"You who swallowed a falling star, o' heartless man, your heart shall soon be mine." That can't be good for the table.

No 230 - Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (Howl's Moving Castle)

Director - Hayao Miyazaki

If there is one thing you can confidently say about Studio Ghibli it is that they make beautiful looking films. Whether it is the masses of fish swimming about in Ponyo or the spirits which mill about in Spirited Away, their films look amazing, deep and layered with gloriously populated and immensely imaginative worlds. It is the same with Howl's Moving Castle, particularly the titular castle itself. From the first time we watch it clanking through the countryside, I was entranced. It is the attention to detail with all the individual moving components which make it so refreshing to watch:

Watch the trailer's opening sequence (also the film's opening sequence) as the castle emerges from the fog.

Just beautiful.

Every frame of the film could be printed off and stuck on your wall. Glorious.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film isn't as strong as the excellent visuals. The film sort of plods along with a story that manages to be vague and far too complex. Sophie's curse (at the heart of the story) is clear enough, but it is interwoven with something about a war and wizards turning into birds and Howl's heart and having to hide from the witch of the waste. It is, really, nonsense and I spent large moments of the film not understanding what was going. This is on my 4th viewing. I don't expect new people to get it at all.

The story isn't moved along by the characters either. It doesn't bode well that the films most likable character is a silent scarecrow with a fixed stupid grin and little to no movement. Everyone else is grumpy, rude or just plain non-eventful.

Howl is the guiltiest, he seems rude, shallow, sulky and really really boring. He is also barely in the film - more of a presence in the background of proceedings who occasionally swooshes in during his Black Swan birdman moments. He doesn't really show any compassion until one big move in the film's final act. But by then, Sophie has fallen in love with him, it is a romance which is used to explain a lot of their actions but which is itself, not that clearly explained. Much like many of the plot points in this film, they just happen. Deal with it.

It is a shame that the story is so lacking, because the film is a pleasure to watch, you just have to entirely disconnect your ears and watch it as a purely visual aesthetic set in a delightful steam punky world. A steam punky world with WIZARDS! Surely the best kind of steam punk world.

But yeah, much like Howl himself, the film looks good, but the intentions and details are muddled or just dull.

You cannot change fate. However, you can rise to meet it, if you so choose.

No 488 - Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke)

Director - Hayao Miyazaki

So, I started the day with a tricky little decision, and I think I chose the controversial choice when i sat down to watch this film with the English dub. But.... I have my reasons and let me explain them.

1) The subtitle translation on my DVD is a bit weird and obscure at times.

2) The English dub was written by Neil Gaiman, and whilst this may only be a rewriting, rather than an original story, the man is still a fucking legend and one of the great fiction writers of our time. The fact that this is a film about man trying to advance forward and negate the work of the ancient Gods is also a very Gaiman idea.

The film is set a very very very long time ago and is about the early settlements of Japan - how they had to clear the forests to make way for their lives and how this affects the spirits and Gods who reside in the forests. I love the spirituality of the Studio Ghibli films and how, although they're all set in different worlds, they share this beautiful history and fantasy. The idea of man coming and disrupting the ancient spirits is something that Ghibli had visited earlier with Pom Poko. Although Princess Mononoke is a lot more serious.... and has less magical scrotums.

But I digress.... war is breaking out in the woods as Iron Town has been creating more and more efficient rifles in order to kill of the Gods and giant beasts in the woods. As they kill off the Gods, the giant beasts become smaller and dumber - more like the beasts of today. But, it also fills the Gods with rage and turns them into demons. This is where we fall into the story.

If there is one thing Ghibli do especially well (and they do a lot of things well) it is creating weird gloopy fluid monsters. They appear in enough films to be a bit of a Ghibli theme:

What I love is the attention to detail. The way that each little slimy tendril moves independently, the way that the grass and plants burn and die as the tendrils touch. It is a massive beast made of thousands of little parts - and it must have been a bitch to animate. Our protagonist - Prince Ashitaka - gets cursed by the demon as tires to defend his clan. He is subsequently, reluctantly, banished into the woods in order for him to find a cure from the great Spirit of the forest.

Ashitaka gets roped into the battle between man and spirit and is generally mistrusted by everybody by his crazy hippy views that they can all get on together. During this war we are introduced to a lot of characters who have a lot of little subplots which aren't vital enough to discuss but which all help drive the story of this central battle.

There are some great flourishes, you can see the spirits becoming less powerful: by the end of the film the apes are essentially normal apes, the boars are getting more dumb, more brutal - it is only the wolves who have managed to survive. Even then there are only 3 of them, but they introduce us to San - the titular Princess Mononoke (Mononoke is a type of Japanese spirit - one of the Yokai) - a girl who has been raised by the Wolf spirits, and - despite her human for - who considers herself one of the wolves.

As San and Ashitaka look about the same age (I'd say mid to late teens....) it is only natural that they fall in love. In fact, even when he is 90% he still has time to tell San that she is beautiful. It is his love which helps drive him on on his quest for good and which helps show the humans (and the spirits) the error in their ways.

Life can be less destructive and more beautiful.... as what is the point in waging a war on nature itself?

The film is long for a cartoon, and it can occasionally feel a bit too serious. It lacks the joyousness of My Neighbour Totoro, but it is still a fascinating watch.

