Hayao Miyazaki
“Hayao Miyazaki is a prominent director of many popular animated feature films. He is also the co-founder of Studio Ghibli an animation studio and production company. He remained largely unknown to the West outside of animation communities, until Miramax released his 1997 ‘Princess Mononoke’.
By that time, his films had already enjoyed both commercial and critical success in Japan and Central Asia. For instance, Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, and the first animated film to win Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards.
His later film, ‘Spirited Away’ had that distinction as well, and was the first anime film to win an Academy Award. Howl’s Moving Castle was also nominated but did not receive the award.
Miyazaki’s films often incorporate recurrent themes such as humanity’s relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. Reflecting Miyazaki’s feminism, the protagonists of his films are often strong, independent girls or young women; the villains when present, are often morally ambiguous characters with redeeming qualities.
Miyazaki’s films have generally been financially successful, and this success has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney. In 2006, Time Magazine voted Miyazaki one of the most influential Asians of the past 60 years.
Miyazaki first gained recognition while working as an in-between artist on the Toei production Gulliver’s Travels Beyond the Moon (Gariba no Uchuu Ryoko, 1965). He found the original ending to the script unsatisfactory and pitched his own idea, which became the ending used in the final film.
He later played an important role as chief animator, concept artist, and scene designer on Hols: Prince of the Sun in 1968, a landmark animated film directed by Isao Takahata, with whom he continued to collaborate for the next three decades.
In Kimio Yabuki’s Puss in Boots (1969) Miyazaki again provided key animation as well as designs, storyboards, and story ideas for key scenes in the film, including the climactic chase scene. Shortly thereafter, Miyazaki proposed scenes in the screenplay for Flying Phantom Ship, in which military tanks would roll into downtown Tokyo and cause mass hysteria, and was hired to storyboard and animate those scenes.
In 1971, Miyazaki played a decisive role in developing structure, characters, and designs for Animal Treasure Island and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, as well as storyboarding and key animating of pivotal scenes in both. He left Toei in 1971 for A Pro, where he co-directed six episodes of the first Lupin III series with Isao Takahata.
He and Takahata then began pre-production on a Pippi Longstocking series and drew extensive story boards for it. However, after traveling to Sweden to conduct research for the film and meet the original author, Astrid Lindgren, they were denied permission to complete the project, and it was canceled.
Instead of Pippi Longstocking, Miyazaki conceived, wrote, designed and animated two Panda! Go, Panda! shorts which were directed by Takahata. Miyazaki then left Nippon Animation in 1979 in the middle of the production of Anne of Green Gables to direct his first feature anime The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), a Lupin III adventure film.
Anime directed by Miyazaki that have won the Animage Anime Grand Prix award have been Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984, Castle in the Sky in 1986, My Neighbor Totoro in 1988, and Kiki’s Delivery Service in 1989.
Miyazaki takes a leading role when creating his films, frequently serving as both writer and director. He personally reviewed every frame used in his early films, though due to health concerns over the high workload he now delegates some of the workload to other Ghibli members.
In a 1999 interview, Miyazaki said, “at this age, I cannot do the work I used to. If my staff can relieve me and I can concentrate on directing, there are still a number of movies I’d like to make.”
In contrast to American animation, the script and storyboards are created together, and animation begins before the story is finished and storyboards are developing. Stories are sometimes based on his manga.
Miyazaki has used traditional animation throughout the animation process, though computer-generated imagery has been employed since Princess Mononoke to give “a little boost of elegance”. In an interview with the Financial Times, Miyazaki said “it’s very important for me to retain the right ratio between working by hand and computer. I have learnt that balance now, how to use both and still be able to call my films 2D.”
Digital paint was also used for the first time in parts of Princess Mononoke in order to meet release deadlines. It has been used as standard for subsequent films. However, in his 2008 film ‘Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea’, Miyazaki has gone back to traditional hand-drawn animation for everything, saying “hand drawing on paper is the fundamental of animation.”
I recommend David Chute’s essay ‘Miyazaki Sensai’ from the November-December, 1998, issue of Film Comment as a well written piece for your further reading.
