Yes! You heard correctly! The founder of M.A.L.E. and monster of the week aficionado TDSA will finally see all this hub-ub that is *reads wikipedia title* Studio Ghibli (Gablee?). Yep, no joke, I'm actually going to watch no less then SEVEN of these anime movies from beginning to end 'cause I want to know just what the heck you people see. After doing one I'll come back here and make my reviews. I don't have a complete idea on all of them I want to see, so if you guys want you can make suggestions.


Things I'm going to point out though:

1. If push comes to shove I'm watching the dubbed version of whatever I'm planning to see.

2. You can only recommend movies, not any OVAs, music videos, or TV stuff.

3. I will not accept every recommendation, anything mentioned here I will look up on Wikipedia.

4. In the event that I every film I see every film and none of them manage to rank an 8/10, everyone who recommended me something has to watch no less than three anime of my choosing. What? Studio Ghibli produces masterpieces, right? Surely they can be recommended to anyone with an anime taste. This is more a less a test of fan loyalty.

5. No recommending The Borrower Arrietty, it's not in the US yet. Any other movie will be find.

6. This is optional but please, give reasons why you recommend a specific movie.


Alright, lets see if I can try to be cultural.

I see a storm on the horizon. . .

WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

Xard, you should know how easy it is for me to give something a high score. The stuff made Ghibli are all masterpieces to many fans and critics alike, surely at least ONE of SEVEN of them can get an 8/10 from me. I figured I added the gambling portion to make a little excitement.

Here are the Ghibli films I've seen:

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984, Hayao Miyazaki)
Castle in the Sky (1986, Hayao Miyazaki)
Grave of the Fireflies (1988, Isao Takahata)
My Neighbour Totoro (1988, Hayao Miyazaki)
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989, Hayao Miyazaki)
Only Yesterday (1991, Isao Takahata)
Porco Rosso (1992, Hayao Miyazaki)
Princess Mononoke (1997, Hayao Miyazaki)
Spirited Away (2001, Hayao Miyazaki)
Howl's Moving Castle (2004, Hayao Miyazaki)

Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion wrote:4. In the event that I every film I see every film and none of them manage to rank an 8/10, everyone who recommended me something has to watch no less than three anime of my choosing.

I beg your pardon? We'll watch what we want to watch, just as you will watch what you want to watch, thank you very much.

You know we already have a Ghibli thread. You could have just posted there.

Also if you want a good feel of which Ghibli films to watch, check out the Ghibli Blog. The guy who runs it knows his stuff. He made me into a bonafide Ghibli nut.

Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion wrote:5. No recommending The Borrower Arrietty, it's not in the US yet. Any other movie will be find.

Oh really? Cant you just travel to Japan or at best Hong Kong to see it? ;) I saw it about three weeks ago in Hong Kong. It was a marvelous movie, truely it was. Surprisingly good to since it wasnt directed by Hayao Miyazaki.

DevRei17 wrote:You know we already have a Ghibli thread. You could have just posted there.

Bad idea. When this thread blows up I don't want the other Ghibli thread to burn too.

Oh really? Cant you just travel to Japan or at best Hong Kong to see it?

I have no money to do such thing.

Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion wrote:4. In the event that I every film I see every film and none of them manage to rank an 8/10, everyone who recommended me something has to watch no less than three anime of my choosing. What? Studio Ghibli produces masterpieces, right? Surely they can be recommended to anyone with an anime taste. This is more a less a test of fan loyalty.

You assume that you have taste. You also assume that this is some sort of contract or formal bet. Nobody here is requiring that you watch these, so you cannot reasonably require others to watch what you want if you don't like these.

After a little thought I've given the notion to start with (seriously, no drum roll emoticon?)




Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind! It's this studio's first, so going with their first is a good place to start, right? Expect a review in the near future!

That might be a good place for you to start. I would say out of the miyazaki movies, and based on what I know of your tastes (since you like giant bugs in movies) I think that there would be the greatest probability of you liking Nausica out of their films, also based on what I know of your tastes you'd probably like tales from earth sea, though I say that for entirely different reasons then Nausica. Also this is not a recommendation, this is simply an observation on my part. If I were to recommend a movie I would recommend... something that I will talk about in another topic at some point so that I don't get roped into anything.

I have no money to do such thing.

In a completely unrelated note, I often wonder why I've never seen an anime fan with large quantities of money.

child of Lilith wrote:Bad idea. When this thread blows up I don't want the other Ghibli thread to burn too.

Your right!
Thanks for pointing out my grave mistake!

