# Is there anyone out there at all like Miyazaki (creator of Princess Mononoke, etc.)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 15, 2008, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590 "2008-01-15T06:39:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Windwalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5e9695/32.png) [@Windwalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Windwalker)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/1 "2008-01-15T06:39:30Z")
I just saw two more of **Miyazaki** ’s movies, _Kiki’s Delivery Service_ and _Howl’s Moving Castle_, and while not as great as Mononoke, they were still excellent. _Kiki’s_ was remarkably conflict-light and probably geared towards younger kids, but I still found it utterly charming and human, not to mention entertaining. _Moving Castle_ was a masterful achievement in setting and environment, but was slightly marred by the plot falling apart towards the end; still completely enthralling, though. _Spirited Away_ was a masterpiece, plain and simple. And _Princess Mononoke_ must rank among the best films ever made. Excluding Disney, is there anyone else that makes films like these? I’m looking for soaring imagination, humanity, and the guts to go a little out there. Perhaps there are some lesser known Japanese animators that make films with less mass appeal (maybe too daring or racy or whatever), but are comparable in quality? (and yes, I will be watching the rest of Miyazaki’s movies in short order :)) ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/2 "2008-01-15T06:42:22Z")
Yes. The film you’re looking for is called [The Plague Dogs.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plague_Dogs_%28film%29) An animated adaptation of the Richard Adams novel. Top-quality animation and a serious (often disturbing) plot. You can see the whole movie in segments on [Youtube](http://youtube.com/results?search_query=the+plague+dogs&search=Search) but I’d recommend actually getting the video because you’re missing a lot of resolution with the Youtube clips. ---
**Author:** ![Paladud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Paladud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paladud)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/3 "2008-01-15T07:04:54Z")
[QUOTE=Argent Towers] Yes. The film you’re looking for is called [The Plague Dogs.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plague_Dogs_%28film%29) An animated adaptation of the Richard Adams novel. Top-quality animation and a serious (often disturbing) plot. You can see the whole movie in segments on [Youtube](http://youtube.com/results?search_query=the+plague+dogs&search=Search) but I’d recommend actually getting the video because you’re missing a lot of resolution with the Youtube clips. [/QUOTE] Just a heads up, this is a LOT darker than Mononoke. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/4 "2008-01-15T07:31:17Z")
There’s no-one like Miyazaki. Some Pixar stuff tries to come close, I guess - Brad Bird’s _Iron Giant_ too. But still too kiddy. Aardman stuff, for me, has some of the whimsy and inventiveness that’s classic Miyazaki. Tim Burton’s stuff too. Some internet shorts I’ve seen also have it - there was one about this kid going to the moon, set to some french indie band - wish I could remember the name. Don’t forget to watch _Laputa_ and _Nausicaä_ too, both excellent. Do _not_ watch the “_Warriors of the Wind_” Nausicaä dub if you can avoid it Otherwise, I’m sure there’s a treasure trove of untranslated Japanese stuff in the wake of Studio Ghibli’s success, but we’ll never know, will we. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/5 "2008-01-15T08:11:20Z")
You should get the Nausicaa comic. I read it first, so when I saw the movie, I actually thought that it blew goats, the comic version was so much more impressive. ---
**Author:** ![puppygod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@puppygod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puppygod)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/6 "2008-01-15T09:35:25Z")
Hey, don’t forget _On Your Mark_. It’s music video, not movie, so it’s often overlooked. But it’s still one of the Miyazaki’s best. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/7 "2008-01-15T09:41:13Z")
[QUOTE=Paladud] Just a heads up, this is a LOT darker than Mononoke. [/QUOTE] I know. I first saw it when I was 9 - it gave me some pretty profound shock. Still the animation in it is absolutely breathtaking to look at - the “fells” and woods of England’s Lake District just come alive with color and vibrance. You can see each blade of grass painstakingly hand-drawn. Here’s a [great scene](http://youtube.com/watch?v=Tp5mcc47xD8) from it. (Warning - violence.) Look at the beauty of that flowing water in the brook behind the dog, and the shading and moss on the rocks. _Plague Dogs_ is my number one animated movie of all time, with _All Dogs Go To Heaven_ by Don Bluth a very close second and _American Pop_ in third place. I’m not into the Japanese fantasy stuff at all. It doesn’t resonate with me whatsoever. But if there was a studio consistently putting out stuff at the level of _Plague Dogs_, I’d be in heaven. ---
