Studio Ghibli

—The music was also particularly good in this film. Miyazaki: I had absolutely no involvement with the music at all. I even joked at one point that maybe we didn’t need any music in the film [laughs], but we couldn’t get away with that. So I left everything regarding music up to Takahata-san, because he knows much more about it. Jo Hisaishi had als

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—What was the difference between what you and your staff were doing and what other studios were doing at that time? Miyazaki: Other studios may also have been pushing their limits. I do think they were all working very hard. But I think we were working the hardest. What I mean is not that we were just working hard, but that we consciously determine

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Some people also suffer from the misconception that Isao Takahata-san and I are both some sort of environmentalists, and that we will make a film out of anything as long as it has an ecological theme or message. Nothing could be further from the truth. Such a film would be like a big fat dried-up log, propped upright. What we need is a living thing

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When the editors of Animage encouraged me to create a manga, I got all excited and, as fate would have it, decided to create my own version of Nausicaä. I am now forced to reflect yet again on why, years ago, I once gave up drawing manga because I felt I lacked talent. At this point, I hope that I can somehow bring this young heroine into a world o

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As I developed into a youth and young adult, I came to realize that I shouldn’t be just a good kid, that I should look at things with my own eyes and have independent ideas. This led me to attempt to turn my back on even my fundamental purity as a child and, combined with the dark time of studying for entrance exams, I came to draw nihilistic gekig

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Of the films we made at Ghibli, the first films, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, and Totoro weren’t able to recoup their production costs from the theatrical releases. We were finally able to make a profit from secondary rights. That switched with Kiki’s Delivery Service. So it wasn’t as if we had a warm, receptive audience f

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