Studio Ghibli, Inc. is a Japanese animation film studio, and previously was a subsidiary of Tokuma Shoten. The company’s logo features the character Totoro from Hayao Miyazaki’s film My Neighbor Totoro.
Several anime features created by Studio Ghibli have won the Animage Anime Grand Prix award including Laputa: Castle in the Sky in 1986, My Neighbor Totoro in 1988, and Kiki’s Delivery Service in 1989. In 2002, Spirited Away won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, the first anime film to win an Academy Award. Read more…
Whisper of the Heart (If You Listen Closely in Japanese) is a 1995 anime movie from Studio Ghibli directed by Yoshifumi Kondo with screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki and based on the manga by Aoi Hiiragi.
One summer evening in 1994, Shizuku Tsukishima, a fourteen-year old girl who is in junior high school in Tama New Town, on the outskirts of Tokyo, looks through the checkout cards in her books and notices a pattern: each book had previously been checked out by someone named “Seiji Amasawa”. Read more…
Porco Rosso, (Crimson Pig in Japanese) is the sixth anime film by Hayao Miyazaki, released in 1992, about an Italian World War I fighter ace, now living as a freelance bounty hunter chasing “air pirates” in the Adriatic Sea. The man has been cursed, and has been transformed into a pig. Once called Marco Pagot, he is now known to the world as “Porco Rosso”, Italian for “Red Pig.” The animation is loosely based on Miyazaki’s manga HikÅtei Jidai. Read more…
Howl’s Moving Castle is a 2004 Japanese animated fantasy movie written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli, based on Diana Wynne Jones’ novel of the same name. Eighteen-year-old Sophie, who runs her late father’s hat shop, encounters the mysterious wizard Howl by chance. He takes a liking to her, but this attracts the attention of the Witch of the Waste, who has been seeking Howl’s heart for herself. Read more…
Spirited Away is a 2001 Japanese anime film written and directed by famed animator Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film views a sullen ten-year-old girl in the middle of her family’s move to the suburbs and an awkward wander into a world of gods, spirits, and monsters; and a bathhouse for these creatures. Read more…
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a 1984 post-apocalyptic Japanese anime film, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, based on his manga of the same name. The film has environmentalist undertones and was presented by the World Wide Fund for Nature when it was released in 1984. Read more…
Hayao Miyazaki (born January 5, 1941 in Tokyo, Japan) is a prominent filmmaker of many popular animated feature films. He is also a 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 in Japan until Titanic (1997) came out a few months later, 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, topping Titanic in the Japanese box office. Howl’s Moving Castle was also nominated but did not receive the award. Read more…
My Neighbor Totoro, is a 1988 Japanese anime film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film follows the two young daughters of a professor and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan. The movie won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1988.
In 1958, the Kusakabe family reunites when a university professor and his two daughters, Satsuki and Mei, move into an old house in rural Japan to be closer to the hospital where his wife is recovering from an illness. The daughters find that the house is inhabited by tiny animated dust creatures called soot sprites — small house spirits seen when moving from light to dark places. When the girls become comfortable in their new house and laugh with their father, the soot spirits leave. Read more…
Princess Mononoke is a 1997 Japanese animated historical fantasy feature film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli. It is a period drama set specifically in the late Muromachi period of Japan but with numerous fantastic elements and concentrates on the struggle between the supernatural guardians of a forest and the humans who consume its resources as seen by the outsider Ashitaka. “Mononoke” is not a name, but a general term in the Japanese language for a spirit or monster. Read more…
Laputa – Castle In The Sky is a 1986 film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It is the first film created and released by Studio Ghibli. Laputa – Castle in the Sky won the Animage Anime Grand Prix in 1986. The name Laputa comes from the name of the floating island in Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels. Read more…
