Favourite Miyazaki film

the earthsea i found slow and odd, with a handful of terrific unnerving moments. i know the farthest shore pretty well so i found some of the departures or changes a bit confusing -- i know this type of criticism is rarely fair, let alone convincing if you haven't Read The Book™, but the grasping of the backstory of the setting (the various islets of the archipelago and their cultural-political ways) seems to rest on your porting in yr memory of the books as shorthand explainer, so

also sparrowhawk himself is very underrealised and not actually very absorbing as a character

iirc, earthsea is the only skip it in the ghibli canon

now revise yr opinion on ponyo

i watched totoro last weekend and apart from the amazing catbus, i thought it was all a bit cutesy-poo

spirited away is a masterpiece tho

the cat returns is slight but hella fun and underrated, (she wants to marry a cat!)
thats all the studio ghibli ive seen so far

i don't think totoro is cutesy-poo! the situations -- realist and quasi-magical -- are often borderline terrifying, and the way the children are is i think very well drawn (the little one just makes me laugh the whole time, her volume control is so random)

(i like the point ebert makes also, that there's no cliched conflict or drama inserted: the darkness is right there but quite understated = ill mother, threat of kids slipping from lovely freedom to play into actually tumbling down a well and drowning or whatever (this is what i found so stressful abr the final ten mins, it made me think how lucky i am to still have a living sister given her unsupervised rural adventures aged 4 and up) (i just read books on my bed, i was only ever in mental peril)

now revise yr opinion on ponyo

Totoro mother is not "ill" btw, she's pregnant! It's shown in the credit sequence. Next time you rewatch it, think about it with that in mind and it becomes a story about how families adjust to change.

Totoro mother is not "ill" btw, she's pregnant!

I've noticed the baby who appears in some, not all, of the credit stills, but this is some epic wtf revisionism!

The mother is def not pregnant while hospitalized, both dubs gloss over it but she's recuperating due to a weak heart but keeps catching "kaze" (could be either flu/cold) so the doctor's keep stalling her release.

Thanks guys I thought I was going mad for a minute

it's probably best avoiding the dubs then if important bits of plot are being missed.

think i was the cagliostro vote. perfect troll opinion but i am more into Lupin III than the filmography of miyazaki

yeah, i've had this conversation a few times with people who have written academic papers about miyazaki: given the unreliable narrator that is mei and satsuki, the weak heart/cold may well be the way they are interpreting the moment with the mother. I am personally positive that she's in the hospital (likely with additional ailments induce by but primarily stemming from the fact that she is) pregnant. Try watching Totoro with that in mind and it plays in a totally different way!

Now where's those paragraphs I wrote somewhere in this or another thread about how Kiki is really about the onset of puberty?

right, here's the reference I remember reading in book one of miyazaki's bio about his mother having spinal TB: it's likely both that and pregnancy as the film is not covering a timeline longer than nine months and mom comes home with a baby:
https://ghibli.fandom.com/wiki/Tuberculosis

willing to fight and die on this hill btw

I might watch it again tomorrow but the Internet is not full of people agreeing with you on this one

i prefer thinking of kiki as being about depression rather than puberty though both viewings work and puberty is more likely "correct"

The mom doesn't come home with a baby lol... In the end credit stills you can see that both Mei & Satsuki have grown a few years.

The heart condition is detailed in the telegram which you only get a brief glance at (prob why it's skipped in the dubs, it's only shown for a moment). The telegram also says that the flu/sickness is delaying her expected discharge from the ward. I guess someone could try to theorize that the telegram is some weird fantasy made up in the girls' minds... but then again I don't write academic papers about teh animes lol.

The mom tells the girls how she needs to get stronger to go home, and that the doctors keep preventing her from going home because she keeps catching either cold/flu/fever. The grandma alludes a couple times that her cooking/vegetables would help her mom recover her health from an illness.

It's a creative theory but even with your 25 years of graduate weeb studies, but I'm gonna say: hard nah.

The correct list:

My Neighbor Totoro
Spirited Away
Kiki
Ponyo
The Wind Rises
From Up on Poppy Hill
Princess Mononoke
Howl’s Moving Castle
My Neighbors the Yamadas
When Marnie was There
Laputa
The Cat Returns
Nausicaa
Whisper of the Heart
Secret World of Arietty
Tale of the Princess Kaguya

I don’t remember Only Yesterday, Grave of the Fireflies, Porco Rosso, or Pom Poko very well.

I’ve never seen Ocean Waves or Tales from Earthsea.

I don't feel like writing a million words on it, but I've noticed that Ponyo, Howl, and Arietty (in particular) are all movies that dispense with standard narrative structure, and are dramatically much "worse" than they should be, but are waaaay more entertaining because they're then not beholden to a bog-standard three-act style.

Pardon a moment's soppiness...

So I got a portable projector screen for my birthday and last night my wife and I gave it a test run on Ponyo.

My wife had a brain haemorrhage three years ago and along with it, a parallel condition called Terson which has messed with her eyesight badly, so watching a projected movie, it was kinda unknown territory for her, I was pretty nervous.

She loves the film. Ghibli movies, in general, are threaded into our relationship. And even though stuff on screen goes missing and colours are distorted for her, she had a good time especially after the first 15 mins which it took for her eyes to acclimate. She could even read the subtitles okay, which is great because it's not the same with the English dubs.

