Studio Ghibli Ranked Part Two - Blueprint: Review (2024)

Having already done my ranking of every Disney and Pixar film, it was inevitable I get around to the third of the big three animation studios. But the experience of watching every Ghibli film chronologically was quite different. While most Disney and Pixar films have a degree of lightness about them, the Ghibli canon is a denser, more challenging but extremely rewarding prospect. While there is a reductive viewpoint on Disney and Pixar which erroneously suggests all their films are sweetness and light, so there is a misconception that Ghibli films are all Fantasy Adventures, when actually that is based on just a handful of the most famous films by their co-founder, Hayao Miyazaki. There is a sort of unifying magic throughout the Ghibli filmography but the films themselves run the gamut from whimsical Fantasy to Action Epics, Teen Dramas to grim dissections of war. This is an amazing body of work and one I’ve thoroughly enjoyed diving into, but it’s also not one to take lightly. If you’re up for the Ghibli experience though, you’re in for a treat.

Part two of my Ghibli ranking features the top 12 of my list, all of which are films I love. You can find Part One here.

All entries contain spoilers.

12. The Secret World of Arrietty

The first time I watched The Secret World of Arrietty I was considerably underwhelmed. As a fan of Studio Ghibli, it was not the sort of film I was expecting from them. Compared with the sprawling Fantasy epics I’d encountered from the studio, it felt too small, underdeveloped, uneventful. I was also thrown by the fact that I knew the original source being adapted, English author Mary Norton’s The Borrowers. I was used to Ghibli films having a certain mystique but my familiarity with The Borrowers, though vague, was enough to damn it with the prejudiced association of Sunday teatime cosiness and the background hum of Antiques Roadshow, Songs of Praise and imminent-school-induced anxiety. Because of these unfair preconceptions, I’d long laboured under the impression that The Secret World of Arrietty was one of Ghibli’s weakest efforts. But returning to it for the first time in a decade and a half, I was knocked out by how the film was somehow simultaneously exactly as I’d remembered and much better than I’d given it credit for being. Yes, this is a small story, about smallness and told in a small way, but that is the perfect approach for this material. First-time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, working from a screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa, has created a beautifully melancholic, meditative film that deliberately focuses on minutiae rather than adventure. The result is one of Ghibli’s most quietly evocative films since Whisper of the Heart.

The Secret World of Arrietty isn’t quite top-tier Ghibli. Its Celtic-inspired score by Cécile Corbel is at times appropriate and at others intrusive, insisting on lilting its way into peaceful moments that do not require its overwrought enhancements. The central relationship between Arrietty and the human boy Shō never quite gets beyond a mutual curiosity yet their climactic parting is forcefully and unconvincingly imbued with an unearned gravitas that borders on romantic. But elsewhere The Secret World of Arrietty is fantastic. The early scenes of Arrietty’s first “borrowing” with her father are representative of what’s to come. It would’ve been easy to play these scenes for suspense and tension but Yonebayashi opts instead for a matter of fact air that reflects the necessity of the process rather than playing up a false sense of wonderment that may thrill the audience but would also betray the characters. This establishes The Secret World of Arrietty’s surprising realism. The Borrowers are involved in a constant struggle to survive and live peacefully but their inability to avoid the prying eyes of humans renders their lives difficult and their happiness tenuous. At the end of the film, they are forced to set sail in search of another home. It’s a hopeful but uncertain climactic note, reflected in the revelation that Shō has a heart condition and is awaiting an operation that does not have a high chance of helping him survive. This is left hanging, with the will-to-live that Shō gains from his encounters with Arrietty being a glimmer of hope that does not require elaboration. For those who have previously fallen foul of changes made to Ghibli films by English language dubs, there is a Disney-dubbed version of The Secret World of Arrietty which undoes this wonderfully effective open-ended finale by tacking on a final voiceover monologue that implies both the success of Shō’s operation and Arrietty’s home-hunting. This alteration undermines the ambiguous, bittersweet tone that is one of the film’s greatest strengths. Disney really needed to Shō and not tell!

After watching The Secret World of Arrietty, it is a series of small moments that stick in the mind: a panicked crow stuck in a window, the capture of Homily and her imprisonment in a jar, the vicious hissing and spitting of a volatile cat, the passing around of sugar cubes between Arrietty and Shō. The narrative is a slice of life, albeit a life with a touch more enchantment, and the steady pacing and minimal action support this approach. I’ve heard some viewers complain that the ending of the film feels more like the end of Act I, but to me that kind of felt like the point. The Secret World of Arrietty is never building towards a flourish or a resolution. This stretch of time has been chosen due to Arrietty’s brief relationship with Shō, which we see in its entirety, and so the film ends when circumstances put a stop to that impossible friendship. Ghibli’s previous film, Ponyo, saw a friendship transcend the barriers of two seemingly incompatible worlds but The Secret World of Arrietty chooses instead a wistful acknowledgement that sometimes the challenges are too great to overcome. But in the lasting effect that the Borrower and the human have on each other, there is hope for progress in the long run. The Secret World of Arrietty, a film I once disliked for its smallness, this time won me over with the same.

11. From Up on Poppy Hill

From Up on Poppy Hill is often ballyhooed as the big Ghibli father/son collaboration. Written by Hayao Miyazaki and directed by his son Gorō, From Up on Poppy Hill’s critical and artistic success would seem to suggest a reconciliation after the falling out caused by Gorō’s work on Tales from Earthsea. Miyazaki Senior’s complaints about that project, coldly delivered though they apparently were, did at least have some truth to them. Adapting the Earthsea books was a mammoth task and handing them to a director with no prior experience did seem oddly cavalier. From Up on Poppy Hill, by contrast, feels like a much better suited choice for a fledgling director, its modest story and gentle, consistent tone befitting a newcomer to the animated medium. Having said that, Gorō’s strong showing on this second feature is not to be underestimated and creating a solidly entertaining ninety minute film from such a small concept requires a talent for storytelling that has obviously flowered after no longer being subjected to the aggressive overwatering of Earthsea. Given his own involvement in the project and the fact that From Up on Poppy Hill came out so well, you may expect to hear a more heartwarming story of Hayao Miyazaki’s reaction to it. However, there exists a video of the speeches given in the immediate aftermath of From Up on Poppy Hill’s studio premiere in which Miyazaki stands before the assembled audience and proceeds to trash the film’s art style and animation. After the most mild of acknowledgements that there were good things in the film, Miyazaki rips the piss out of the characters’ movements, actively demonstrating how they should walk and pointing the finger equally at the animators and director for what he calls very basic errors. The camera cuts occasionally to Gorō, trapped in his seat and enduring his father’s criticisms, and only after this tirade does the elder Miyazaki cede the stage to the director himself. On his way to the front, Gorō passes his father and they don’t even glance at each other. The whole thing makes the fact that Hayao left the Earthsea premiere for a cigarette feel like a comparatively minor mark of disrespect.

