Princess Mononoke - 2001 won, for Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (USA) Best Home Video Release.
Spirited Away - 2003 won, Oscar Award (USA) for Best Animation Feature, also won and has been nominated for many other awards.
Howl's Moving Castle - 2006 won, for Hollywood Film Award, also won and has been nominated for many other awards.
Hayao Miyazaki has even been nicknamed "The Japanese Walt Disney"; this could be because his anime's have become just as popular as the famous Walt Disney films.
Hayao Miyazaki's Japanese anime could be an example of the popularity of Japanese anime but why has it become popular? According to Lent (2000) anime texts entertain audiences around the world on the most basic level, but, equally importantly, they also move to provoke viewers on other levels as well, stimulating audiences to work through certain contemporary issues in ways the older art forms cannot. I've liked anime for as long as I can remember. The first Miyazaki film I fell in love with was Spirited Away, and it is also one of my favourite films that I can just watch over and over again.
In Princess Mononoke the spirits of the forest are an important aspect of the film
and in Spirited Away there are a lot of different spirits in the film but I don’t
think they were the main focus of the film. Wright (2005) states that Miyazaki’s films describe an intriguing mixture of
earthy spirituality particularly drawn from the Shinto tradition, Wright also says that
there are many themes and symbols of Shinto mythology and
spiritualism in Hayao Miyazaki’s films. Shinto means the way
of the Gods, an indigenous faith that is one of Japans major religions along
with Buddhism.
I also noticed that the romance in
both Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away were quite similar. For example, the
end of Princess Mononoke, Ashitaka and San go their separate ways in Spirited
Away Chihiro and Haku also must go their separate ways. I would have loved to see
the film end with the romance between the both the characters of Princess
Mononoke and Spirited Away to be together in the end, which Disney films are so
good with but Miyazaki has chosen more of a bitter sweet ending for both films.
Maybe he didn’t want to be cliché about the romance but I think that’s what
makes Miyazaki’s films different that Disney films.
Miyazaki is also known
for creating characters that seem to be good within the film but then they are
actually bad or vice versa. Miyazaki creates characters that are mysterious in
a way because they seem unpredictable. It’s not that black and white to judge
if a character is either good or bad because the characters seem to have a bit
of both. For example in Princess Mononoke, the character of Lady Eboshi comes
off as the bad person because she is trying to destroy the forest for her Iron
Town but at the end she realises she was wrong and decides to do the right
thing. However, the character Jigo came off as a good person who helped
Ashitaka in the beginning but then turned around and wanted to kill the Deer
God of the forest.
Hayao Miyazaki’s films have
become well known globally as he continues to create more films that capture
the hearts of many audiences like me. Princess Mononoke has definitely been added to my favorite Miyazaki films.
Reference
IMDb (n.d.). Hayao Miyazaki.
Retrieved 22 August 2012 from http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594503/awards
japan-guide.com
(n.d.). Shinto. Retrieved 24 August, 2012 from http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2056.html
Lent, J. A.
(2000). Animation in Asia: appropriation, reinterpretation, and adoption or
adaptation. Retrieved 24 August, 2012, from AnimeResearch.co
Wright, L. (2005). Nature Spirits, Giant Insects and
World Trees: the nature vision of Hayao Miyazaki. In the Journal of Religion
of Popular Culture. Volume X: Summer 2005
Great post Clarice! Lively and you keep it interesting. I would be interested to know more examples of Shinto imagery or symbolism in the film.
ReplyDeleteThe one issue I would have with you is your claim that 'at the end she [Lady Eboshi] realises she was wrong and decides to do the right thing.' The way I saw it, she is determined to rebuild Irontown and make it even better than before, but there is no hint I can see that she intends to stop making iron and stop producing weapons. That's what makes Ashitaka's decision to work with her and not return to his village quite problematic.
Hi Mike,
DeleteThank you for commenting on my blog. About your comment of how I mentioned Lady Eboshi decides to do the right thing, what I meant to say is that I thought Lady Eboshi would stop attacking the spirits of the forest and would create a better iron town without hurting the spirits.