Forgive me as I do not know the background or history. May I ask if TDSA never watch any Miyazaki's anime? If true, is it possible to share with me the reason? I do not mean to sound patronizing. It is just that a very significant number of anime fans in the west first came to anime through Miyazaki, and even if they did not see Miyazaki at the beginning, most of all very soon see one. So I just wonder if there is a deliberate decision for TDSA to not see any Miyazaki's picture so far.

I believe I have seen all the Miyazaki's picture and most of Studio Ghibli's output (not all of them were directed by Miyazaki)

The following list is from Wiki for all movie ouput from Ghibli, and it has the date of release and the name of the director as well:

1 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind March 11, 1984 Hayao Miyazaki
2 Laputa Castle in the Sky August 2, 1986 Hayao Miyazaki
3 Grave of the Fireflies April 16, 1988 Isao Takahata
4 My Neighbour Totoro April 16, 1988 Hayao Miyazaki
5 Kiki's Delivery Service July 29, 1989 Hayao Miyazaki
6 Only Yesterday July 20, 1991 Isao Takahata
7 Porco Rosso July 18, 1992 Hayao Miyazaki
8 Ocean Waves May 3, 1993 Tomomi Mochizuki
9 Pom Poko July 16, 1994 Isao Takahata
10 Whisper of the Heart July 15, 1995 Yoshifumi Kondō
11 Princess Mononoke July 12, 1997 Hayao Miyazaki
12 My Neighbours the Yamadas July 17, 1999 Isao Takahata
13 Spirited Away July 27, 2001 Hayao Miyazaki
14 The Cat Returns July 19, 2002 Hiroyuki Morita
15 Howl's Moving Castle November 20, 2004 Hayao Miyazaki
16 Tales from Earthsea July 29, 2006 Gorō Miyazaki
17 Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea July 19, 2008 Hayao Miyazaki
18 The Borrower Arrietty July 17, 2010 Hiromasa Yonebayashi

I have seen all except #8 and #14. My best favorite is Mononoke Hime (#11) but my 2nd best favorite is actually Mimi wo Sumaseba (#10).

Anyway, the most conventional way is to check what made Miyazaki famous -- so need to check out earlier time when he did sci-fi that wowed the anime world then (and even now), not least the action scenes and world creation ideas - Laputa or Nausicca would be a good start.

Then we would like to find out how Miyazaki became the icon for children's anime and got more than one generation of young kids to be fan of his anime and the anime characters in the anime while had grown-up reflecting on their childhood or their life - Totoro or Spirited Away should be checked, or Kiki

Then we want to see how Studio Ghibli went beyond making "children anime" category (even though the anime is as good for adults too) - Graveyard of Firelies got many to recognise Ghibli as a company of talented staff not just another name for Miyazaki, and it can make tear-jerking anime based in the real-life world just as well.

Then we want to go back to see Miyazaki reaching his mature age -- with bigger fund and more advanced technology, he could work out his magic on perfecting the background portrayal, bringing the thrill of action scenes to even higher level, at the same time bringing good food for thoughts to adults watching the anime. While the anime is good for children, arguably its main appeal is for adults -- Porco Rosso and Mononoke Hime belong to this age.

Just some suggestions. Any comment or suggestion is very welcome.

By the way, TDSA's condition #4 is really not helping the thread. People will just get turned off by such demand. I will not abide by that condition. I just want to share with everyone my approach to recommending Ghibli's movie to an anime fan.

Sounds like more TDSA grandstanding time. I do hope you're not just watching these films with the intent to be discontented with them.

On the other hand, this thread reminded me that I still have yet to watch Ocean Waves.

I will observe that Laputa has a battle robot. I will also observe that it has an appalling Disney dubtitled version.

Mr. Tines wrote:I will also observe that it has an appalling Disney dubtitled version.

It does, and it's the 2010 re-release, so avoid that as best as you can or just watch the film in dub (which is good, as far as dubs go).

I know it's not technically Ghibli, but you should watch Miyazaki's film Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro. It's awesome, and should be seen by anyone calling themselves an anime fan.

BrikHaus wrote:I know it's not technically Ghibli, but you should watch Miyazaki's film Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro. It's awesome, and should be seen by anyone calling themselves an anime fan.

Apparently Spielberg called it one of the greatest adventure movies ever made and he's absolutely right. Cagliostro is just work of genius.

By the way, today I finally watched the two Lupin III episodes Miyazaki directed year after Cagliostro (they were his final works in franchise), episodes 145 The Albatross and series finale 155 Farewell Lupin. Miyazaki recycled the design for bank robbing robot (inspired by Fleischer's classic Superman cartoon The Mechanical Monsters from 1941) in Laputa nearly intact. It also featured yet another proto-Nausicaä for crying out loud!

In any case those two episodes were spot on perfect, just like the film Castle of Cagliostro was.

Okay, here are TDSA's reviews, freshly extracted from the Time Dome.