You get to enjoy the mysticism of Japanese culture but also get the grittiness of War in feudal Japan. And there is grit. This may be a PG rated cartoon but arms and heads get lopped off and fly about with remarkable abandon.

But, we do have the lovely little tree spirits who are quite cute in their weird gormless way. Look at them.

I've already got a Ponyo and a Catbus.... I reckon I need me some tree spirits though.

Nothing that happens is ever forgotten, even if you can't remember it.

No 339 - Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi)
Director - Hayao Miyazaki

I love Studio Ghibli. I love Miyazaki. He, and his studio, have rekindled a love and excitement about cartoons. It is almost the same thrill I got as a child watching Disney.

Like most Westerners of my generation (though by no means all), I came to discover Ghibli through the release of Spirited Away. It is by no means my favourite, but they're in the list so I can talk about them later. It is, however, my first Ghibli film and so it should be the first one I watch.

I've watched this film several times before in both English and Japanese. For while I have really strong views on dubbing, they don't cross over to animation and I frequently watch the dubbed cartoon (after all lip synch is less of an obvious issue). I have decided to watch the dubbed version this time for 2 reasons:
When I first saw it at the cinema it was the American dub, therefore this is the version that I believe would have been most seen.
Secondly Davigh Chase's voice is far far far less annoying than Rumi Hiragi who plays Chihiro as very screechy. I want to like Chihiro, not want her to be muted.

What I like about Studio Ghibli is that they never go out to make Kid's films. They go out to tell stories. Some of their stories (like the upcoming Ponyo) are more aimed at children, whilst others (such as Princess Mononoke or Grave of the Fireflies) certainly aren't. This one falls in the middle, as it is quite a simple and beautiful love story, but filled with a lot of complex Japanese folklore and mythology.

Simply paraphrased, the film follows a small girl called Chihiro, who is lured to a resort for spirits. Here her parents are turned into pigs, she is forced to work in the bath house until she earns the right to be freed.
There is a love story between her and a mysterious boy/dragon called Haku. There is also an awful lot of talk of spirits and witches and magic, aspects that are deep in the culture and mythology of Japan but are quite alien to my western eyes. However, as I watch more Ghibli films, I'm becoming a bit more experienced with the Japanese spirit world and I recognised familiar themes.
Spirits such as the Spring spirits (large lumbering chicks with vacant stares and hats made of leaves) remind me of Totoro, Ghibli's most famous spring spirit. Totoro's soot sprites also make a return in this. However, this is still a world with only one human character, and no real attempt at explaining who or what the other characters are.

The point I'm trying to make here is that despite an unusual central concept (or perhaps BECAUSE of an unusual central concept) the film captured the western audience and flung Ghibli's back catalog into the public's attention. I love Disney, I really really do - to probably quite an uncool degree - however come 2001, their animation department was pretty much dead (I believe Atlantis was their 2001 release... hardly a Disney classic). So this film came with an epic story, insane characters and beautiful animation and shook up the animation kings.
It bodes well that John Lasseter, one of the key brains behind Pixar and the now king and daddy of Disney's creative department, is a huge Ghibli fan and produced Spirited Away's anglification.

Disney believed that hand drawn animation was on the way out, and that all stories would be moving to computer animation. This is a belief not shared by Mr Lasseter (check out his new ideas for upcoming Disney. Including the proper old school feeling The Princess and The Frog) but was also trounced by Spirited Away.
The animation is beautiful. Truly stunning and should best be admired when checking out the backgrounds. I'm aware that this is a bit of a geeky thing to say, but the backgrounds are stunning. If you haven't seen the film, have a look at the trailer HERE. The animation is quite subtle, rather than the bold lines of Western animation, colours meld into each other and provide an almost watercolour feeling, contrasting boldly with the main characters. Also, check out the stink spirit in Spirited Away. Then go and check out the cursed boar in Mononoke, or the Shadow spies in Howl's Moving Castle or the collapsing giant in Nausicaa. Ghibli love drawing pustulous masses of slime, oozing all over the place and they do it so very very well. It is even more amazing when you think that everything is hand drawn as Miyazaki doesn't believe in using CGI enhancements. Hell, even ALADDIN was using CGI enhancements.

But the final thing I want to talk about, is the sheer imagination of the film (a point I've touched on several times). Without researching Japanese folklore, it is difficult to know what elements were adopted from existing stories, but the tale is incredibly brave. What I love about it is the sheer number of lavish and extravagant characters who appear to be there solely to be extras. The sheer amount of character design is incredible, it makes me think of Del Toro's market scene in Hellboy 2. Only spread out for most of a film.
The vast a varied cast of monsters, ghosts and freaks helps to fully engross the viewer in a surreal and yet believable world. A world where scale doesn't seem to mean anything or where people can travel as small strips of flying origami (paper cutting people to death) or where a love story happens between a child and a river.

Allow me to repeat myself. The central love story is between a small child. And a river.

Yet, whilst that is a very strange thing to type - it makes perfect sense in the film. Surely, that is the true magic of Spirited Away. It creates an elegant story full of fantastic witches and demons and spirits and frogmen. It paints this world in such a beautiful palette. But the true magic is, you believe a girl and a river could fall in love.

And that is one hell of a triumph.