Aside from it being a shame to see such reprehensible coldness from a director whose films are known for their humanism, Miyazaki Senior was just plain wrong about From Up on Poppy Hill’s quality. As a master of animation, I’m sure the flaws he perceived seemed blatant to him but there is so much simple beauty in From Up on Poppy Hill that a more supportive father could surely have found something for which to praise his son. This is definitely Gorō’s greatest and had this been his debut feature (and had it not been followed by Earwig and the Witch) the initial reaction may have been excitement about a promising new director, rather than the disappointment shouldered by Gorō over a project that was likely doomed to failure in the hands of most artists. As the follow-up to Tales from Earthsea, there’s a residual sense of letdown that From Up on Poppy Hill is saddled with shaking off, its deliberate intimacy not always credited with the quiet confidence it exudes and instead perceived as tentative stumbling in the wake of a bloated predecessor. It’s best when giving From Up on Poppy Hill its critical due to dissociate it completely from both Earthsea and Gorō’s disapproving daddy. After all, Miyazaki Senior may have written the screenplay here but it is a comparatively slight and melodramatic thing, which Miyazaki Junior deserves credit for bringing fully and memorably to life.

From Up on Poppy Hill is one of the most down-to-earth Ghibli films but while it has no fantastical content it manages to capture the warm sense of wonderment that so clearly makes it the work of the studio. A 60s period piece with a focus on high schoolers but with a cross-generational twist, the surface mood is bright and breezy while the underlying sense of history provides a counterbalancing dramatic weight. The narrative about a group of kids trying to save their school clubhouse from demolition is fresh and fun while a budding romance that is scuppered by the revelation of potential shared parentage opens up a door to the past that imbues the story with a haunting gravitas. A lot of fuss was made by some viewers about From Up on Poppy Hill being “a film about incest” but it’s nothing of the kind. The discovery that the protagonists Umi and Shun may share a father makes them immediately pull back from their budding romance and, while they honestly share the fact that they love each other, they also recognise that they can’t act on those feelings. That, for me, makes the film a story about love hitting a tragically unnegotiable obstacle. From Up on Poppy Hill is no more a film about incest than Titanic is a film about an iceberg.

In terms of broadening the Ghibli palette, From Up on Poppy Hill feels like a very valuable contribution to the canon. From its laidback but emotionally effective approach to its lively use of Pop music and its tremendous sense of place and time, it is a little gem of a film that may bore those looking for the high fantasy of the other Miyazaki but will likely appeal to fans of Only Yesterday or Whisper of the Heart. The great director Mamoru Hosoda was originally hired to direct Howl’s Moving Castle but he ended up leaving the production when he felt he was being pushed into making a Hayao Miyazaki cover version rather than being allowed to do things his way. Of course, Hayao Miyazaki is a great filmmaker but we have Hayao Miyazaki to make Hayao Miyazaki films. That’s why I find it refreshing and worthy of celebration that, despite the overbearing criticisms endured at his father’s hands, Gorō Miyazaki has continued to do his own thing. In the case of From Up on Poppy Hill at least, it gave us another great Ghibli film in a whole different register.

10. Only Yesterday

Throughout the 80s and 90s, his film about magical raccoons with gigantic testicles aside, Isao Takahata was Ghibli’s realist director. In contrast with Hayao Miyazaki’s fantastical flights of fancy, Takahata’s work was often concerned with the realities of life, be they exceptional or mundane. So when Miyazaki became interested in adapting Hotaru Okamoto and Yuko Tone’s Omoide Poro Poro, passing it on to Takahata probably seemed like the natural choice to make. The story of Taeko Okajima, a young woman whose ten day holiday to help with a safflower harvest becomes a gateway to memories from her childhood, Only Yesterday is a beautiful exploration of the significance seemingly small events can have in influencing the people we become, and how we can still break free of the patterns they create. The opening of Takahata’s previous Ghibli film Grave of the Fireflies featured a couple of symbolic ghosts marking the end of two lives. Only Yesterday is concerned with spectres of the past, the building blocks at the beginning of a life. Rather than present a whimsical, nostalgic vision of childhood or a repressed collection of traumas, Takahata’s incisive screenplay focuses instead on seemingly incidental interludes punctuated by the rising of intense moments of happiness, sorrow, shock and disappointment. One story in particular involving the underwhelming experience of tasting fresh pineapple for the first time stands out as a masterful encapsulation of life’s minutiae in a way that can easily be applied to the larger canvases of adulthood.

Only Yesterday cuts between the adult Taeko’s journey to the countryside, experiences of working with the farmers, and recollections of her youth. The latter are presented in a minimalist fashion, their half-finished backdrops dominated by white spaces that accurately evoke the patchy imperfections of memory. By contrast, Taeko’s adulthood is depicted in full, intricate detail, beautifully capturing the feeling of travel and temporary escape. One curious detail of Only Yesterday is the fact that its dialogue was recorded first so that animators could fit the facial movements to the spoken words. Traditionally, Japanese animation featured dialogue dubbed on once the animation was complete. Though it does help bolster the grounded atmosphere of Only Yesterday, this approach occasionally results in some slightly lumpy and grotesque looking faces that overreach in their attempt to create an unfettered reality. It’s a minor quibble but there are moments when I slightly recoiled which clashed somewhat with such a visually striking creation. A bigger problem with Only Yesterday is the lengthy stretches of dialogue about organic farming. Takahata had previously made a three hour documentary about the preservation and restoration of a Yanagawa canal which critic Alex Dudok de Wit described as “Takahata’s most meditative work — and his most pedantic.” A touch of that pedantry has found its way into Only Yesterday, its sufficiently layered narrative pushed past the two hour mark by this unnecessarily thick additional topping. If you have an interest in the subject then it shouldn’t be a problem and Taeko’s attraction to farming is an important character trait but at times it feels superseded by Takahata’s own fascination and fastidious verbosity.

Though its imperfections prevent the otherwise wonderful Only Yesterday from securing a place in my top tier of Ghibli films, it does feature undoubtedly my favourite ending in the Ghibli canon. Set to the gorgeous Japanese ballad Ai wa Hana, Kimi wa sono Tane (Love is a Flower, You are the Seed), the sequence plays out over the closing credits and depicts Taeko getting off her train home and returning to the promise of love and happiness on the farm. This decision is facilitated by the arrival of her former classmates and her younger self, who wordlessly encourage and abet her in following her own inclinations rather than those foisted upon her. In doing so, she leaves them behind forever, culminating in the perfect final image of the young Taeko watching her older self drive away, her face a picture of heart-wrenching ambiguity. The children are even more expressive without dialogue and I never make it through the whole sequence with dry cheeks. It’s an absolutely exquisite scene, combining a rousing feelgood revelation with the melancholy that comes along with even the most positive of big life changes. It is this emotional duality that Takahata captures so wonderfully throughout Only Yesterday, replicating the impressive feat of Grave of the Fireflies by once again presenting deeply moving material without an ounce of cloying manipulation.

