A to Z of Animation Studios: G Is for Studio Ghibli
Where the food looks better than real food and the quiet moments hit harder than the action.
G is for Studio Ghibli
Founded: 1985, in Tokyo, by directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki, with backing from publisher Tokuma Shoten.
The approach: Hand-drawn films, made slowly and with enormous care, for kids and adults at the same time.
Greatest hits
Castle in the Sky (1986). Floating cities, flying machines and the first official Ghibli film.
My Neighbor Totoro (1988). Two sisters, a sick mother and a giant forest spirit with a bus shaped like a cat. Totoro became the studio's logo.
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989). A young witch moves to a new town and learns that confidence comes and goes.
Princess Mononoke (1997). A fierce, epic story about people and nature. Best for older kids and teens.
Spirited Away (2001). REAL: it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the first hand-drawn and the first non-English-language film to win it.
Howl's Moving Castle (2004) and Ponyo (2008). One a walking castle, one a goldfish who wants to be a girl.
The Boy and the Heron (2023). REAL: Miyazaki's later film won Ghibli its second Oscar.
The Ghibli formula
Food you can almost taste. Ghibli animators treat a bowl of ramen like a main character.
Quiet moments. Characters sit, wait for a bus, watch the rain. Miyazaki calls these pauses ma: the emptiness that lets you feel.
Determined young heroes, often girls, who solve problems with kindness and courage.
Flight. Planes, brooms, dragons, castles, cat-buses. Something is always flying.
Villains who aren't purely evil. Almost every "bad guy" has a reason.
The struggles
Miyazaki has "retired" more than once and come back every time. Hand-drawn feature films take years, and Ghibli has had long pauses between projects.
RUMOR: a quote has circulated for years claiming Miyazaki said "anime was a mistake." He never said those exact words. It's a mistranslated and exaggerated version of comments he made about the anime industry.
Honorable mention: Studio Ponoc
REAL: founded in 2015 by former Ghibli producer Yoshiaki Nishimura and many Ghibli artists. Their first feature, Mary and the Witch's Flower (2017), carries the Ghibli spirit forward.
The lesson
Ghibli teaches the power of slowing down. In a world of fast cuts and constant noise, a moment of quiet can be the most memorable thing in a film.
Up next
H is for Hanna-Barbera.
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