Characteristics of Japanese Animation Creator Hayao Miyazaki’s Author Style

To create an image “Kept away as if by magic” Miyazaki was inspired by his friend’s daughter. Today it is one of the most popular and famous anime in the world. According to the plot, the capricious girl Chihiro, together with her parents, drives a car through the forest in order to quickly get to a new house. The child is tired from the long drive, but the parents ignore the daughter’s displeased remarks. At one point, they turn the wrong way and find themselves in a strange place: there is no one around and only abandoned buildings and bathhouses are visible. Chihiro immediately becomes uncomfortable, but again Mom and Dad don’t hear the girl’s warnings, who insistently persuade them to go back to the car. It soon turns out that Chihiro immediately felt they shouldn’t have lingered in these places: the mysterious village is dominated by an insidious old witch who doesn’t favor uninvited guests at all.

Miyazaki has millions of sources of inspiration. But he never leaves the viewer with clues, which are often found in Hollywood animation. But the pleasure of guessing these references is what, among other things, the viewer likes and expects from the paintings of this author. At the movie theater “My Neighbor Totoro” you may see the famous Cheshire Cat, or you may find nothing in common with it. But one thing remains the main thing – the real pleasure of a fairy tale invented by a talented artist. “My Neighbor Totoro” is a story about the adventures of two sisters, filled with colorful Japanese folklore, which in itself is “magical” for Russian audiences, doubling the delicious fairy tale atmosphere of an already amazing story.

“Princess Mononoke” – a cartoon that once became the beginning of Hayao Miyazaki’s world fame. And in it, the author raises completely adult topics – feminism, ecology, the opposition of true evil to the touch of good. According to the plot, the son of the leader of the ancient people and the adopted daughter of the wolf goddess find themselves at the center of a fierce confrontation between the City of Iron and the Forest. Faced with a huge demon boar, the young prince Emishi Ashitaka is cursed. He grants the prince supernatural powers, but threatens to rob him of his will and his life. Ashitaka embarks on a journey to uncover the secret of demotic possession. The search leads him to Iron City, where people live and work together under the guidance of the benevolent Lady Eboshi. But there is a “but” – the prosperity of the city depends on the destruction of the forest. Therefore, the deities and forest spirits hate people, and the wolf princess San tries to attack Eboshi. Having been on both sides of this battle, Ashitaka searches for a way to end it.

Interestingly, all of Miazaki’s works are designed for completely different audiences. The author is sure that you can talk about important topics with a person of any age – you just need to choose the right genre. “Howl’s Moving Castle” – a real emotional drama, told in a language understandable to children. A modest young girl named Sophie works in a hat shop and leads a mundane, mundane life. Everything suddenly changes when Wizard Howl’s amazing moving castle appears near his town. Howl saves Sophie from two insistent soldiers, and the young girl falls in love with him. After Sophie’s exciting walk with the wizard, the envious waste witch comes to visit, who out of jealousy turns the heroine into an old woman. Filled with despair, Sophie, in the form of an elderly woman, leaves her home, goes on a wandering journey and finds herself in the strange castle of Howl. There she meets not only the wizard himself, but also his apprentice Markle and the bewitched servant Calcifer. Sophie and Calcifer agree that they will help each other break free from the spell, but before that, the heroes must go through many trials.

“Every woman is as capable of being a hero as a man,” says Miyazaki. The director shows us strong heroines, not princesses waiting to be rescued by a brave prince. “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” – one of the oldest and most revered masterpieces of Hayao Miyazaki, who created a bewitching and dangerous post-apocalyptic world where the brave girl Nausicaa lives – people’s last hope for a peaceful coexistence with the nature and among themselves. The historical anime was based on the manga of the same name by Miyazaki himself. Work on the project, which would become a classic in world animation, actually formed the famous Studio Ghibli. A thousand years have passed since the global battle and ecological catastrophe irreversibly changed the Earth. Now the land is almost entirely covered by the endless Poison Forest, teeming with mutated insects. The old civilization has fallen and its place has been taken by colonizing states, which are in constant hostility with each other. But there is one exception – the peaceful Valley of the Winds. Daughter of a local ruler, the young Nausicaa tries to reveal the secret of the Forest. When enmity comes to her, she searches for a way to appease the destructive aggression of people and the righteous anger of nature.