9. Kiki’s Delivery Service

Kiki’s Delivery Service was a big film for Studio Ghibli, who were badly in need of a hit in order to survive. Based on a 1985 children’s novel by Eiko Kadono, it is the lighthearted tale of a young witch who sets out on her own as part of her witch’s rites of passage, and ends up living above a bakery and running her own courier service delivering orders by broomstick. The novel is reportedly a series of episodic mini-adventures and director Hayao Miyazaki preserves this approach but with the addition of a few larger scale challenges and a greater depth of emotional response from Kiki regarding her loneliness. Kadono’s anxieties about these changes to her story were assuaged by an invitation to Studio Ghibli to see the work in progress. Miyazaki’s instincts were validated when Kiki’s Delivery Service became a huge critical and commercial success. The sparing application of increased dramatic tension gives the film an effective shape but the finished product still retains a leisurely slice of life style, albeit a life tinged with enchantment.

The easy charm of Kiki’s Delivery Service is enhanced by its rounded, polished character designs and bright, attractive cityscapes. The film looks beautiful and is replete with those small moments of everyday routine that Miyazaki is so adept at representing and which allow the viewer to drink in the scenery and atmosphere at an unhurried pace. There are themes in Kiki’s Delivery Service, chiefly the transition from childhood to maturity, but they are engaged with more breezily than those underscoring previous Ghibli films. This allows Kiki’s Delivery Service to emphasise character to a new level, with Kiki easily being the most memorable protagonist the studio had given us thus far. Crucially, the supporting characters are all just as strong, with Kiki’s cat Jiji, bakery owner Osono and charismatic artist Ursula standing out. All these characters feel like they could have interesting storylines of their own but they are largely used sparingly and in relation to how they affect Kiki’s world. Osono, for instance, is heavily pregnant and, though it is mentioned, this never becomes a plot point that drives the narrative so much as it is just an extra detail that adds colour and realism. Jiji gets his own amusing little side-quest where he has to pose as a cat toy in a family’s home but this is in order to give Kiki time to find the real toy which she has misplaced during the delivery process.

From memory, I always thought that the action-packed finale in which Kiki rescues her friend in the aftermath of an airship crash was a bit tacked on in order to give a wilfully meandering film an emphatic note on which to end. On this rewatch I realised that is entirely incorrect. Miyazaki introduces plenty of foreshadowing for the accident, while the rescue itself is the natural progression from Kiki’s symbolic loss of confidence, allowing her to regain her power of flight and increase her wavering self-esteem. That the act of heroism also proves her worth in the eyes of the community is a harder allegorical potato to comfortably hold onto. While it may be an extension of the “believe in yourself and others will believe in you” metaphor, it also seems a bit thematically dubious to have Kiki’s standing in the community hinge on a big heroic flourish. In a film aimed at children, it’s easy to imagine the wrong message being taken away from such ambiguous didacticism. Still, that’s a small nitpick and, viewed merely from an entertainment standpoint, Kiki’s Delivery Service ends on a dramatic high that satisfies while leaving room for discussion.

Although crashing an unsolicited airship into proceedings sounds like the most Miyazaki move ever, Kiki’s Delivery Service is actually testament to the director’s impressive ability to put his stamp on a film without betraying story or character. Miyazaki’s Ghibli films thus far boasted both a unifying style and a diversity of tones, with Miyazaki responding to the natural requirements of the narrative. So Kiki’s Delivery Service became a very different children’s film from My Neighbour Totoro, yet you can see their director’s fingerprints all over both, the same fingerprints that somehow also adorn the grim dystopian vision of Naussicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Such balance and restraint are the mark of a good director and Kiki’s Delivery Service slipped neatly into the growing pantheon of Miyazaki masterpieces.

8. Castle in the Sky

Following the success of the grim dystopian epic Naussicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Hayao Miyazaki stated his intention to make a more lighthearted, old-fashioned Adventure movie. With producer Isao Takahata, Miyazaki founded Studio Ghibli for which Castle in the Sky would become the inaugural release. It’s a shame that Naussicaä of the Valley of the Wind has become accepted as the starting point for Ghibli because Castle in the Sky feels like a much more fitting opener. Though the dense, convoluted Sci-fi/Fantasy style of Naussicaä would eventually resurface in future Ghibli films like Princess Mononoke and Tales from Earthsea, the livelier, more accessible Fantasy Adventure approach of Castle in the Sky is much more characteristic of Ghibli’s overall image. It’s certainly the reason I fell for the studio’s films, offering a sense of magic and wonder that has rarely been matched elsewhere. That’s why, although I have adhered to public consensus by including Naussicaä in my ranking, for me Castle in the Sky is Ghibli’s ground zero.

Although Naussicaä was not my cup of tea, I did admire its patient, slow-burning approach to storytelling, its opening stretch gradually acclimatising viewers to its world. By contrast, Castle in the Sky leaps straight into its action, with a pre-credits sequence in which a kidnapped young girl called Sheeta makes a daring escape from an airship. It is immediate testament to Miyazaki’s wide-ranging abilities as a director. He can give it to you slowly or put the pedal to the metal and start at full throttle with equally effective results. The amount of thrilling events packed into the subsequent opening half hour almost beggars belief. There are chases, escapes, punch ups and revelations galore and Miyazaki is still just setting things up. The breathless, upbeat action sequences, driven to delirious heights of delight by Joe Hisaishi’s propulsive score, are punctuated by moments of downtime in which plot details are imparted in a natural way that was lacking in Nausicaä’s heavily expository introduction. Miyazaki establishes one of his most valuable techniques in these scenes. He is able to impart the information we need by way of two characters conversing but he places the experiential emphasis on the simple tasks they are performing. The orphan Paku, who takes Sheeta in after her escape, tells her of his search for the titular floating castle in order to prove his late father’s theories and the two of them examine the magical crystal that caused Sheeta to float down from the skies. But what is most memorable about these scenes is the morning routine, Sheeta waking up and Paku cooking breakfast for them. These are the sort of day-to-day details that most filmmakers leave out but Miyazaki works hard to make us smell the eggs frying in the pan and feel the sun on our freshly-rested bodies. This is the magic of Ghibli. When I think of their output, I think of small moments of cosy domesticity just as readily and fondly as I recall airships and adventure. That’s why their films often feel lived as much as simply watched.

Though critics at the time debated the virtues of its two hour runtime, Castle in the Sky uses every one of its 124 minutes. Its plot works as both a straightforward Fantasy Adventure and an environmental allegory, while Miyazaki keeps the action coming so consistently that boredom is virtually out of the question. There’s plenty of humour throughout Castle in the Sky, mostly provided by the air pirates who start out as a threat and later become allies to Pazu and Sheeta. The central duo also have to deal with the unwanted attentions of a megalomaniacal government agent and the army. All things considered, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Miyazaki’s protagonists are once again underwritten, with Sheeta in particular coming from the same school of ethereal heroines as Naussicaä. As was the case with Naussicaä, this doesn’t detract significantly from enjoyment of the film since events and supporting characters make up for the basic, blandly virtuous leads, but Miyazaki would definitely get better at writing his protagonists in later films. As is often the case in Japanese cinema, the humour doesn’t always quite align with western sensibilities. One scene in particular, in which the adult male pirates seem taken with the thirteen year old Sheeta in an uncomfortably ambiguous way, has been roundly debated by fans. Their shy embarrassment and competitive need for her attentions is easier to take as a desire to please a surrogate mother figure but if you’re watching Disney’s 90s dub they made the bizarre choice to have one of the pirates loudly declare “I’m in love with you” while wielding a bunch of flowers.

