MIYAZAKI Hayao

  • Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakuchi
    Winner of the 2002 Academy Award for Best Animated feature, Spirited Away tells the story of 10-year-old Chihiro, a girl in the midst of a move to the suburbs who wanders into a strange town and finds a world of spirits ruled over by the mysterious Yubaba.
    Updated: 2021-09-08
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  • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
    The story is set in the future 1000 years after the “Seven Days of Fire”, a cataclysm brought on by the excessive industrialisation that mankind has undergone. It utterly destroyed industrial civilisation approximately a millennium after it began to flourish. Although humanity survived, the land surface of the Earth has become heavily polluted and the seas are poisonous. Most of the world is covered by the “Sea of Corruption”, a toxic forest of fungal plants which is steadily encroaching on the remaining open land. It is protected by large insects, including the huge Ohmu. Humanity clings on to survival in the polluted lands beyond the forest, periodically engaging in bouts of internecine fighting for the scarce resources that remain.

    -- Wikipedia
    Updated: 2021-08-25
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  • Sabaku no Tami
    Is a manga which Miyazaki wrote for a newspaper targeted for children. It is more of a graphic novel than a manga, since most of the text are written outside of the frames and there are very few dialogue bubbles (though towards the end of the story, it moved closer to the traditional manga style).

    The surprisingly dark story deals with the devastation of war, betrayal, and the ugliness of the human nature under desperate situations, including deaths of several characters. One can see the influence of TEZUKA Osamu in the art style of this manga (as in most of the manga written in this time).
    Updated: 2021-08-26
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  • Princess Mononoke
    Also known as Princess Mononoke, the Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghilbi film.

    In order to satisfy their own needs for land and resources, Man is encroaching on their sacred territory, cutting down the trees and destroying everything else that stand in their path. As a result, the animal gods became angry and attacked the encampment.

    Into this conflict wanders a young boy, Ashitaka, a refugee of the Emishi people. His people still live in hiding, but when his village was attacked, he shot and killed one of the animal gods. For this he has been given the curse of death.

    He has begun a search through Japan to find the secret of his curse when he arrives at the encampment. Outside of the encampment he is attacked by the "Monster Princess", a girl raised in the woods by Moro no Kimi (a 300 year old female wolf god) and who is driven by a fierce hatred for the humans who are destroying the forest. She has repeatedly attacked the encampment, but after she meets Ashitaka, she becomes torn between her loyalty to the animal-gods and the world of the humans.
    Surrounded by the warring characters of the humans on one side and the animal-gods on the other, each side believing in the righteouness of its cause, it is Ashitaka and San who must face each other personally and, by the end of the film, come to an understanding of each other's world and make the attempt to coexist without hatred and violence.

    Not far from the heart of the sacred forest where the great Deer God dwells, a new town called Irontown is founded. Conflict seems inevitable.

    A young girl, raised by wolves, and a warrior bearing a curse inflicted by the hatred of a dying Boar God are trying to make things right. Will they succeed?
    Updated: 2021-08-25
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  • Shuna no Tabi
    [From Nausicaa.net]:

    Shuna is a prince of a very poor country. His people have very little that they can grow on their poor land, and are starving. Shuna hears of the Land of the Gods and of the Golden Wheat growing there, and so he journeys there to bring the seeds back to his people. After a very long and hard journey, he finally reaches the Land of the Gods, and steals some seeds. But he is severely punished for his crime. However he is nursed back to health by a girl whom he once rescued from slavery, and who now lives in a mountain village. She also plants Shuna's seeds and protects them from the elements. Eventually, the crop season comes, and she now has to choose a husband...
    Updated: 2021-08-25
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