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Everything about Hayao Miyazaki totally explained

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. 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 didn't receive the award.
   Miyazaki's films often incorporate common themes, such as humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. 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. However, Miyazaki doesn't see himself as a person building an animation empire, but as an animator fortunate enough to have been able to make films with complete creative control. In 2006, Time Magazine voted Miyazaki one of the most influential Asians of the past 60 years.
   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.

Biography

Miyazaki, the second of four brothers, was born in the town of Akebono-cho, part of Tokyo's Bunkyō-ku. During World War II, Miyazaki's father Katsuji was director of Miyazaki Airplane, owned by his brother (Hayao Miyazaki's uncle), which made rudders for A6M Zero fighter planes. During this time, Miyazaki drew airplanes and developed a lifelong fascination with aviation, a penchant that later manifested as a recurring theme in his films.
   Miyazaki's mother was a voracious reader who often questioned socially accepted norms. Miyazaki later said that he inherited his questioning and skeptical mind from her. His mother underwent treatment for spinal tuberculosis from 1947 until 1955, and so the family moved frequently. His interest in animation began in this period; however, in order to become an animator, he'd to learn to draw the human figure, since his prior work had been limited to airplanes and battleships.. The film premiered at the 2004 Venice International Film Festival and won the Golden Osella award for animation technology. On November 20, 2004, Howl's Moving Castle opened to general audiences in Japan where it earned ¥1.4 billion in its first two days. The English language version was later released in the US by Walt Disney.
   In 2005, Miyazaki received a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival. Later that year, it was reported that Miyazaki's final film project would be I Lost My Little Boy,later re-titled 'Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea', based on a Chinese children's book.
   In 2006, Miyazaki's son Gorō Miyazaki completed his first film, Tales from Earthsea, based on several stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. (Hayao) Miyazaki had long aspired to make an anime of this work and had repeatedly asked for permission from the original author, Ursula K. Le Guin. However, he'd been refused every time. Instead, Miyazaki produced Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind and Shuna no tabi, (The Journey of Shuna) as substitutes (some of the ideas from Shuna no tabi were diverted to this movie). When Le Guin finally requested that Miyazaki produce an anime adaptation of her work, he refused because he'd lost the desire to do so.
   Throughout the film's production, Goro and his father were not speaking to each other, due to a dispute over whether or not Gorō was ready to direct.. This movie was originally to be produced by Miyazaki, but he declined as he was already in the middle of producing Howl's Moving Castle. Ghibli decided to make Goro, who had yet to head any animated films, the producer instead.
   In 2006, Nausicaa.net reported Hayao Miyazaki's plans to direct another film, rumored to be set in Kobe. Among areas Miyazaki's team visited during pre-production were an old café run by an elderly couple, and the view of a city from high in the mountains. The exact location of these places is censored from Studio Ghibli's production diaries. The studio has also announced that Miyazaki has begun creating storyboards for the film and that they're being produced in watercolor because the film will have an "unusual visual style." Studio Ghibli anticipates a production time of 20 months, with release slated for Summer 2008.
   In 2007, the film's title was publicly announced as Gake no ue no Ponyo, literally "Ponyo on a Cliff." The story is said to revolve around a five-year old boy, Sosuke, and the Princess goldfish, Ponyo, who wants to become human. Studio Ghibli President Toshio Suzuki noted that "70 to 80% of the film takes place at sea. It will be a director’s challenge on how that'll express the sea and its waves with freehand drawing." The film will probably not contain any computer generated imagery, or CGI, in contrast to Miyazaki's other recent work.

Television

Miyazaki's work in television is less known than his films. In the 1970s he worked as an animator on the World Masterpiece Theater television animation series under Isao Takahata. His first directorial credit is for the television version of Lupin III in 1971; he was co-director (with Takahata) of the second half of the first television series, and director of two episodes of the second series. His first feature film was a Lupin III adventure titled Castle of Cagliostro.
   Miyazaki's most famous television work was his direction of Future Boy Conan (1978), an adaptation of the children's novel The Incredible Tide by Alexander Key. The main antagonist is the leader of the city-state of Industria who attempts to revive lost technology. The series also elaborates on the characters and events in the book, and is an early example of characterizations which recur throughout Miyazaki's later work: a girl who is in touch with nature, a warrior woman who appears menacing but isn't an antagonist, and a boy who seems destined for the girl. The series also featured imaginative aircraft designs. Future Boy Conan was the TV animation series that Hayao Miyazaki had directed for the first time completely. This work was a big bet for Hayao Miyazaki who was worried whether to keep drawing a layout under Takahata untouched or to stop the work of anime. And, he won the bet and worked as a director after that. In making this work, Miyazaki invited Yasuo Otsuka who was a superior in the Toei Animation age and an elder friend as a partner on the drawing side. In those days, Miyazaki who had been drawing a layout and a storyboard, a picture, etc. in Takahata's work ("Heidi, Girl of the Alps", "3000 Leagues in Search of Mother") was the frustrations. Since the direction of Takahata who pursues realism compels the controlled play to the character, he as animator was dissatisfied. To make the frustration emanated, Miyazaki made Future Boy Conan full of the action scene.
   Miyazaki directed six episodes of Sherlock Hound, an Italian-Japanese co-production which retold Sherlock Holmes tales using anthropomorphic animals. These episodes were first broadcast in 1984-85.