For lovers of Adventure films like myself though, these small nitpicks pale into insignificance when we’re being served up an almost relentless stream of fights, chases, explosions, airship rides, magic and mystery. Unlike more reticent fare aimed squarely at children, Castle in the Sky refuses to soft pedal its peril, with one of its teenage protagonists narrowly avoiding being shot in the face when a bullet grazes his cheek and draws blood. The action ranges from airships battling their way through lightning storms to two burly men trying to out-testosterone each other by bursting out of their shirts and smacking the snot out of each other. Although it has serious underlying messages and moments of blissful, punctuating quietude, Castle in the Sky is the sort of film you watch with a smile plastered permanently on your face, perhaps only interrupted by the odd gasp or teeth gritted in anxious anticipation. It’s a hell of an opening act for one of the world’s greatest animation studios.

7. Grave of the Fireflies

Roger Ebert called Grave of the Fireflies one of the greatest War films ever made. This is a significant statement about an animated film because it looks past the medium to focus on the genre, rather than miscategorising animation as a genre itself, as so many tend to do. Ebert also stated that he would never watch the film again as he found it too heart-wrenching to bear a revisit. This is a common reaction to Grave of the Fireflies and not an unreasonable one. Its tale of two Japanese children orphaned by an American air strike starts out sad and keeps getting sadder, until in the final stretch we’re watching their long, agonising death from starvation. It’s no wonder animation historian Jerry Beck named it one of the top three most depressing animated films of all time. Still, “depressing” is an often misleading term and, as is the case when it is applied to Radiohead or The Smiths, it feels like an oversimplification (even if Morrissey’s political allegiances justify the latter point to a certain extent). It’s fair to say that Grave of the Fireflies is not exactly an uplifting experience but, in the hands of director Isao Takahata, it is never a manipulative or sentimental one either. Given that it is based on a semi-autobiographical short story by Akiyuki Nosaka who wrote it as a personal apology to his dead sister, it is essential that such exploitative approaches be avoided at all costs. While tear ducts are easily triggered by Grave of the Fireflies, Takahata never feels like he’s reaching for moistened cheeks as his ultimate goal. Rather, they are the inevitable byproduct of a deeply human story vividly and humanely imparted.

Though he had helmed several feature animations before this, Grave of the Fireflies was Ghibli co-founder Takahata’s first film for the studio, and what a way to kick things off! While Hayao Miyazaki’s Ghibli films thus far had leaned towards Adventure stories, their serious messages delivered allegorically, Takahata aims to show absolute brutal reality. Only the opening, in which we see the protagonists Seita and Setsuko as ghosts, offers something more symbolic, with the audience left to decide how literally to take these reunited apparitions. Some critics felt it was a mistake to open the film by showing that the lead characters would both end up dead but it feels almost necessary to me, given that Takahata was not aiming to surprise us with these developments. These tragedies are inevitable amidst the atrocities of war and somehow knowing the ending makes Grave of the Fireflies’ march towards it more bearable to experience. We shouldn’t be feeling hope for these characters because, given the impossibility of their situation, there is no hope. It is exploring that desolate path which is of interest, rather than wondering where it may lead.

Grave of the Fireflies was originally released on a double bill with My Neighbour Totoro. Although this may seem like a tonal clash, these two films have more in common than may at first be apparent. Ever since I heard about that double bill, they have become inextricably linked in my head and watching them back to back showcases Studio Ghibli’s emotional breadth and unifying tonal consistency. In its subplot about a sick mother, My Neighbour Totoro shares some of Grave of the Fireflies’ real-world sadness, while Totoro’s beguiling magic and astute depiction of childhood is evident in Grave of the Fireflies’ initial scenes of Seita and Setsuko’s early days living in an abandoned bomb shelter, the sky illuminated by the titular insects. The exceptional character work in Totoro’s child protagonists is also reflected in Grave of the Fireflies’ young leads, which is absolutely crucial in appreciating the full gravity of their tragic situation and devastating deaths. Setsuko in particular is exactly like a real little girl, the atrocities foisted upon her being well beyond her fragile understanding. Seita is a boy trying to assume the responsibilities of a man, a practical impossibility that ultimately destroys both him and his sister. Unsympathetic reviewers have scoffed at the inevitability of the children’s deaths when they could’ve returned to their aunt’s house at any time, but this is to misunderstand cultural issues of honour and dignity that were clear to Japanese audiences and are signposted for international viewers in Seita’s idolisation of his Navy Captain father, seen only on an increasingly ragged picture that the boy carries with him throughout the film.

Grave of the Fireflies is frequently mischaracterised as an anti-war film, something that Takahata himself denied. Though he himself held anti-war views, the director’s intention is to sympathise rather than politicise. There can’t help but be a political viewpoint of some kind when tackling a subject as profoundly disturbing as war but Grave of the Fireflies presents a vision of the fallout from conflict which acknowledges the tragic waste without pointing fingers at specific sides. The importance of a mutually supportive society is the upbeat moral to take away from the downbeat material and Takahata’s implied target is the totalitarianism that dogged Japan during the period depicted, the return of which he deeply feared. In this context it is easy to see why Grave of the Fireflies needed to be as unrelentingly grim as it is but by focusing squarely on the details of the victims of totalitarianism rather than explicitly deconstructing the ideology itself, the film allows viewers to experience those emotional connections first, enhancing the power of the political implications when or if they arrive at them.

As an unflinching depiction of the suffering of innocents, Grave of the Fireflies may not be the first film most people grab for an evening’s entertainment but the story is so well told and the characters are so strongly evocative it becomes thoroughly compelling. There’s nothing pleasant about ninety minutes of suffering but seeing that suffering acknowledged rather than ignored is reason enough to celebrate the existence of Grave of the Fireflies, and in the context of the faintly detectable subtext that we can make a better world, the viewing experience achieves a subtle catharsis that makes that oft-used term “depressing” feel even more reductive.

6. My Neighbours the Yamadas

Isao Takahata’s My Neighbours the Yamadas, an adaptation of the four cell comic strip Nono-Chan, was released between two Studio Ghibli blockbusters by Hayao Miyazaki: Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. In contrast with these Fantasy epics, My Neighbours the Yamadas works with a superficially smaller palette, detailing the everyday incidents in the life of a family of five living in the suburbs. With its notably different aesthetic and storytelling style, the film became Ghibli’s first box office bomb and remains one of the studio’s least-watched or discussed films. Its focus on minutiae and mundanity might not have sat well with those still buzzing from the sprawling scope of Princess Mononoke but in its own way it explores themes that are equally or arguably even more resonant and its budget was almost as big as Mononoke’s due to the stylised digital techniques used to capture the look and feel of a comic strip come to life.

