The Case of Our Studio Ghibli Top 10 (Part 1)

Well, Animation April is over, but that doesn’t mean that we have to stop talking about animation! This year, we decided to extend our animation discussion into the next month and celebrate aniMAY! 

A couple of years ago, we did an episode about the history of Studio Ghibli, the animation house responsible for some of the most charming animated films ever made. Back then, we promised to one day come back to the topic and make a list of our Top 10 Studio Ghibli movies! It was difficult because these films are absolutely beautiful and it’s nearly impossible to decide which ones we like the most. But, we did it anyway! 

So, strap in as we break down our favorite Studio Ghibli movies! *Because we have so much to say about these movies, this episode is just the first half of our list. Stay tuned for the second half releasing next week!* 

We’d like to start our episode with a quote from Hayao Miyazaki, the man synonymous with Studio Ghibli films: “Basically our foremost objective here is making good films. No guarantees of lifetime employment here. But companies are just conduits for money. Its success isn’t our priority. What’s important is that you’re doing what you want and that you’re gaining skills. If Ghibli ceases to appeal to you, then just quit. Because I’ll do the same.”

As we go through these movies, there are some names that you will hear us repeat a few times. One of them is the composer Joe Hisaishi. He began working with Hayao Miyazaki pretty much right from the beginning with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. A Pitchfork article by Brady Gerber states that many compare Hisaishi to John Williams as he has written the music for many well-known Anime films, including a few of the highest-grossing Japanese films. These include Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Ponyo. 

10. Castle in the Sky (1986)

  • Summary

    • Sheeta, a young orphan girl, is trying to escape two separate groups that are following her. Colonel Muska who had kidnapped her, and Dola and her sons who are after the magical crystal around her neck. As she goes to escape she is rescued by young Pazu who has a goal to find the mysterious floating city of Laputa. The pair seek Laputa together as Muska and Dola pursue them and the treasure rumored to be within.  

  • Making of

    • Both the story and screenplay were written by Hayao Miyazaki, who also directed!

    • In 1984, Hayao Miyazaki directed his first original feature film: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The film was produced by the studio Topcraft and created by the founding members of Studio Ghibli. The film received enough praise and financial success that Miyazaki was able to co-found Studio Ghibli just a year later. Because of this, some consider Nausicaa to be the first Ghibli film, while others believe Castle in the Sky was the first.

    • Miyazaki took the name of the floating castle kingdom ‘Laputa’ from “Gulliver’s Travels.”

      • He took a lot of inspiration from famous authors, including Jonathan Swift and Jules Verne. 

    • In 1984 Miyazaki visited Wales. During his visit, he was able to witness the dying industry of mining within a small village, and how this affected its people. He was inspired by the miner’s strike against the pit closures. 

      • The next biggest influence that Wales had on the film was the medieval castles. Caerphilly, Caernarfon, and Powis Castle are three such castles on which Laputa was based.  

    • The film was originally called, Laputa: Castle in the Sky. However, the name changed to simply Castle in the Sky because in Spanish “La Puta” means “the whore.” 

    • Different dubbed versions exist but now only one can really be found easily. Disney recorded the dub in 1998 with 90s powerhouse voices like James Van Der Beek, Cloris Leachman, Anna Paquin, and Mark Hamil. However, it was not released on DVD and video until 2003.

    • The entire film was made with over 69,000 hand-drawn frames!

  • Music

    • The music was composed by Joe Hisaishi. He even re-did the music in 1998 for the Disney dubbed version. 

    • In a 1999 interview with Keyboard Magazine Joe Hisaishi said,  "According to Disney's staff, foreigners (non-Japanese) feel uncomfortable if there is no music for more than 3 minutes [laughs]. You see this in the Western movies, which have music throughout. Especially, it is the natural state for a (non-Japanese) animated film to have music all the time. However, in the original Laputa, there is only one-hour worth of music in the 2-hour 4 minute movie. There are parts that do not have any music for 7 to 8 minutes. So, we decided to redo the music as the existing soundtrack will not be suitable for the markets outside of Japan. If we just add new music, it won't go well with the music made 14 years ago. So we completely re-recorded everything. Of course, we cannot demolish the melody of Laputa, so I changed the arrangement of it while keeping its integrity.”

    • The main theme is beautiful and we will link to a performance here by West Winds, the Band of the Bukit Batok Community Club.

9. The Wind Rises (2013)

  • Summary

    • Jiro dreams of flying and designing beautiful airplanes, inspired by the famous Italian designer Caproni. Nearsighted from a young age and unable to be a pilot, Jiro joins a major Japanese engineering company and becomes one of the world's most innovative and accomplished airplane designers. The film chronicles much of his life, depicting key historical events, including the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the Great Depression, the tuberculosis epidemic, and Japan's plunge into war.

  • Making of

    • Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

      • The Wind Rises was marketed as his last film but that has now changed as he has decided to come out of retirement for a film called “How Do You Live?” This storyboard took Miyazaki two years to complete.

      • Toshio Suzuki, Miyasaki’s longtime collaborator, also produced the film. Suzuki produced Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and more! 

