Portal:Studio Ghibli


Founded in June 1985, Studio Ghibli is headed by the directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata and the producer Toshio Suzuki. Prior to the formation of the studio, Miyazaki and Takahata had already had long careers in Japanese film and television animation and had worked together on Hols: Prince of the Sun and Panda! Go, Panda!; and Suzuki was an editor at Tokuma Shoten's Animage magazine.

The studio was founded after the success of the 1984 film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, written and directed by Miyazaki for Topcraft and distributed by Toei Company. The origins of the film lie in the first two volumes of a serialized manga written by Miyazaki for publication in Animage as a way of generating interest in an anime version. Suzuki was part of the production team on the film and founded Studio Ghibli with Miyazaki, who also invited Takahata to join the new studio.

The studio has mainly produced films by Miyazaki, with the second most prolific director being Takahata (most notably with Grave of the Fireflies). Other directors who have worked with Studio Ghibli include Yoshifumi Kondo, Hiroyuki Morita, Gorō Miyazaki, and Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Composer Joe Hisaishi has provided the soundtracks for most of Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli films. In their book Anime Classics Zettai!, Brian Camp and Julie Davis made note of Michiyo Yasuda as "a mainstay of Studio Ghibli’s extraordinary design and production team".

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Hayao Miyazaki (宮﨑 駿, Miyazaki Hayao; born January 5, 1941) is a Japanese film director, animator, manga artist, illustrator, producer, and screenwriter. Through a career that has spanned six decades, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and as a maker of anime feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli, a film and animation studio. The success of Miyazaki's films has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney, British animator Nick Park, and American director Steven Spielberg. He is considered one of the most popular and influential animators in cinema.

Born in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Miyazaki began his animation career in 1963, when he joined Toei Animation. From there, Miyazaki worked as an in-between artist for Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon, working in various roles in the animation industry until he directed his first feature film, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, released in 1979. After the success of his next film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984, he co-founded Studio Ghibli, where he continued to produce many feature films.

While Miyazaki's films have long enjoyed both commercial and critical success in Japan, he remained largely unknown to the West until Miramax Films released Princess Mononoke (1997). Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing film in Japan until it was eclipsed by another 1997 film, Titanic, and the first animated film to win Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards. Miyazaki's next film, Spirited Away (2001), topped Titanic's sales at the Japanese box office, won Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards, and was the first anime film to win an American Academy Award.

Miyazaki's films often contain recurrent themes, like humanity's relationship with nature and technology, feminism, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. The protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women. Miyazaki's newest film, The Wind Rises, was released on July 20, 2013 and screened internationally in February 2014. Miyazaki announced on September 1, 2013 that this would be his final feature-length film.

Selected work

Ponyo (崖の上のポニョ, Gake no Ue no Ponyo; literally "Ponyo on the Cliff"), initially titled in English as Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, is a 2008 Japanese animated fantasy comedy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli and Toho. It is Miyazaki's eighth film for Ghibli, and his tenth overall. The plot centers on a goldfish named Ponyo who befriends a five-year-old human boy, Sōsuke, and wants to become a human girl. The film has won several awards, including the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year. It was released in Japan on July 19, 2008, in the US and Canada on August 14, 2009, and in the UK on February 12, 2010. The film reached #9 in the US box office charts for its opening weekend.

Brunhilde is a fish-girl who lives with her father Fujimoto—a once-human wizard-scientist who now lives underwater—and her numerous smaller sisters. One day, while she and her siblings are on an outing with their father, Brunhilde sneaks off and floats away on the back of a jellyfish. After becoming stuck in a bottle, she drifts to the shore of a small fishing town and is found and rescued by a small boy named Sōsuke. Splitting the bottle open, Sōsuke cuts his finger in the process.

Brunhilde licks his wound when he picks her up, and the wound heals almost instantly. Fujimoto calls his wave spirits to recover her. After the wave spirits take Ponyo away, Sōsuke is heartbroken and goes home with his mother, Lisa, who tries to cheer him up, to no avail. Ponyo and Fujimoto have an argument, during which Ponyo refuses to let her father call her by her birth-name, "Brunhilde". She declares her name to be Ponyo and voices her desire to become human.

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Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu (玉繭物語, Tamamayu Monogatari; literally "The Story of the Jade Cocoon") is a video game for the Sony PlayStation, released by Crave in 1998. The game combines elements of role-playing video games and virtual pet management. It was developed by Genki in collaboration with Katsuya Kondō, character designer for the Studio Ghibli movies Kiki's Delivery Service and I Can Hear the Sea.

Jade Cocoon is set in a world where most of the land is covered in dense forest; populated by bizarre, mostly bug-like monsters called Minions. The only safe havens are small villages, one of which is the home of the protagonist, Levant. Levant is a young Cocoon Master, whose job is to capture and purify the Minions. The Minions can then be used to fight and defend Levant, spun into silk for money, or fused with other Minions to form more powerful combinations.

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Replica Möwe glider from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The glider has been flown a few hundred meters.

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Subcategories

Wikipedia: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind · Studio Ghibli (animated films, people) · Ni no Kuni · Topcraft
Commons: Studio Ghibli · Cosplay (Howl, in the US, Kiki, Mononoke, Nausicaä, Porco, Totoro· Films (Howl, Kiki, Laputa, Mononoke, Nausicaä, Ponyo, Porco, Spirited Away, Totoro, The Wind Rises, The Boy and the Heron), Museum · People (Gorō Miyazaki, Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata)

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