Given that Princess Mononoke is currently towards the bottom of my Ghibli ranking, it’s perhaps no surprise that I adore My Neighbours the Yamadas. I find its exploration of small day-to-day incidents as engaging and moving as I found Mononoke’s fantasy trappings alienating and abstruse. Although cultural differences reportedly made My Neighbours the Yamadas difficult to tailor to foreign markets, its examination of family dynamics feels satisfyingly universal, not to mention very funny. Presented as a series of vignettes, the film’s scenarios vary in length and tone. Some are clear emulations of the four panel comics from which the film was adapted. Others are longer stories, with the feel of those themed runs of comic strips that play out across several days of newspaper publications. Then there are some more meditative passages reflecting on the nature and importance of family, albeit with tongue-in-cheek interludes of their own to prevent the emergence of a maudlin westernised sentimentalism. The changes in tone are also reflected in changes in art style that occur periodically, all within the parameters of the film’s striking digital watercolour aesthetic. While Miyazaki’s films of the era were laden with plot guaranteed to please a wider audience, Takahata’s work is arguably more interesting for animation nerds and no less beautiful in its own way. The experimentalism of Yamadas draws on the minimalism of Only Yesterday’s flashback sequences, the shapeshifting animation style of the raccoon-dogs in Pom Poko and the undiluted humanism of both Grave of the Fireflies and Only Yesterday. In a way, My Neighbours the Yamadas is the culmination of lessons learned thus far in Takahata’s Ghibli career. The fact that they coalesce in service of an episodic domestic Comedy somehow makes that all the more appealing.

There are those who feel the episodic nature of My Neighbours the Yamadas makes the 104 minute running time feel exhausting but honestly it flies by for me. The characters are established quickly and effectively, and then each story reset is a new surprise, in contrast with the gradually denser and more unwieldy single narrative of Princess Mononoke. The many different types of humour help keep My Neighbours the Yamadas fresh throughout. There are outright gags that take only a minute or less to tell but there is also a lot of rich character comedy, moments of genuine sweetness and observational passages that don’t need a big punchline to tease out the humour of recognition. One particularly memorable scene lingers long over the exhausted patriarch returning home drunk and munching his way through a banana. It’s a small moment rendered rivetingly amusing by its unhurried approach. Another sequence in which the grandmother visits an elderly friend in the hospital shifts suddenly from humour to crushing pathos as the question “Why are you in the hospital anyway?” goes unanswered through the stream of undammable tears it unleashes.

The name Studio Ghibli does tend to carry with it expectations of magic and wonder, so it’s hardly surprising that the studio’s least commercially successful film is the one deliberately rooted in the everyday. But Takahata’s approach to this material absolutely taps into the edge of enchantment that characterises our very existence for those inclined to view it through a certain lens. A wonderful, striking and resonant piece of work that is infinitely rewatchable.

5. Spirited Away

Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning masterpiece Spirited Away follows the story of 10 year old Chihiro who inadvertently enters the spirit world while she and her family are travelling to their new home. Spirited Away takes place largely within a gorgeously-realised Spirit Bathhouse in which Chihiro is forced to work while trying to rescue her parents from a spell that has transformed them into pigs. That’s the basic setup for the film but it goes to many different, unexpected places and introduces a seemingly endless stream of fascinating and inventive characters across its two hour runtime. Comparisons with Alice in Wonderland were inevitable but the superficial similarities in the story structure are balanced by a completely different tone, warmer and less disconcertingly anarchic than Lewis Carroll’s classic novel. Something Spirited Away does share with Alice in Wonderland is the way in which its themes feel almost supplementary. If you engage with them you may find your experience enhanced but it is perfectly possible to enjoy Spirited Away at a surface level, revelling in its sumptuous visual majesty, exquisite animation and cornucopia of imaginative creations.

There is ample magic to be found within these walls teeming with spirits of all shapes and sizes but it is when Miyazaki takes us on an extended, quiet journey away from the hubbub that Spirited Away gives us its most effective scenes of breath-taking awe. Chihiro’s quest forces her to take a train to visit the witch Zenibaba. Accompanied by the mute spirit No Face, Chihiro’s journey is uneventful and consists of lengthy passages of silence among ghostly shadows of passengers or in an otherwise empty carriage. Given nothing of significance seems to happen in this journey, most directors probably would have left it out, cutting from the boarding of the train to the arrival at Zenibaba’s house, but Miyazaki recognises the value of showing these extended moments of quiet meditation. When discussing moments like these in his work, Miyazaki refers to the Japanese term ‘Ma’, conscious intervals of silence and inaction which allow the audience to experience a sense of time along with the protagonists. Miyazaki told Roger Ebert, “If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness. but if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.” While watching Spirited Away, the audience shares in every moment of Chihiro’s quest and, in doing so, what should be mundane moments become all the more magical. After the chaos of the Bathhouse, the melancholy train journey feels like an escape and we share in the glorious views from the window and the claustrophobia of the insalubrious train carriage. Though there is ostensibly little happening on the screen, as we collect our own thoughts and feelings at this point in the story we project this process onto the characters as well, giving their subsequent actions a greater sense of consideration and significance.

I still consider Spirited Away a masterpiece but as part of a chronological Ghibli rewatch I was surprised to find it ranking below several films when I would once have placed it top of my list without question. When I first saw Spirited Away back in the early 00s it was unlike anything I’d ever seen before but as it served as my gateway to Studio Ghibli’s other work I was able to retrospectively place it in a wider context which both enhanced and diminished its impact. Viewing the films that lead up to Spirited Away illustrated how it was a triumphant culmination of sorts but I also found a much greater intimacy in the predecessors that inspired it. So while Spirited Away is the most visually striking and tonally ambitious of the Ghibli films thus far, I also didn’t quite connect with it on an emotional level to the same extent as My Neighbour Totoro, Whisper of the Heart or Grave of the Fireflies. There were moments when the animation nerd in me felt moved by the filmmakers achievements or when Joe Hisaishi’s score bore me aloft on its rousing flourishes, but I was less convinced by the undercooked ruminations on love and the vaguely defined relationship between Chihiro and Haku. Still, refreshingly this is not the part of Spirited Away that is given the spotlight. Those aforementioned quiet moments of reflection, of bodies in transit, were what touched me, in a more restrained, cerebral manner than, say, Whisper of the Heart’s more overt emotional peaks.

Any attempt to give a blow by blow account of Spirited Away’s plot would doubtless make it sound unwieldy but the viewing experience itself makes an odd kind of sense, with Miyazaki’s writing and direction giving each scene and idea the room it requires to breath and develop. The fact that he doesn’t pull all his threads together for a neat climax is a deliberate choice, making Spirited Away all the more rewatchable. Unlike Miyazaki’s previous epics Naussicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away didn’t lose me at the halfway mark because its surprises continued to delight and its jigsaw-like structure facilitated consistent entertainment instead of drooping under the weight of convoluted lore and the tonal equivalent of a furrowed brow. While Naussicaä and Mononoke built to action-packed blurs in their final acts, Spirited Away followed a more unconventional path of building towards silence and stillness, cradling the head of the viewer it has been bombarding with stimulation only minutes before, rather than increasing said bombardment to the point of oversaturation. Few films manage to pull off such a peaceful winddown but Spirited Away does so with such grace that its strangeness only becomes apparent on later reflection. As my first Studio Ghibli film, Spirited Away will always have a special place in my heart and I was delighted, though not surprised, to find that it stands up as a unique masterpiece to this day. Its surprisingly low place in my league table is only a sign of how infectious the whole Ghibli experience is once it gets its hooks in you.

