Exploring the Magic of Miyazaki Hayao's Animation

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Hope in Despair: The Greatness of Miyazaki Hayao
“Animation time!”
When I was in elementary school, my dad would often begin the perfect Sunday experience this way, and I would dash out of my room, hop onto the sofa, and curl myself around my father’s round belly. On one of these days in particular, we watched Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro (1988). The few things I still remember about the movie are the huge, puffy, and eccentrically adorable forest spirit Totoro – with his eyes staring nowhere – and my dad’s warm and soft stomach covered by a wool sweater of exactly the same shade of gray as Totoro’s fur.
My Neighbor Totoro was my first Miyazaki film. I had heard several times that Miyazaki was one of the greatest animators of all time, but …show more content…

It is never the stereotypical one between greedy exploiters and innocent wildlife, or between post-apocalyptic society and ominous nature. In Princess Mononoke, people have to wipe out forests to claim iron sand and produce iron for a living, while the Wolf God and Boar God have brutally killed guiltless laborers to defend their home. In Valley of the Wind, the military Princess Kushana ruthlessly invades Nausicca’s hometown because she is determined to mature the Giant Warrior embryo kept by the valley people. The Giant Warrior is said to be able to massacre the threatening Ohms – huge, aggressive bugs that dwell in toxic jungles. Although Princess Kushana kills Nausicca’s father and imprisons Nausicca and all other valley people to take over the valley, eventually she repents after realizing that the only way for the human race to survive is not to eradicate Ohms, but to learn to coexist with them. The disgusting bugs turn out to be protectors of the toxic jungles, and the jungle plants become toxic because they have been purifying polluted water and soil. Miyazaki is not a mere entertainer; he turns the fantastical into the

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