Studio Ghibli from the perspective of a Western animation fan

[smahala1991]

Last week I asked this question about a good beginner anime to start off with. A lot of you suggested good choices, but a very popular recommendation was films by Studio Ghibli. I started looking and among them were some titles I had heard of before such as Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, Whisper of the Heart, and Kiki's Delivery Service which the last one I have covered. So, over the weekend I watched Kiki's Delivery Service, Ponyo, Spirited Away, and The Secret World of Arriety. But enough about the introduction, let's get to the nitty gritty.

The Animation

First off want to talk about how stunningly beautiful the animation is. One of my favorite scenes was in Spirited Away when Sen/ Chihiro and No face got on the train. The whole visual was about 2 minutes long with no dialogue. The landscape and the scene did all the talking

In Kiki's Delivery Service the whole scenery of the European town, the seascapes, and flying scenes were all done very beautifully.

Ponyo also had very good seascapes and animation amazement all it's own too.

The storylines

Spirited Away to me had a great story line. It was really complex and offered a lot of character development. The spirits, monsters, creatures, and Chihiro herself all had stories of their own and it really shows.

Kiki is very slow paced. But it does offer a great story about coming of age and a witch in training who loses her spark but rejuvenates herself to become better and grow as a person.

Ponyo is really cute and tells a great story of a young boy who's dad is a sailor who stays away for days at a time. While his mom is constantly helping at a seniors center. He befriends a young fish girl named Ponyo who becomes part human as the time goes on. She discovers a lot of the aspects of land life and wants to stay human.

If you noticed that I'm not speaking much on Arriety it's kinda because I didn't really care for it. I just found out of all the others the story is just hard to follow but the animation was well done.

Overall, I find these to be good recommendations. As a non anime fan but curious coming into this I didn't really know what to expect. But I was impressed with what Studio Ghibli is able to produce. Miazaki (Forgive me if I'm not spelling his name right) is a genius who did get a lot of his inspiration from Disney and The Fleischer Brothers ( Repsonsible for Betty Boop and Popeye).

I've noticed that sometimes some Anime fans don't like Western animation because the storylines are immature, characters are poorly drawn, and tend not to hold attention very long. Whereas sone Western animation fans criticize Anime for the streotypes that it's really sexual, gory, and uses the schoolgirl theme way too much. Really both forms can be enjoyable and you can like both. I feel like Ghibli's films are good for a watch for Anime and Western animation fans alike. My top recommendation is Spirited Away.

[DCooper]

After seeing your earlier discussion, I checked out Spirited Away over the weekend. I generally go for the standard 12-13 episode seasons rather than movies, as they lend themselves to more character development and more involved plotlines.

All in all, Spirited Away was worth watching. It covered a pretty good amount of plot for a 2 hour format, and was pretty well made. I found it a little softer than I usually get into, and wasn't really crazy about the animation style. But I've watched a TON of anime, and all-in-all, it was pretty decent.

I get the criticisms about the overuse of the schoolgirl theme, and the strange visual language things (the bloody nose and chibi deformation stand out for me). https://www.japanpowered.com/japan-culture/animes-visual-language
But you get accustomed to those things, and the depth of characters and creativity of the storylines, along with the variety of stuff out there makes it my favorite form of video entertainment out there.

If you want to check out another very highly rated, slightly more modern (about 10 years old, iirc) anime that does a nice job of highlighting a little different style, look at the first few episodes of Stein's Gate. I guarantee you'll end up wanting to watch the whole thing.

https://myanimelist.net/anime/9253/Steins_Gate

[smahala1991]

There is one thing about Anime I like more than Western animation. They don't seem to make as big of a deal over political agenda and think it's propaganda like Americans do about modern cartoons and TV shows

[DCooper]

Yeah, I have not really seen any social agenda pushed, even in very recent animes. I wonder if that has to do with the original target audience being largely Japanese males.

[DCooper]

by the way if you want an excellent resource for anime, 9anime. to has almost everything that's available anywhere. The site is a mess of popups to get through on vanilla firefox or chrome, but brave browser runs it seamlessly.

[DCooper]

Disregard the space in the middle of the address, autoformatting inserted it.

[19magic]

I know you said you liked anime but I'm pretty sure this was an anime, have you watched the Black butler film? It's dubbed in English but I really loved it

[DCooper]

@19magic Black Butler was simply one hell of a series, lol

[19magic]

But have you watched the live action black butler the swordmanship is brilliant one of the best I've ever seen

[DCooper]

@19magic I haven't. Maybe I'll have to check that out...

[Twinrova]

"I've noticed that sometimes some Anime fans don't like Western animation because the storylines are immature". I think this captures a lot of the sentiment revolving around Western animated films. If you look at the Disney classics, you get the same kind of fanicful allure you see in Ghibli movies, but the narrative's are immature as you say; they're more for children. When you watch a Studio Ghibli film, you can really see why it would appeal to even adults like ourselves: the films are replete with messages intended for more mature audiences.

Good review. Very accurate overall.

[smahala1991]

One thing I like about the Ghibli films is there's no poop or fart jokes like in Despicable Me or films like that

[19magic]

Howls moving castle is my fav, I've also watched ponyo, spirited away, return of the cat (I believe where a girl saves the King cat and unkowinly gets engaged to the Prince cat), there is another one on Netflix which I liked but can't for the life of me remember the name but it's about dustmites and the guardian.

I watched the odd one here and there but I'm wary of the typical titty anime, I used to like mew mew power when I was younger but now whatching it, it's a bit bleh all that trouble she went through, all the lies and she it just seems a bit immature now

[smahala1991]

The 4 I watched were really beautiful. A lot of people hate on Ponyo but it was actually a good and charming story

[Samoht_Sirrom1]

There are so many anime's out there some of them like spirited away and Kiki's delivery service are great there are other still such as death note, fullmetal alchemist, high school DXD, the irregular magic high school, in another world with my smartphone, re Zero, The familiar of Zero, no life no game and Sword art online I can go on for a long time yet there was a so many good anime out there.

[Jjpayne]

I completely agree with you! And i loved this my take!

[xXHosaeXx]

I always admired the ghibli art style. Can never reproduce it well tho. Strange, with how simple it is.