4. Pom Poko

Isao Takahata’s Pom Poko has long had the reputation in the west of being “the mad one” amongst the Ghibli films. Given that it focuses on a group of small, furry, shapeshifting environmentalists with enormous stretchy testicles, you’d be forgiven for agreeing with that sentiment on the basis of a short synopsis. Context is key, however, and the tanuki, Japanese raccoon dogs with transformational abilities, have long been a part of Eastern folklore which would make them a far less surprising, if no less riveting, group of protagonists for a Japanese audience. The Disney dub for English-speaking audiences erroneously identifies the characters are ordinary raccoons, as well as replacing any use of the words “testicles” or “scrotum” with the phrase “raccoon pouch” whatever the hell one of those is. Disney’s attempted softening of the material may have been predictable but there’s no mistaking those furry danglers for anything but tanuki bollocks, even in the scenes where they remain a comparatively normal size. I’m dispensing with the raccoon-dog-ball-talk early on because this detail tends to be what many reviews focus on almost exclusively and it is a very minor, though undoubtedly surprising, element of Pom Poko. Here is a film that goes all over the place in its examination of its themes. Though some feel its two hour title is as overstretched as a well-worn raccoon pouch, it allows for some astounding set pieces and for the tanuki community to be as fleshed out and well-rounded as… well, you can see where I’m going with this simile!

Although it is unique in many ways, Pom Poko can be categorised alongside a growing 90s trend for environmentalist animation. Of course, Ghibli had been dropping eco-allegories into their films since the inception of the studio in the 80s, but with movies like Ferngully and Once Upon a Forest and TV shows like Captain Planet and The Animals of Farthing Wood, going green had become a much more prominent thematic concern in children’s entertainment. Although some of these releases could be fairly on the nose, tackling such ominous subject matter also required a harder edge. The body count in Farthing Wood, for instance, was a good deal higher than that of its contemporaries. Pom Poko stands out in this respect, with its numerous deaths dealt with unsentimentally by a droll, dispassionate narrator. Though we lose a lot of tanuki across the film, Pom Poko plays just as fast and loose with human lives, something that separates it from its more tentative contemporaries. In their quest for survival, these raccoon-dogs kill several humans and they do so deliberately and with a jubilant response they struggle to suppress. This is shocking at first but the realisation comes quickly that the tanuki are a different species, treating human life with the causal disdain that people direct at animals. We never see the faces or grieving families of the drivers the tanuki run off the road. That’s not the point. These critters are fighting for their continued existence and a few human corpses are collateral damage akin to traps that need emptying. Not since one of The Plague Dogs accidentally fired a shotgun into a man’s face have I seen such reckless disregard for human life in animation, and I love it. Fuck us!

From the poster art, Pom Poko looks like it’s going to be a cute little adventure for young children. When you then hear that it is an environmental-themed animation, a different set of expectations emerge, perhaps of worthiness and preachy excess. Ultimately, none of these expectations are met. Instead, Pom Poko plays more like a War movie mixed with a Horror film. No one raccoon-dog is singled out as the protagonist, with the film’s focus being on a whole raccoon-platoon and the difficulties of getting a community with different favoured approaches to pull together and function as a unit battling a common enemy. Unlike in the more cloying films in this subgenre, the tanuki are not all good and pure, wondering with moistened saucer-sized eyes why the bad humans are doing this to them. Instead, we get a real mixed bag of well drawn characters, from mentally-exhausted elders to gung-ho upstarts to more reasonable types who keep getting sidelined by sex. Did I mention Pom Poko is also quite bawdy? Giant testicles aside, it doesn’t shy away from the mating habits of the raccoon-dogs (or daaawgs!) or try to impose human morals onto their rituals. So when they swear off sex to focus on the battle with the humans, we get a whole sequence of the female tanuki literally (and, thankfully, successfully) fighting off over-insistent males. It might sound tasteless but it is a crucial part of Pom Poko’s skilful differentiation of humans and animals.

The shapeshifting qualities of the tanuki (something to which I, in common with many of my generation, first encountered by way of Super Mario Bros. 3’s Tanooki Suit, which allowed its wearer to transform into an impervious statue) is a gateway to some of Studio Ghibli’s most inventive animated sequences ever. The way in which the characters are depicted is constantly shifting between realistic raccoon-dogs, anthropomorphic ones and childishly simple cartoon sketches that seem to emerge during times of great vulnerability. But it is when the tanuki begin using their powers in order to terrify humans that Pom Poko becomes jaw-droppingly wild. One memorably horrific sequence sees an unfortunate police officer running into various tanuki disguised as humans, each of whom then makes their face vanish before his eyes. Chased down by eerie, blank-headed apparitions, the officer finally collapses from terror. The film’s centrepiece however is an elaborate parade of ghosts which the tanuki stage in order to convince the humans their town is haunted. The level of imagination is astonishing, with one extended gag featuring two drunks facing the screen talking to one another while various tanuki disguised as creatures pop up behind them. There’s something of the ghoulish imagination of Beetlejuice about this scene, with some truly incredible creations making two second cameos. In a nice nod to previous glories, eagle-eyed viewers may also spot Kiki, Porco Rosso, Totoro and Taeko amidst the supernatural parade.

Despite regular claims that Pom Poko is longer than its premise can sustain, I think it makes the most of its lengthy runtime to explore the environmental themes from as many different angles as possible. By turns hilarious, horrific, insightful, gripping and satirical, Pom Poko may be too strange for some tastes and not what people were expecting from Takahata after his more realistic Ghibli films Grave of the Fireflies and Only Yesterday. For me though, Pom Poko trumps both of these and I realised on this viewing that it is right up there with my absolute favourite top tier Ghiblis. Only a fourth-wall breaking moment at the end feels like a misstep, as one taunki turns to the audience to deliver the moral. It feels like a concession to the more self-serious eco-cartoons of the era and doesn’t really belong here, which is frustrating given that it is literally the last thing that happens. In a film of such wild extremes I can forgive this climactic overreach though. The other 118 1/2 minutes are, after all, some of the most imaginative ever animated.

3. Whisper of the Heart

Although it has become something of a cult Ghibli film in the west, Whisper of the Heart was another major hit for the studio in Japan. This was a big deal as it was the first film directed by Yoshifumi Kondō, a Ghibli animation director who was expected to become the studio’s next significant talent. Hayao Miyazaki was already eyeing retirement at this early stage and passed his screenplay based on Aoi Hiiragi’s manga Whisper of the Heart on to Kondō. Kondō certainly proved himself in the director’s chair, turning in a film that fit beautifully with the established Ghibli aesthetic but which bore his own unique stamp also. Tragically, Kondō died of an aortic dissection at the age of 47 before he could make any more films. The doctor attributed it to the strain of overwork, a common factor in the notoriously demanding and inflexible Japanese animation industry. Kondō had delivered another Ghibli masterpiece but at what price?