    • The film is a combination of both fiction and non-fiction. It takes elements from a biopic about the real Japanese airplane designer Jiro Horikoshi and combines it with a few novels and stories.

      • These include the novel The Wind Has Risen by Tatsuo Hori. This is a romantic novel in which the main character meets a woman, falls in love, and then she passes away from tuberculosis.

      • Graveyard by the Sea is a poem written by Paul Valéry, which is featured in the film. It poses deep questions about life and death, with the later half of the poem including the line: “The wind is rising!… We must try to live!”

      • Finally, the film draws upon The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann and shows the physical, psychological, and moral growth of the protagonist.

        • Ben Sachs of the Chicago Reader commented on Miyazaki’s use of this source material saying, “During the sanatorium episode, Miyazaki introduces another fictional character, a pacifist German emigre called Castorp. He’s named after the hero of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, another tale about an effete man in a sanatorium who’s seduced by a life of abstract meditation; Mann’s hero falls so in love with a life of contemplation that, despite never being sick, he doesn’t leave the sanatorium for seven years. With this reference, Miyazaki implies that Horikoshi—and by extension, architects of killing machines everywhere—has fallen under a similar spell.”

      • Miyazaki in The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness says, “You know, people who design airplanes and machines… No matter how much they believe that what they do is good, the winds of time eventually turn them into tools of industrial civilization. It’s never unscathed. They’re cursed dreams. Animation too. Today, all of humanity’s dreams are cursed somehow. Beautiful yet cursed dreams.”  

      • Miyazaki struggles with the same kind of balance between fascination with these deadly machines and his anti-war stance. During World War II, his father owned a company that manufactured parts for warplanes named Miyazaki Airplane. Miyazaki believes strongly that Jiro Horikoshi was also non-militant, but was fascinated by the planes. So, the movie is anti-war. 

      • In the original storyboard, Nahoko calls out to Jiro at the end and says “come.” In the finished film, she instead tells him to “live.”

      • After the staff screening, Miyazaki thanked everyone and said (a little embarrassed) that this was the first time he cried at his own film. 

    • Music

      • The Wind Rises was another Miyasaki triumph, in part because of Joe Hisaishi’s intricate score that embodied the historical nature of the movie as well as its dream-like elements. 

8. From Up on Poppy Hill (2011)

  • Summary

    • In 1960s Japan, the country is focused on modernization and leaving behind the painful memory of WWII. For a group of students living in Yokohama, this means the demolishing of their beloved clubhouse during preparations for the 1964 Olympics. While fixing up the building in the hopes that it can be saved, two students, Umi and Shun, gradually grow more and more fond of each other. Even though their love gets stronger every day, a complicated trial keeps them from being together. Even so, they continue to work together without fleeing the difficulties of reality.

  • Making of

    • From Up on Poppy Hill is based on the 1980s shōjo manga of the same name by Tetsuo Sayama and Chizuru Takahashi, with Gorō Miyazaki directing. Gorō Miyazaki is the eldest son of Hayao Miyazaki and he made his directorial debut in the 2006 film Tales from Earthsea. 

      • Much like other Ghibli films, the film is a co-production of many companies with Studio Ghibli, including Walt Disney Japan, Mitsubishi Corporation, and Tōhō.

    • After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, the film's production was affected by rolling blackouts imposed after the disaster. The animators were even forced to work at night to minimize disruptions. However, Hayao Miyazaki assured the public that the film would still be released on July 16, 2011, as previously announced, saying that it was their responsibility to do so. Gorō Miyazaki stated that while most of the staff was not affected by the disaster, there were several who took some time to recover. 

    • For Poppy Hill, Gorō Miyazaki initially researched Yokohama, intending to be faithful to the city's historical and real-life details. However, after realizing that recreating something of the time may seem real, but may not necessarily be beautiful. Miyazaki decided instead to show the location as "shimmering and bustling with life" from the viewpoint of the characters. 

      • In designing the Latin Quarter, Miyazaki worked with the art directors on the clutter in the house and the architecture of the building. He would think back to his college years and the clutter that he lived through.

    • Gorō explained in The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness that he did not start out wanting to be in animation and a director but loves to do it. If it were not for Studio Ghibli however he would not be in this line of work. He does it for the people there and for the studio. 

  • Music

    • The score for Up on Poppy Hill was provided by Satoshi Takebe. He is a musician and producer from Tokyo and he also composed the score for The Earwig and the Witch. 

7. Secret World of Arrietty (2010)

  • Summary

    • Fourteen-year-old Arrietty and the rest of the Clock family live a peaceful life in secret from the outside world. They make their own home from items that they borrow from the houses of human beans. However, life changes dramatically for the Clocks when a visiting human boy discovers Arrietty and the existence of the little people.

  • Making of

    • The Secret World of Arrietty (or Arrietty the Borrower as it’s known in Japan) is based on the novel The Borrowers by the British writer Mary Norton. The novel won the Carnegie Medal for children's literature in 1953 and had already been adapted into two films and a TV series by the time. However, Studio Ghibli founders Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki had been contemplating making an adaptation of this novel for the past 50 years. 

