Favourite Miyazaki film

*tempted by

infused

thought pom poko was really up and down. story, impact, themes & more naturalistic animation = GREAT. otoh, at least half the comedy & anthro tanuki action was really lame & grating.

Nausicää is my favorite, followed by Castle in the Sky, then Kiki's Delivery Service. Still need to see the Lupin movie, Totoro and Princess Mononoke, though.

― tanuki, Wednesday, March 7, 2012 3:24 AM (16 hours ago)

^^^ correct first and second choice :D
I'd throw Porco Rosso in at #3

Nausicaä is pretty good, but sadly I read the comic first, and even though the movie is a fine adaptation, it just doesn't manage to convey the richness of the comic's themes. (Partially because the comic wasn't finished when the movie came out.)

Here's how I'd rate Miyazaki's films, to to bottom:

Totoro
Castle in the Sky
Porco Rosso
Nausicaä
Ponyo
Lupin III
Mononoke
Moving Castle

I still haven't seen Kiki, need to correct that soon.

Oh sorry, add Spirited Away there, between Nausicaä and Ponyo.

Miyazaki's never been too good at endings

This is nuts! Kiki - awesome ending! Mononoke - awesome ending! Totoro - awesome ending! Laputa - awesome ending!

Totoro | Spirited Away | Kiki's Delivery Service
Mononoke | Castle in the Sky | Ponyo | Howl's Moving Castle
Porco Rosso | Nausicaa | The Castle of Cagliostro | Cat Returns

Cat Returns is not Miyazaki.

oh. it wasn't very good, anyway.

Eh, i consider ghibli close enough

i LOVE cat returns, one of my favorite ghibli films (a long list, admittedly)

The ending of Mononoke might look halfway cool but it's absolute garbage. The forest spirit is a stupid way to wrap up a movie.

otm

notm

mononoke ending is v satisfying

I was being sarcastic

If Miyazaki is so bad at endings, why am I always moved to tears at the end of his movies??? That doesn't happen at movies with good endings (except for Cold Mountain, I was v mad at myself for crying at that).

subtlety is lost on me

xp

The endings aren't usually stupid. There might be three dissenters here but they only make up a minority

loved this! saw it today. so well written - understated and elegiac. and the animation was gorgeous - so carefully drawn and so lush. really one of the best - up there with totoro, spirited away and kiki in my eyes. maybe the best of the bunch actually (tho i haven't seen spirited away in awhile and i do remember how much i loved it)

also will arnett did not bother me at all! i thought he did a great job as the dad.

i have never seen any of these but my kids watched Nausicaa the other week and seemed pretty into it

cosco has most of these in their movie section now

2 new Ghibli films announced for summer 2013 in Japan!

http://i.imgur.com/5YuiX.png
Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Is Rising) written & directed by Miyazaki, story is about Jiro Horikoshi who was the designer of many WWII Japanese fighter planes.

http://i.imgur.com/95rlW.png
Kaguya-hime no Monogatari (The Tale of Princess Kaguya) directed by Isao Takahata, based on a Japanese folktale about a princess discovered as a baby inside the stalk of a glowing bamboo plant.

those are some beautiful promo posters. especially Kaze Tachinu - looks so breezy and sunny.

Although I'm starting to wonder whether Ghibli will make another truly great movie again.

Great news and yeah, *gorgeous* posters. Almost more excited about a new one from Isao Takahata than Miyazaki tbh, it's been so long since he directed anything and Only Yesterday is up there with anything else that Ghibli has made.

The premise of The Wind is Rising sounds fascinating though, hopefully an excuse for plenty of aerial sequences too. Man, I'm totally psyched for these :)

Sounds like the Wind is Rising could potentially be the first Miyazaki with no fantasy elements, interesting.

Watched Ponyo for the first time the other day, some absolutely stunning sequences, particularly the flooded town. Though the plot felt like it was invented by an eight year-old on the fly (maybe that's the point?).

Oh and the use of colour was phenomenal, maybe his best yet in that respect.

For real, there's some spectacular stuff in Ponyo] - the sequence where they they're racing the storm back to the clifftop home always sticks with me: the roiling sea, and the tiny figure of Ponyo pelting along beside the car on the cresting fish-like waves. And then they get back and have a ham/eggs/noodles meal - from a hurricane to domestic bliss in 10 minutes. And yr right, glorious work with colour throughout. Def. gonna have to watch it again soon.

my niece and nephew are your exemplary cultural-ADD children of today, nothing holds the attention, everything's accompanied by simultaneous DS-playing or similar, but the other day I put Ponyo on and within fifteen minutes they had dropped what they were doing and were silent and rapt till the end of it. Considering that they watch even their favourite films in a really passive way it was amazing to see.

Lovely!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7D-1RG-VRk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BPTNdmdJSc

i love that video.

was it on the ponyo dvd?

Spirited Away

Since this thread's revived, I may as well use it to note how much that last episode of Game of Thrones (w/ Danaerys) stole from the end of Nausicaa.

trailer for new film
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOsHgNaMTKw

Also, want to say from memory that Miyazaki (et all) have trouble with endings, a la Hitchcock and Spielberg.

so so so so wrong

i mean, it's not even true of hitchcock imo!

I'd say plotting simply isn't Miyazaki's strongest point, he's better at developing general themes and portraying individual moments. For example, the plots of Princess Mononoke, Moving Castle and Ponyo are all kind of a mess; with Ponyo it doesn't matter so much, since it's not a plot-centric movie, but with the former two it certainly hindered my enjoyment of the movie. His plotting deficiencies are even more evident if you read the Nausicaä manga, which arguably is Miyazaki at his purest, since he did it all by himself... The major themes of the comic and some individual bits certainly linger in mind, but I challenge anyone who's read it to try to summarize the plot in a coherent way.

His episodic plot structuring is a different style from what you're (we're) used to, the Shakespearean conflict-resolution style of storytelling. Seemingly unrelated plot events with abrupt changes of tone are the norm in Japanese plotting from The Tale of Genji through to Mishima and Kurozawa and Haruki Murakami. At least, that was my impression

I dunno, I've read plenty of manga and seen plenty of anime, and though it might be more prevalent than in the West, I wouldn't say this is the norm for either.

Also, the not-so-coherent/episodic structure is fine with me, if it fits the tone of the movie, like it does in Totoro or Pom Poko (not a Miyazaki movie, I know, but it's by Studio Ghibli). But when a movie is more plot-driven, and the plot gets incoherent, like it does in Moving Castle, that is a flaw to me.

I think Nausicaa (manga)'s plot is basically clear, it's just that it's a really long war epic with a large cast and there is a tendency towards episodic detours in the form. I mean, she's named after a bit character in a superfluous, plot-derailing segment of the Odyssey iirc... I'll concede that it maybe suffers a bit from write-as-you-go over many years, and a couple of big later plot developments aren't REALLY set up in the first half, but it's not Howl-level by any means.

Japanese sites reporting that Hayao Miyazaki has announced his retirement from making films
http://mainichi.jp/mantan/news/20130901dyo00m200036000c.html

Awww.

Howl's Moving Castle on Film4 again yesterday. If it weren't for No-Face in Spirited Away it might actually be my favourite.

he also recently said that Hideaki Anno (Nausicaa key animator & writer/director of Evangelion) can make the Nausicaa sequel that Anno has been badgering him about. hmmmm.

Woah, I never knew the Anno-Nausicaa connection!