It should be hard to watch Whisper of the Heart without feeling sad but it is testament to the terrific work Kondō put in that it is a film that whisks the viewer away from such considerations completely. Miyazaki’s screenplay is strong, a celebration of the creative spirit peppered with the complications of everyday life that both feed and obstruct that passion. But it is Kondō’s gorgeous direction that draws out the full potential of the story. This is a Ghibli city film, eschewing the rural settings of previous works for a ravishing Tokyo backdrop which gives us a greater sense of hustle and bustle while also finding the small pockets of magic and peace amongst it. The protagonist, 14 year old Shizuku, is one of the great Ghibli heroines, a bundle of neurotic teenage energy who provides a window into the highs and lows of youth. There’s a nice slice of life feel to Whisper of the Heart that may at first feel underwhelming to those expecting high fantasy based on the somewhat misleading poster art. It takes a while to get a handle on the film because its depiction of everyday occurrences makes it initially seem directionless. In the tradition of the best Ghibli films, Whisper of the Heart is loaded with those moments of day-to-day living, wherein we see the characters wake up, have breakfast, indulge in realistically inconsequential dialogues. The effect this has is to greatly enhance the impact once we start to examine Shizuku’s hopes, dreams and passions. We suddenly become aware that we know almost everything about this girl, not only helping us to understand her actions better but increasing the extent to which we root for her artistic endeavours.

Like Ocean Waves before it, Whisper of the Heart is a teenage story, but it never descends into the Melodrama that its predecessor hurriedly became in its last act. There is romance, mystery, fantasy and poignant observations aplenty but Whisper of the Heart is a film of small moments that inspire big emotions. It will doubtless play best for creative types who will recognise their own attempts at self-expression in the activities of the aspiring musicians and writers on the screen. An impromptu performance of John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads, the film’s musical motif, is especially moving and there is a real sense of a spontaneous moment having been captured on film which transcends the knowledge that such a thing is impossible in the intricate art of animation. There are moments throughout that inspire a similar feeling of invigorating spontaneity. Shizuku following a cat on a train and discovering an old antiques shop, “a place where stories begin”, is so very Ghibli in the natural way it unfolds and the unforced magic it finds in the everyday. Shizuku’s experience of writing her first story, of losing herself in the experience, is riveting in its minutiae, and her nervous desperation at awaiting the opinion of her first reader and spluttering self-doubt in the face of positive feedback is one of the most evocative moments of animation that I, a self-doubting wannabe creative myself, have ever experienced.

With its astonishing but unselfconscious kaleidoscope of moods, Whisper of the Heart spoke directly to my emotions to the extent that I briefly considered making it my number one Ghibli film. Ultimately though, the romance between Shizuku and the strangely disagreeable boy who recovers her lost book resolved itself in a slightly anticlimactic final scene that is the only part of the film that feels remotely false. Though still thematically fitting, it somehow fails to convince as an ending and the final moment does tend to inspire inappropriate laughter above anything else. If only Whisper of the Heart could’ve ended with the same gentle, organic poignancy it displays throughout, it would be near-enough perfect. Still, this small bump in the country road was not enough to derail my adoration of this beautiful work. One can only wonder what Kondō would’ve achieved next had his own creative journey been fuelled by the same gently supportive attitude he depicts in his sole masterwork.

2. The Tale of Princess Kaguya

There have been a few surprises in this revisit of the whole Studio Ghibli catalogue: films I like more than I thought I did, films I’m not as keen on as I once was. But perhaps the major personal revelation has been just how much I prefer Isao Takahata over Hayao Miyazaki. I love both, of course, and Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro is the film that has claimed the top spot in my charts, but there are several Miyazaki films I’m not terribly keen on, whereas every one of Takahata’s five Ghibli films have made the upper reaches of my list. Part of the reason I find Takahata so much more exciting is you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get with his films. Miyazaki’s films are bursting with ideas but mostly follow a fairly consistent stylistic and thematic pattern. Takahata’s films feel bolder and their emotional humanism is often delivered far more effectively than Miyazaki’s occasionally creaky sentimentalism. There is, of course, no need to compare, as both directors have emphatically made their respective marks on the medium, but it is interesting to note that Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises and Takahata’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya were both released in the same year and were originally intended to be put out as a double bill in tribute to the 25th anniversary of that original Miyazaki/Takahata double feature, My Neighbour Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies. It is perhaps fortunate that Takahata, who Miyazaki was quoted as saying was descended from a giant sloth, was insistent on taking the extra time required to perfect his final masterpiece. This meant missing the deadline for the double feature but such a release schedule would’ve surely proved exhausting. Both The Wind Rises and The Tale of Princess Kaguya are big slabs of cinema and the idea of watching them back-to-back is a fearsome prospect. Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbour Totoro are very different films that somehow compliment each other quite well, their combined runtimes coming in at just under 3 hours. The near 4 and a half hour experience of watching The Wind Rises followed by The Tale of Princess Kaguya would’ve been akin to washing down a 72 oz. steak with a two pint mug of brisket.

Both The Wind Rises and The Tale of Princess Kaguya have been accused of being overlong but I only feel that way about one of them. The Wind Rises just ain’t my cup of meat (I’m vegan actually, but let’s not strangle this metaphor any more than we already have) while for me, an animation obsessive who is riveted by innovations within the medium, the sumptuous Tale of Princess Kaguya is a film I actually feel benefits from its 137 minute runtime. The film has a comparatively glacial pace but the time it takes to tell its classical fable increases the impact of its various emotional payoffs enormously. Takahata’s take on this hefty piece of 10th century Japanese folklore is rich with satirical humour, vibrant humanism, progressive attitudes and devastating sadness. One thing that western audiences should be aware of going in is just how bizarre this ancient story gets. There’s a disorienting narrative swerve in the final act that made my head spin just a little too much first time round. This was rectified when I read up on the origin of the story and realised just how well known this story, originally known as The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, is in Japan. There would have been an expectation that audiences in Takahata’s homeland were already familiar with the story and therefore foreshadowing the bonkers twist would’ve seemed not only unnecessary but detrimentally patronising. If you can align yourself with the eastern mindset by familiarising yourself with the source text and contextualising the film as the classical adaptation that it is, The Tale of Princess Kaguya makes a lot more sense and instantly gains a new gravitas where once there seemed to be only oblique tangents.

The first time I saw The Tale of Princess Kaguya I loved it but this time, only my second viewing, it flew right up my Ghibli ranking, only held off the top spot by the mighty Totoro. My better understanding of the source material helped somewhat but I also felt a much greater emotional connection. When you’re prepared for the quirks of the plot, it’s easier to focus on and empathise with the feelings of the characters. Takahata and Riko Sakaguchi’s screenplay does a fantastic job of capturing the shifting dynamics between the princess and her adoptive parents, an empathetic core that is reflected in the absolutely exquisite character animation. As a longtime animation enthusiast, sometimes truly beautiful animation is enough alone to trigger my emotions, regardless of the content of the story. It’s no exaggeration to say that The Tale of Princess Kaguya has some of the most beautiful animation I’ve ever seen. Its painterly style builds on the director’s use of minimalism and negative space in previous films Only Yesterday and My Neighbours the Yamadas, creating a stylised world that is spine-tingling in its luscious artistry. Special mention must go to Kazuo Oga for his evocative watercolour backgrounds and Osamu Tanabe for his perfectly pitched character designs. Takahata made the decision to eschew a realistic art style and tasked his animators with helping the audience to “recollect the realities of this life by sketching ordinary human qualities with simple props.” It’s testament to the talents of the creative team that they were able to translate such an intangible request into such a breathtaking reality.

