an awesome one by Kondo, a correct one by Morita and some unequal ones by Goro Miyazaki.
It’s a midsized company employing plenty of producers, animators and other specialists. It could stop with Miyazaki retirement. It could keep going on making other movies which might or might not be as good as the Takahata and Miyazaki’s ones. Neither solution is inherently better.
But, no, Ghibli isn’t Miyazaki. The idea makes as much sense as talking about a Studio Ghibli style while Takahata made movies which were widely different from one another.
> The studio also coproduced an interesting movie of Dudok de Wit and produced an awesome one by Kondo, a correct one by Morita and some unequal ones by Goro Miyazaki.
Can you elaborate here? Is Kondo, Yoshifumo Kondo's Whisper of the Heart? Is Morita, Hiroyuki Morita's Cat return? I thought Cat return was a pretty bad movie by any account, but I'm also not sure what you mean by it being "a correct one".
Yes, indeed, both are Ghibli movies. Whisper of the Heart is by all accounts a very successful movie and a critic darling. The cat return while not a masterpiece is an overall ok movie - I think pretty bad is harsh.
Anyway the key point is that there is more to Ghibli that Miyazaki and even Takahata in the same way there is more to Miyazaki than Ghibli.
One day you will read the headline “Hayao Miyazaki has died.”
And you know that will also be the end of Studio Ghibli. Whatever comes next under that name, will only be a shadow of what it once was.
Unfortunately the article does not really explore its own title, just implying it could happen since, Miyazaki is old.
We are all left to hope that Ghibli's studio keeps going even after Miyazaki stops.
archive link
Studio Ghibli is Miyazaki.
It goes with him.
Well the style has been destroyed by the grifters.
On to the next one.
i don’t think studio ghibli should shut down just because miyazaki retires. great studios outlive their founders—their spirit and vision can be passed on, refined, and kept alive through new talent.
look at apple: steve jobs defined it, but the company kept going and still carries his legacy. ghibli could do the same. miyazaki shaped its soul, but that soul doesn’t have to vanish with him.
it’d be a real loss to the world to never see anything new from ghibli again.
The ghibli image generation meme was clearly responsible for a significant portion of openai’s growth to being a $300 billion company. If altman didnt throw ghibli at least a few hundred million for that, ghibli should sue openai.
The meme is likely to have profited both Studio Ghibli and OpenAI, as the studios probably got some publicity for it, without direct competition as Ghibli is not in the business of drawing memes.
Either way, it probably doesn't amount to much, it was just a fad.
It was a big deal for like about a week. It has died down now.
My Neighbor Totoro is a family favorite in our household. My wife loves it. We even play the soundtrack in the car and in our backyard. We also greatly enjoy the Ernest & Celestine movies. We are waiting for the show to make it to a streaming service for us to try that.
I hope the next generation of Studio Ghibli isn't afraid to further explore the "Miyazaki universes" he envisioned. I know that AI will make it possible for others to do so, even if they drop the ball.
I'm grateful for the work these people have done to entertain so many with heartfelt animations.
> I know that AI will make it possible for others to do so, even if they drop the ball.
Ugh...
If you were grateful for their work, you wouldn't wish for AI to "generate" soulless facsimiles of that work to drown people in.
> I know that AI will make it possible for others to do so
Disgusting take.
If indeed Ghibli goes with Miyazaki, then let it go. Sometimes art is just done and that's a concept as a culture we have so much friction with. If a game isn't updating, it's dead. If a movie isn't getting a sequel, it's dead. If a studio stops creating it's treated like some kind of loss, as if the beautiful things it's already made aren't good enough because there can't be any more.
Not every movie needs sequels, not every "universe" needs to have every corner of it documented and turned into subsequent works. For fucks sake just let stuff be finished, and that attitude comes with a bonus feature where maybe creatives won't be constantly burning themselves out under the demands of every audience.
I genuinely can't fathom the sort of person who is like "this artists' work moved me and elevated me as a person, but I guess if they die I can use shitty image gen programs to see more of what they might've made." Gross. Just gross.
> I know that AI will make it possible for others to do so, even if they drop the ball.
Seems you completely miss the point of Miyazaki's work. You can watch a video of Miyazaki watching an AI generated animation and see what he think about generative "art"[1].