Manga

Miyazaki has illustrated several manga, beginning in 1969 with Puss in Boots (Nagakutsu wo Haita Neko). His major work in this format is the seven-volume manga version of his tale Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which he created from 1982 to 1994 and which has sold millions of copies worldwide. Other works include,,, which was the basis of his film Porco Rosso).
   In October 2006, A Trip to Tynemouth was published in Japan. Miyazaki based it on the young adult short stories of Robert Westall, who grew up in World War II England. The most famous story, first published in a collection called Break of Dark, is titled Blackham's Wimpy. The rival Royal Air Force crews in the story fly Vickers Wellington Bombers, the nickname comes from the character J. Wellington Wimpy from Popeye comics and cartoons.

Creation process and animation style

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 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've 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.

Character

Miyazaki often alludes to environmentalism, a theme explored in a number of his films. In an interview with The New Yorker, Miyazaki claimed that much of modern culture is "thin and shallow and fake", and "not entirely jokingly" looked forward to an apocalyptic age in which "wild green grasses" take over. Nonetheless, he suggests that adults shouldn't "impose their vision of the world on children."

...children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations.


Themes and devices

Good and evil

Most of Miyazaki's characters are dynamic, capable of change, and not easily caricatured into traditional good-evil dichotomies. Many menacing characters have redeeming features, and are not firmly defined as antagonists. Lady Eboshi of Princess Mononoke knowingly exploits the forests for raw materials at the expense of animal life, while simultaneously sheltering lepers and former prostitutes in her city. The film culminates in reconciliation, rather than the vanquishing of some irredeemable evil.
   The same is true for Spirited Away, where, according to Miyazaki, "the heroine [is] thrown into a place where the good and bad dwell together ... She manages not because she's destroyed the “evil,” but because she's acquired the ability to survive."
   Miyazaki has explained that the lack of clearly defined good and evil is because of his views of the 21st century as a complex time, where old norms no longer are true and need to be re-examined. Simple stereotypes can't be used, even in children's films. However, even though Miyazaki sometimes feels pessimistic about the world, he prefers to show children a positive world view instead.

Influences

A number of Western authors have influenced Miyazaki's work, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Lewis Carroll, and Diana Wynne Jones. Miyazaki confided to Le Guin that Earthsea has been a great influence on all his works, and that he's kept her books on his bedside.
   Miyazaki and French writer and illustrator Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) have influenced each other and have become friends as a result of their mutual admiration. Monnaie de Paris held an exhibition of their work titled Miyazaki et Moebius: Deux Artistes Dont Les Dessins Prennent Vie (Two Artists’s Drawings Taking on a Life of Their Own) from December 2004 to April 2005. Both artists attended the opening of the exhibition. Also Moebius has named his daughter Nausicaa after Miyazaki's heroine.
   Miyazaki has been deeply influenced by another French writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He illustrated the Japanese covers of Saint-Exupéry's Night Flight (Vol de nuit) and Wind, Sand and Stars (Terre des Hommes), and wrote an afterword for Wind, Sand and Stars.
   In an interview broadcast on BBC Choice on 2002-06-10, Miyazaki cited the British authors Eleanor Farjeon, Rosemary Sutcliff, and Philippa Pearce as influences. The filmmaker has also publicly expressed fondness of Roald Dahl's stories about pilots and airplanes; the image in Porco Rosso of a cloud of dead pilots was inspired by Dahl's They Shall Not Grow Old. As in Miyazaki's films, these authors create self-contained worlds in which allegory is often used, and characters have complex, and often ambiguous, motivations. Other Miyazaki works, such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away incorporate elements of Japanese history and mythology.
   Miyazaki attributed his inspiration to go into the animation field to the release of The Tale of the White Serpent, considered the first modern anime, in 1958. The Snow Queen, a Soviet animated film, is cited by Miyazaki as one of his earliest inspirations, having motivated him to stay in animation production. Yuriy Norshteyn, a Russian animator, is Miyazaki's friend and praised by him as "a great artist". Norshteyn's Hedgehog in the Fog is cited as one of Miyazaki's favourite animated films.

Filmography

Director, screenplay, and storyboards

Scene design, layout

  • Heidi, Girl of the Alps, 1974 anime series
  • 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, 1976 anime series
  • Anne of Green Gables, Episodes 1-15, 1979 anime series

    Concept, screenplay, storyboards, scene design, key animation

  • Panda! Go, Panda!, 1972 short film

    Screenplay, storyboards, scene design, art design, key animation

  • , 1973 short film

    Screenwriter, storyboards, executive producer, sequence director

  • Whisper of the Heart, 1995 film

    Story consultant, key animation, storyboards, scene design

  • , 1971

    Key animation, storyboards, scene design

  • , 1968 film

    Organizer, key animation, storyboards

  • , 1971

    Key animation, storyboards, design

  • Puss 'n Boots, 1969 film
  • Flying Phantom Ship, 1969 filmFurther Information

    Get more info on 'Hayao Miyazaki'.


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