The production of The Tale of Princess Kaguya was the sort of dream opportunity that rarely comes around in the animation industry. Seiichiro Ujiie, the chairman of Nippon TV, knew he was nearing the end of his life and was desperate to see another Takahata work before he checked out. To that end, he provided Takahata with a huge budget to create another film. Tragically, the lengthy creative process meant Ujiie died before The Tale of Princess Kaguya was completed but he essentially gifted the world one last Takahata masterpiece by making such an ambitious creation possible. At the time, The Tale of Princess Kaguya was the most expensive Japanese film ever made (a feat since surpassed by Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron) and it shows. If the minimalism of the image might not suggest a huge price tag to the more reductive thinker, the level of painstaking care visible in every frame surely does. Given that this was Takahata’s final film and The Wind Rises was supposed to be Miyazaki’s too, I wonder if the influences from each other’s work that these two directors seemingly display here was intentional. This might be the sentimentalist in me but I can’t help but feel the increased realism of The Wind Rises owed something to Takahata’s more grounded humanism, while the Fantasy edge in The Tale of Princess Kaguya seems to owe something to Miyazaki, especially a sequence in which ecstatic joy is represented by two characters taking flight. Takahata also used Miyazaki’s regular composer Joe Hisaishi for the only time, resulting in a beautifully subtle score which further demonstrated Hisaishi’s impressive range and adaptability.

Ultimately though, The Tale of Princess Kaguya is demonstrably a Takahata film, a fact evidenced by its sober but devastating approach to emotionally raw content and its daring experimental approach to animation. The shapeshifting raccoon-dogs of Pom Poko and the changing animation styles of Only Yesterday and My Neighbours the Yamadas reach their apex here in the form of a rapidly growing baby and a startling instantaneous devolution into a preliminary-sketch-like interlude as a representation of white-hot fury. The latter moment is one of the most memorable sequences in the entire Ghibli canon. The Tale of Princess Kaguya might not be the first film that comes to mind when someone mentions the name Studio Ghibli but it is the perfect demonstration of the boldly brilliant work to be found in the less representative margins of the Ghibli catalogue. The Wind Rises may have been the more widely seen and discussed of the two but for me The Tale of Princess Kaguya was the great Ghibli masterpiece of 2013 and one of the studio’s most remarkable works overall.

1. My Neighbour Totoro

Two young girls are waiting for their father at an isolated bus stop. When he fails to arrive on the expected bus and with the rain getting heavy, the two girls become worried. The younger girl, Mei, eventually falls asleep on her older sister Satsuki’s back. At this point, the titular Totoro arrives at the bus stop. Mei has met him before but this is Satsuki’s first encounter with the large forest sprite. As Totoro joins her in waiting at the bus stop, Satsuki offers him a spare umbrella to replace the ineffectual leaf he is using for defence against the rain. Totoro is grateful and excited by the sounds the raindrops make on the umbrella. In thanks, he gives Satsuki a bundle of nuts and seeds. Then a large cat-shaped bus arrives, which Totoro boards. Once he is gone, the girls’ father finally arrives.

It’s hard to explain just what makes this simple encounter one of the most perfectly executed scenes in cinema history. It certainly doesn’t sound that way on paper but on screen Hayao Miyazaki creates a sense of wonder like no other. He manages to capture both the magic of a childhood viewpoint and the contrasting tendency of children to respond to fantastical things as if they were everyday occurrences. The average adult would probably have run away at the sight of Totoro. Satsuki offers him an umbrella. Frequently named as the best of the Studio Ghibli films and one of Miyazaki’s crowning achievements, My Neighbour Totoro is a film whose immense charm and simple magic crept up on me due to its unpredictable narrative shifts which seemed completely logical on subsequent viewings. Perhaps the greatest shock of My Neighbour Totoro for those who are more familiar with Miyazaki’s work is just how little fantastical content there is. The film has a solid backbone of enchantment but it is used sparingly. The appearances by woodland sprites are spaced out and only occur after long stretches of realistic, domestic storytelling. This ultimately makes for a more measured and tonally fascinating film.

My Neighbour Totoro may have come as something of a surprise for Miyazaki fans in 1988. His previous two films, Naussicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky, are lengthy Fantasy Adventure films packed with event and driven by stern environmentalist reproofs. By contrast, My Neighbour Totoro is an intimate, leisurely-paced story that examines the relationship between human beings and nature by way of whimsical but earthy forest sprites. Those looking for the headlong rush of Castle in the Sky will be wrong-footed by My Neighbour Totoro’s tonal subtlety but the world Miyazaki creates is rich with magic whether the forest sprites are on screen or not. His deftly restrained screenplay offers us the magic of childhood, of exploring a new house and making new friends. A key detail in this respect is how much Miyazaki has upped the quality of his character work. Both Naussicaä and Castle in the Sky suffered from comparatively bland protagonists whose essential goodness was offered in place of any real personality traits. But from the moment we meet Mei and Satsuki, they are not just strong characters but 100% realistic children. Their reactions, whether upbeat or morose, are exquisitely observed. Their excitable capering as they run around their new house is a joy to watch and their mannerisms will be instantly recognisable both to those who have children and those with the ability, and crucially the inclination, to recall their own childhood.

There’s an underlying sadness to My Neighbour Totoro that comes by way of the girls’ mother Yasuko, who is recovering from a long-term illness in a nearby hospital. The details of Yasuko’s illness are kept deliberately vague and Miyazaki avoids cloying scenes of the children pining for their mother. Instead, he establishes that relationship of mutual adoration then presents a realistic continuation of life in the meantime. The seed is planted early to ensure the viewer is well aware the mother is never far from her children’s minds, and this fact colours every scene with delicately realised shades, eschewing the need for dialogue that directly addresses the situation. My Neighbour Totoro is a brief film, running over half an hour shorter than its two Ghibli predecessors, and this is testament to its narrative economy and emotional subtlety. Miyazaki had proved his ability to work on big canvases but given the chance to present a small, personal watercolour he absolutely excelled in the most soul-enriching manner.

The first time I watched My Neighbour Totoro, coming off the back of Spirited Away as so many western Ghibli fans originally did, I missed its subtle charm and just thought it was accidentally uneventful. Subsequent watches revealed it to be anything but uneventful and everything in it, far from being accidental, revealed itself to be designed with the fine-tuning of a fastidious watchmaker. As the west belatedly cottoned on to Ghibli, My Neighbour Totoro gradually garnered more and more acclaim until it quietly asserted itself as one of the cornerstones of the animated medium. More than that, it has become rightly regarded as one of the most remarkable films in all of cinema. Its beautiful, modest power still feels totally unique even amongst the other great works of its director and every element of the film, from its enchanting score by Joe Hisaishi and its striking art direction by Kazuo Oga, has penetrated the culture and set a new watermark for intelligent, original children’s stories.