    • Ghibli announced the film in late 2009 with Hiromasa Yonebayashi making his directorial debut as the youngest director of a Ghibli film. He had been a long-time animator at Studio Ghibli and worked on films like Howl's Moving Castle, Ponyo, and Spirited Away, and he was also the reserve director for the film Tales from Earthsea.

    • Toshio Suzuki, one of the co-writers for the film, confessed that Miyazaki wrote the initial screenplay without even re-reading the novel and he relied only on his memories of reading it long ago. According to him, Miyazaki has a 'good memory' but he nevertheless often makes mistakes and reinterprets things or gives importance to unnecessary details. For example, if there is a garden in the book, as there is in The Borrowers, he will instantly love it. 

      • He explains, “He really loves gardens. And those that are abandoned have even more of his favors. So much so that he first made a plan of the garden before even starting on Arrietty's screenplay.”

    • Niya the cat looks an awful lot like the Studio Ghibli cat seen in the documentary Kingdom of Dreams and Madness named Ushiko…

    • The English dub of the film included a lot of big names, like Amy Poehler, Will Arnett, and Carol Burnett. 

  • Music

    • French harpist and composer Cécile Corbel provided the light and fantastical score for Arietty. 

    • Bridgit Mendler, who plays Arietty in the English dub, also sang the song Summertime for the soundtrack. 

6. Ponyo (2008)

  • Summary

    • Five-year-old Sosuke finds a little goldfish and brings it home with him, naming it Ponyo. Unbeknownst to him, Ponyo is the daughter of the Queen of the Sea, and her father is desperate to bring her home. Sosuke loses Ponyo when her father brings her back to the ocean kingdom and forbids her to interact with the human world. Ponyo cannot let go and yearns to be a part of the surface world. 

  • Making of

    • Hayao Miyazaki directed Ponyo, and he wrote the screenplay as well. Writer Melissa Matheson (the screenwriter behind ET) wrote the English version of the film. 

    • The Japanese title for the film is “Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea.”

    • The biggest influence has been revealed as The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson. 

      • Another influence that has been hypothesized is its similarities to Richard Wagner’s 4 part German opera called Ring Cycle. 

        • This opera contains one of the most used pieces of classical music in film and TV, The Ride of the Valkyries. In Ponyo, the title character rides a sea of fish during a Tsunami, which brings up similar imagery.

        • One of the characters in Ring Cycle is Brunhilde and in Ponyo, it is revealed that this was the name given to her by her father before Sosuke changed it. 

    • In order for the film to have more of a warmth to it, pencil animators used pencil. Miyazaki even wanted the pencil marks to be seen. In an interview with News Zero Miyazaki said, “You see, when trying to create a realistic film, to create a world with that level of detail, we have tried so many things, even 3D computer graphics. But the more precision we pursued, the more stressed our work became over unimportant details, and the more we felt like we were losing something.” Using computer graphics did not make him happy. 

    • The art director chosen for the film was Noboru Yoshida. He was specifically brought in by Miyazaki because Noboru had impressed him in Spirited Away with the Demon Room that he had been in charge of creating.

      • In this film, there are no perfectly straight lines. Everything has a curve to it to bring warmth and friendliness. Animators also achieved this by using crayons instead of paints.

      • There were 1,139 backgrounds for the film!

    • Animation is the perfect medium for change and metamorphosis. This is clearly shown within the film as Ponyo changes from a goldfish to a girl seamlessly from frame to frame. 

    • Even though we live in a world where water distorts color, Miyazaki chose to not change the color of Ponyo very much between above and below water because he believes goldfish are more beautiful in the water.

    • Miyazaki on the red carpet discussed how the little boy is actually the main character and not Ponyo. 

    • A real baby was used for the sound effects of the baby that Ponyo and Sosuke come across!

    • In order to get the underwater audio, especially near the end when many of the humans are underwater, a vase was used. They placed a speaker with the recordings at the top of the vase and recorded the new audio that resulted in the reverberations from inside the vase.

  • Music

    • The music was done, once again, by Joe Hisaishi. 

    • A loud orchestral soundtrack is used in this film, a little different than many of the other films listed. This reflects the violent nature of the Tsunami that engulfs the area once Ponyo breaks free and flees to the surface. 

In the United States, Japanese anime sits on the edge of mainstream media. But even if some Americans are unfamiliar with most anime, Studio Ghibli has managed to bridge the cultural barrier. There are people all over America and in other western countries that have embraced anime and its incredible storytelling and breathtaking visuals because Studio Ghibli introduced them to a style of animation that they otherwise may have not explored. 

This is just the first half of our Top 10 list, and every one of these films is fantastic in its own way. So, come join us next week when we attempt the impossible task of listing our top 5 favorite films from Studio Ghibli! 

80's, 90's, Animation, Film History, Nostalgia, Podcast, Anime, Ranking, Studio Ghibli, Top 10Adam OsburnAnime, Studio Ghibli, Animation, Hayao Miyazaki, Joe Hisashi, Film History, Film, Castle in the Sky, From up on Poppy Hill, The Wind Rises, The Secret World of Arrietty, Ponyo