This week marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of Studio Ghibli, possibly the world’s most revered animation studio. It’s a bittersweet occasion, given that the company’s activities have been on a “hiatus” since last year, due to the retirement of founder Hayao Miyazaki and the disappointing box office of several of its more recent films. Still, that’s no reason to dampen any celebration of Ghibli’s beloved roster of films.
The studio is respected the world over for its lush animation, attention to detail, and the way its movies can soak its audiences in a mood without any effort at all — a trait many find lacking in most American cartoons. Ghibli’s stories take viewers of all ages seriously, never let commercial concerns get in the way of imagination, and more often than not incorporate female characters in a way that puts the rest of the film industry to shame, animated or live-action.
To observe Studio Ghibli’s 30th birthday, I’ve taken up the task of ranking its entire oeuvre of feature films. Feel free to disagree with the placements — that’s half the fun of a ranked list.
22. Tales from Earthsea (Goro Miyazaki, 2006)
Rankings can often seem frustratingly arbitrary, or change depending on the writer’s preferences from one day to another. But from the moment I took on this task, there was no question of what would be at the bottom of this list. Tales from Earthsea holds the dubious distinction of being Ghibli’s only outright bad (terrible, even) movie. The junior Miyazaki turns Earthsea into the most generic of fantasy settings, which is the stage for bland good-and-evil conflict between characters who are either cardboard or outright unlikable (the ponderous shitheel Prince Arren is unquestionably the worst Ghibli lead). The pleasingly freeform Ghibli story approach here decays into a grotesque, senselessly dull plot. Urusla K. Le Guin had previously turned the studio down several times when they approached her about adapting her work, and the instinct proved sadly well-founded.
21. Ocean Waves (Tomomoi Mochizuki, 1993)
Produced for television as a cheap training exercise for younger, newer staff members, this film nonetheless ran over both budget and schedule. It’s hard to understand how, since the result is identical to every other TV anime from the time. That goes both in terms of aesthetics (though the animation is perhaps smoother than that of its peers) and of story. It’s a halfhearted love triangle that’s more about an extended day trip to Tokyo and sends the very odd moral that, as a friend put it, “you should pursue love interests even if they turn out boring or shallow, because you should always stick to what you initially wanted.” A winnow-slight piece of work.
20. The Secret World of Arrietty (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2010)
19. When Marnie Was There (Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2014)
Yonebayashi’s two contributions to the studio often seems like the work of a rival studio attempting to emulate the Ghibli formula (while somehow getting away with copying their character design house style). Both films are pleasant, with fleeting moments of deeper beauty or thematic work. And they have their solid qualities — Cécile Corbel’s score for Arrietty is terrific, and Marnie‘s ghost story is a notable break from the studio’s usual output. But neither movie amounts to all that much in the end.
18. Howl’s Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)
Miyazaki famously works without screenplays, essentially half finding his films as he makes them — even the ones adapted from books. Historically, this has worked out stunningly well for him, but his lower-tier titles on this list are the exceptions. Howl is not free-flowing but formless, its strange story twists too random and unmotivated (and unable to be excused with “well there’s magic afoot”). Even though Miyazaki is passionately anti-war and incorporates that idea into much of his work, the theme feels tacked on here, the darker shades of the title character’s work too much at odds with everything else that’s going on. Still, it is gorgeous, the eponymous castle a clever visual feat.
17. From Up on Poppy Hill (Goro Miyazaki, 2011)
In a vast improvement over his debut feature, the junior Miyazaki turns in a quite nice piece. Its uncomplicated story about a school trying to save its old clubhouse serves as a vector for an effective mood piece about Japan in its postwar years. Ghibli is often praised for its ability to capture little, everyday slices of life, and Poppy Hill is basically one big string of those little moments. So it’s most unwelcome that the plot suddenly snarls at a late stage with a weird-ass twist: The two romantic leads might be brother and sister! Even stranger is how the incest plot is resolved not too long after, raising the question of what point it had at all.
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