I don’t think there’s a single name more important to bring up when talking about anime as Hayao Miyazaki, the creative genius behind many of the fantastic Studio Ghibli films coming out of Japan.
Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki, 宮崎 駿, was born on January 5, 1941, making him 71 years old today. Together with Isao Takahata, he founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, an animation studio which has been hailed by many as a success very much akin to what a Japanese Disney studio would look like. Hayao himself has been compared to Walt Disney, of course, and has even been named one of the most influential people by Time Magazine.
While he started as an animator on the payroll of Toei Animation, Hayao quickly found himself more comfortable in the chair of producer and director, having gone so far as to travel to Sweden to meet with Astrid Lindgren to explore the possibility of making a series based on the Pippi Longstocking franchise. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the rights, and the world is a poorer place for it.
Hayao’s first feature film was Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro, released in 1979. He followed this up with Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso and Princess Mononoke, which was the highes grossing movie in Japan in 1997, until Titanic came and stole first place.
Miyazaki’s films often incorporate recurrent themes like humanity’s relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. His protagonists are often strong, independent girls or young women, and one will often find his villains to be morally ambiguous with a number of redeeming qualities that kind of make you understand why they turned out that way instead of learning to hate them.