Starting Point: 1979-1996

Further, I think the time will come when we won’t be able to fix our air conditioners, there will be no electricity delivered, and we’ll be saying, “This is what we used to call a television and it showed video images.” It takes two weeks for an air conditioner to be repaired now, and when these things accumulate, I’m sure a time will come when we

Related to that, there was a film called The NeverEnding Story. It was somewhat changed from the original story. A dragon appears and has a very obvious face. You can tell what it is thinking from its face. This was totally uninteresting. For us something is far more likely to become an object of our longing when we don’t know what it is thinking.

When I became an elementary school pupil, I learned that elephants can be killed by machine guns and I recall being very dejected. I had assumed that machine gun bullets would bounce off elephants.

There are even those—joking of course—who take the extreme position of saying that they find Miya-san the individual more compelling than the works he creates.

Recently, Miyazaki-san finished drawing Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Reading it, I was moved to tears. This makes me want to ask Miyazaki-san about his views on the environment. People find it very difficult to understand environmental problems from discussions about the ways in which the environment is being destroyed or the fact that the e

Hayao Miyazaki has sometimes been described as “a man with no need for the production process.” Even on the Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind animated feature, when I served as producer, he never needed anyone to whip his behind to get him to do any of his work. He participated as a member of our animation staff as if he weren’t worried about the

And to be quite frank, the moment I actually decided to finish the serialization, I already felt as though I had turned into a real wrinkled old geezer. That stated, my work has by no means ended. And I’m really in a bind, because as a result I don’t truly feel liberated either. I wish I could say that I’ve just had a heavy load lifted from my shou

Miyazaki: Yes, I did make a storyboard of the return of the umbrella. But that would make Totoro understand things too much. There is no way he would understand lending and borrowing. And there is no way Totoro would have an aversion to getting wet in the rain. —Because he is an animal. Miyazaki: Right. And rain helps plants grow. Since he lives as

Miyazaki: I’m fascinated by wars, and I read a lot about them. People therefore often ask me, “Miyazaki-san, do you like war?” and I respond by asking if they think AIDS researchers like AIDS.