My Neighbor Totoro is a children’s film for the world as it is, and for the world as it should be.
In Miyazaki's Spirited Away, I see a film that I can show my daughter to find herself in, and a model I can only hope to embody myself.
In Howl’s Moving Castle, bodily curses abound; in this world, you can be betrayed by your body as easily as you can betray it.
At different forked roads in my 27 years, I saw Miyazaki’s women and thought, I can? And each, in her distinct way, said Yes.
In Castle in the Sky, nature is not to be negotiated with, nor reveled in. A humanity that would exploit nuclear energy is a humanity which doesn’t deserve its benefits.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is not, perhaps, Miyazaki’s best movie, but it is his most earnest and original; a declaration of ideals that his later movies will refine.
We leave our experience with Princess Kaguya—as with all of the best Ghibli films—changed, our lives recontextualized.
Isao Takahata’s tragic and poetic Grave of the Fireflies is a warning that bullets and bombs are not the only deadly forces in wartime.
It’s always felt like Ghibli movies understood what it meant to grow up as a girl, still unconvinced by the world that she has to fight for everything she has.