It was weirdly emotional but reasonably successful. We're gonna try her out on some Ozu soon, continuing the Japanese theme, and when I came home tonight her little Ponyo figure that she bought from the Ghibli Museum shop was down from the top of the wardrobe and on her bedside cabinet.

:)

Many thumbs up to hear that MN!

Well, two

the Internet is not full of people agreeing with you

i've never been to japan so i'm only guessing that its skies are as blue and its clouds as large and white and fluffy as anywhere of similar latitude but i still love the the ghibli skies look so exactly like the cover art skies and clouds of british children's books and jigsaws from the 1930s, a very particular blue and a very particular painted fluffiness

(tonight i'm watching KIKI'S DELIVERY SRVICE for the first time, already i feel i understand it better than Fuck the NRA (ulysses) has for decades)

i am also going to watch kiki for the first time tonight

please explain its nuances to me in great detail

i hope to christ you are watching a sub and not a dub

sub yes, kiki is pregnant apparently

pregnant with meaning, sure

late xp to albert but:

The mom doesn't come home with a baby lol...

if we've already established the mother (of three i might add!) had spinal tuberculosis and not "flu", I think it's a short and reasonable leap to imagine what else is not being carefully and clinically explained to both mei and satsuke and, consequently, to us as the audience.

i'd argue that searching miyazaki's films too closely looking for "proof" is like trying to fact check a fairy tale. on the other hand, finding deeper themes and complexities when you go into the woods is the point of reading good children's literature beyond puberty.

kiki is amazing, and yes subs only, the dub of that is really unfortunate

all the boys are tintin in this film lol

this scene is half serge clerc and half a 30s uk travel poster

https://i.stack.imgur.com/gT1Jb.jpg

(the colours aren't really right in that one but i couldn't find the one it reminds me of most on-line)

https://i.imgur.com/TxIPRsf.jpg

excellent stuff :)

(tho totoro doesn't actually remind me of those posters anything like as much as kiki, where they clearly unfurled a sheaf of them in the studio and said "like this please" except with crowd characters from the post-hergé school)

smdh at ragged edges, visible artefacts & missing foot. oh well i was under (bed)time constraints.

@ulysses w/r/t pregnancy in Japan (& please trust me on this):

When a couple is expecting a child (and this would be 100% specific to the culture of mid-century Saitama-ken, as is incredibly still common today in both cities/countryside), the mother goes to stay with her parents for most of the 3rd trimester prior to delivery and then again (with baby) for the first 30-100 days post-partum.

Look up 里帰り出産 or 産後の肥立ち in your favorite multilingual search engine.

But yeah, the doctor's telegram from the doctor clearly states her condition as "心臓弱" (so as not to confuse HM's bio with the story presented)...

...and I just remembered the very same heart condition shows up again with Sho/Shawn in Arietty. #ghiblitropes

and not "flu"

for the last time (I hope): the mom is hospitalized for a weak heart condition, her release is being delayed because she catches "風邪" (hard to translate but could mean either cold/flu/fever) & the doctors don't want to release her unless she's in 100% health.

You are free to re-imagine whatever backstory you like, I'm just telling you the information that the film provides.

the mom is not in the sanitarium because she is pregnant, let's stop this lunacy

just carefully rewatched the credit-still sequence -- may go back and break it down to some extent (= frame by frame) -- but while a baby (and at one point 2 x babies) do appear alongside the girls, mei in particular, they never appear (that i could see) (will recheck 2moro and take proper weeb-studies notes unless someone else does first) with the mother, and in the very last frame we see the 2 x girls in bed with the mother, who is reading to them. everyone looks happy but i would not say she looks 100% recovered…

my provisional pre-rerewatch conclusion is that *if* the arrival of a baby is being implied, it is nonetheless somewhat *ambiguously* (indeed deniably!) implied: in most of the credit stills with the baby (or babies) there are several other children too, the rest of whom must be from other families

if the totoros are spirits of growth and life, and come out of the forests help the girls at the moment when the parents aren't available, then the best proof of the totoros' efforts would probably be the girls growing into healthy, older, socially integrated beings... and the photos at the end of the movie (with happy M and S) might prove exactly that?

what are the best Miyazaki films to watch with younger kids (~ages 4-7)?

The mom is in the hospital bc that is where she is a viking

Ponyo, Totoro, Howl. Ponyo makes perfect sense to kids, IMHO, and less sense to adults. All Miyazaki (except maybe) Totoro can be scary/overwhelming. Most of the dubs are serviceable, but not great.

Maybe The Cat Returns too. Am I wrong or is it a sequel to Whisper of the Heart inasmuch as it's (SPOILER ALERT) the story Shizuku writes at the end of that film?

Now where's those paragraphs I wrote somewhere in this or another thread about how Kiki is really about the onset of puberty?

― Fuck the NRA

just watched it for maybe the fourth or fifth time and I came to the same conclusion

as much as i love every miyazaki film, my personal top 3 are princess mononoke, laputa, and nausicaa.

the only one i haven't seen yet is the wind rises. i've heard a lot of conflicting opinions... what did you guys think?

btw, this isn't a film, but miyazaki's 1978 tv show 'future boy conan' is absolutely incredible!

kiki was pretty good! will do either laputa or the wind rises next weekend i think

Now where's those paragraphs I wrote somewhere in this or another thread about how Kiki is really about the onset of puberty?

I just thought of Kiki as a really great portrayal of burnout. But I should really watch it again.