Comprehensive information and links about Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki ), born January 5, 1941 in Tokyo, is one of the most famous and respected creators of anime, or Japanese animated films.

Miyazaki is the creator of many popular anime feature films, as well as some manga (Japanese comics). Although largely unknown in the West outside of animation circles until Miramax released his film in 1999, his films have enjoyed huge box-office and critical success in Japan and East Asia for many years. Miyazaki's later in the same year.

Miyazaki's films are distinguished by recurring themes, such as humanity's relationship to nature and technology, and the difficulty of maintaining a pacifist ethic. The protagonists of his movies are often strong, independent girls or young women; the "villains" often turn out to be ambiguous characters with redeeming qualities.

Miyazaki is considered to be the Walt Disney of Japanese animation. This may prove true, as his films have grossed enough to put him in league with Disney's work. However, Miyazaki does not see himself as a person building an animation empire - only an animator lucky enough to have been allowed to make films with his own personal touch. With that statement, one might compare him to Yuri Norstein, Frederic Back, or Chuck Jones as an animator's animator.

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Films

Miyazaki first gained recognition while working as an inbetween artist on the Toei Animation production of was lacking and pitched his own idea—which became the ending that was actually used in the final film.

, a landmark animated film directed by Isao Takahata, with whom he would continue to collaborate for the next three decades.

Miyazaki's first film as a director was ), was an epic adventure featuring many distinctive themes that reappear in later films: a concern with ecological issues, a fascination with aircraft, and the absence of a traditional villain. He adapted it from the manga of the same name, which he had himself created two years prior. Following the success of , Miyazaki co-founded, with Isao Takahata, the animation film company Studio Ghibli, and has produced most (if not all) of his subsequent work through it.

(1989Hayao Miyazaki is the story of a small-town teenage witch who strikes out on her own in a big city.

(1992) was something of a departure for Miyazaki, in that the main character was an adult male--an anti-fascist aviator transformed into an anthropomorphic pig. The film is a light-hearted adventure set in a fictional world based on 1920s Italy where bounty hunters, aviators, and air pirates battle in the skies. The movie explores the tension between selfishness and duty. Many also see the film as being an abstract self-portrait of the director himself, something of a fictionalised autobiography.

. The main plot is an epic struggle between the animal gods who rule the forest and the humans who are trying to exploit it for industry. The film was a huge commercial success in Japan where it became the highest grossing film of all time, until the later success of

He came out of retirement after spending a holiday with the daughters of a friend, one of whom became the inspiration for , "The Spiriting Away of Sen and Chihiro"), the story of a girl who is forced to survive in a strange alternate spirit world, enlisted to work in a bathhouse for spirits and gods after her parents are turned into pigs. The film, released in Japan in July 2001, broke the attendance and box office records previously set by with ¥30.4 billion in total gross earnings from over 23 million viewings. It has received numerous film awards, including Best Picture at the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, Golden Bear (First Prize) at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival, and the 2002 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the first Oscar awarded to an anime production. In 2005, Miyazaki was awarded for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival.

, an anime film adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones' fantasy novel of the same name for which he was required to come out of retirement again following the sudden departure of original director Mamoru Hosoda. The film premiered at the 2004 Venice International Film Festival and won the Golden Osella award for animation technology. On November 20, 2004, opened to general audiences in Japan and earned ¥1.4 billion in its first two days, continuing the record-setting trend of Miyazaki films at the box office. The English dubbed version was released in the U.S. through Disney on June 11, 2005.

One of the most distinctive traits of Miyazaki's later films that sets them apart from classic Western animation (like that of DisneyHayao Miyazaki is the lack of stereotypically "good" or "bad" characters. His characters have complex motivations, and while some can be better or worse than others they are often capable of growth and change. For example, Lady Eboshi from stands in opposition to the other main characters, and her iron works blatantly exploit the nearby forests for raw materials. However, her character doesn't fit into the standard role of villain: the viewer sees how she provides a productive home for lepers and former prostitutes in her city, and by the end of the film she appears to have a change of heart about stripping the forest and killing off its spirits. Some of Miyazaki's early films, however, featured undeniably evil villains (Count Cagliostro in

Visual devices

Specific visual elements recur in many of Miyazaki's films. Particularly in his later work, he occasionally dedicates a few seconds of film to explore a quiet moment in the animated environment. The image of wind moving in long waves across a field of grass or grain has been used in many of his films, as is a closeup shot of a stone or boulder darkening with raindrops. These brief sequences, usually no longer than five or six seconds, are often instrumental in establishing the larger "reality" of his animated world.

Another visual element common to Miyazaki's films is the use of character designs that, at the most basic level, are quite similar. This is often humorously considered an artistic perception that such characters are actors and actresses, reappearing in different films of his.

Flight by the characters is a very common occurrence in Miyazaki's films, lauded for their ability to often look very natural and not "forced". Examples include Nausicaä piloting Mehve, Kiki riding her broomstick, Totoro carrying Satsuki and Mei across the night sky, Howl and Sophie floating majestically above the town of Market Chipping, or Chihiro being borne by Haku in dragon-form back towards the bathhouse of the spirits to find her parents.

Influences

A number of English and French authors have influenced Miyazaki's artwork, such as Lewis Carroll, Möbius, Diana Wynne Jones, and J.R.R. Tolkien. As in Miyazaki's films, these authors have created self-contained worlds where allegory is avoided, characters have complex or ambiguous motivations, and the audience is not explicitly lectured to. In a 1994 BBC interview, Miyazaki cited the British authors Eleanor Farjeon, Rosemary Sutcliff, and Philippa Pearce as influences. He has also created TV work based on Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. The filmmaker is also fond of Roald Dahl's stories about planes and pilots: for example, the image from of a cloud of dead pilots was inspired by Dahl's "They Shall Not Grow Old". Other Miyazaki works—such as —specifically incorporate elements of Japanese history and mythology.

Miyazaki was also influenced by his political background in the ANPO Hantai (opponents of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty) and labor movements of the 1960s. These political roots had an impact on the themes of his films.

TV series

Miyazaki's work in TV series is less well known than his films. In the 1970s he worked as an animator on the World Masterpiece Theater TV animation series under Isao Takahata. His first directorial credit is for the TV version of in 1971; he was a co-director (with Takahata) of the second half of the first TV series, and director of two episodes of the second. He later based his first feature film, by Alexander Key. The main antagonist is the leader of the city-state of Industria who is attempting to revive some banned technology. The series also elaborates on the characters and events in the book, but nonetheless is an early example of certain character types which would recur throughout Miyazaki's later work: for example, a girl who is in touch with nature, a warrior woman who is not her antagonist, and a boy who seems destined for the girl. The series also featured lots of unusual aircraft.

He also directed six episodes of , a retelling of the Sherlock Holmes tales using anthropomorphic animals that was released in 1984-85.

, on which he worked from 1982 to 1994 and has sold more than 10 million copies in Japan. He originally didn't want to do as a manga but was forced to after Toshio Suzuki couldn't get funding for a film not based on a manga. Other works include