Saturday, January 31, 2009

STUDIO GHIBLI

I spent my Chinese New Year holidays at home, downloading a few movies produced by Studio Ghibli. I saw my first anime movie about 10 years ago when a colleague showed me 'Princess Mononoke'. He had just come back from Japan back then and wanted to show the movie to his students. I could not understand the movie back then since everything was in Japanese. The only Japanese words I knew back then were 'arigato' and 'ajinomoto' (and still are). The Japanese anime and manga industry is huge and I know there are millions of fans out there. I am definitely a greenhorn compared to them. Studio Ghibli, under the direction of its co-founder and force, Hayao Miyazaki, has produced many movies such as Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away. Aesthetically and content-wise, I prefer Studio Ghibli's movies to Disney animated movies which can be a bunch of crap sometimes. Try to watch them if you can. You'll be amazed by the details done by the animators.