**Author:** ![garius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e19b73/32.png) [@garius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garius)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/8 "2008-01-15T11:25:17Z")
Check out the works of [Makoto Shinkai](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makoto_Shinkai). [Hoshi no koe/ “Voices of a Distant Star”](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0370754/) is breathtakingly good and is (so far) the only non-Miyazaki anime that my Missus has really liked.\* His first proper “studio” film - [Kumo no mukô, yakusoku no basho / “The Place Promised in Our Early Days”](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381348/) is also pretty damn good, and hopefully a taste of even better to come. It’s even more amazing when you realise that he originally did it _all by himself_ on his Mac. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/9 "2008-01-15T13:12:45Z")
> [@](#): > > Yes. The film you’re looking for is called The Plague Dogs. > > An animated adaptation of the Richard Adams novel. Top-quality animation and a serious (often disturbing) plot. > > You can see the whole movie in segments on Youtube but I’d recommend actually getting the video because you’re missing a lot of resolution with the Youtube clips. You bring up **The Plague Dogs** but not his earlier (and much more upbeat) Richard Adams adaptation, **Watership Down**? Rent THAT film, instead. (They made a reference to it in **wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit** , when the van radio starts playing the Art Garfunkel song “Bright Eyes” that was written for WD) ---
**Author:** ![garius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e19b73/32.png) [@garius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garius)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/10 "2008-01-15T13:28:49Z")
Ah, _Watership Down_. They say that every 90 seconds a child somewhere in the world becomes mentally scarred for life by that particular work of animated wabbit genius. ---
**Author:** ![randwill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@randwill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randwill)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/11 "2008-01-15T14:30:23Z")
Once you’ve seen all of Miyazaki’s films (don’t miss “Castle in the Sky” and “Porco Rosso”) I recommend “Whisper of the Heart” and it’s spin-off “The Cat Returns” and “Only Yesterday”. These have more heart and humanity than all of Pixar’s output. ---
**Author:** ![Hodge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Hodge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hodge)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/12 "2008-01-15T14:45:24Z")
Miyazaki is a visionary genius, in a class all by himself, but there are other wonderful anime films out there. First, you should check out other non-Miyazaki Studio Ghibli films like “Grave of the Fireflies”, an emotionally devastating WWII film. One of the greatest war movies ever made. Seriously. Much less traumatic is “Only Yesterday”, a gentle, whimsical story about a young city woman learning to love life in the country. The other big name anime director I highly recommend is Satoshi Kon. Whereas Miyazaki makes mythic and surreal childlike fantasies, Kon swims in darker psychological water with flawed, often paranoid, characters playing out dramas that can be subject to many different interpretations. You can’t always trust what you’re being shown as he often plays with audience expectations and meta-narrative. See “Perfect Blue” for a disturbing, Hitchcockian thriller with dashes of De Palma-like exploitation, “Millennium Actress” a trippy and disorienting story about a documentary crew filming the reminiscences of a famous actress and “Tokyo Godfathers”, probably his most conventional film, is a Christmas fable about a group of homeless people who find an abandoned baby and their attempts to find its parents. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/13 "2008-01-15T15:08:09Z")
[QUOTE=randwill] Once you’ve seen all of Miyazaki’s films (don’t miss “Castle in the Sky” and “Porco Rosso”) I recommend “Whisper of the Heart” and it’s spin-off “The Cat Returns” and “Only Yesterday”. These have more heart and humanity than all of Pixar’s output. [/QUOTE] I want to second this. IMNSHO, “Whisper of the Heart” is the best of Miyazaki’s works. Though you may want to find a primer somewhere about Japanese cultural norms before viewing it. A lot of the powerful scenes won’t make sense until you know what the cultural norms are. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/14 "2008-01-15T15:23:00Z")
[The Triplets of Belleville](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286244/). Much different style, but the same sort of dark and funny imagination, with no condescending for the kiddies (there’s even a bit of nudity). ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/15 "2008-01-15T16:26:29Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] You bring up **The Plague Dogs** but not his earlier (and much more upbeat) Richard Adams adaptation, **Watership Down**? Rent THAT film, instead. [/QUOTE] Maybe, if you want a bunch of hoopty-poopty mystical mumbo-jumbo. _Plague Dogs_ is darker but it’s also more moving of a story, in my opinion. Of course, why not just rent both of them? You shouldn’t miss out on _Plague Dogs_ just because it’s darker. ---
**Author:** ![Student\_Driver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3da27b/32.png) [@Student\_Driver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Student_Driver)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/16 "2008-01-15T16:35:56Z")
I was a fanboy for [Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Space_Force:_The_Wings_of_Honneamise). Not sure of its current availability on home video (got mine on LD). Nothing holds a candle to Miyazaki’s best (Kiki’s Delivery Service is probably my favorite animated film of all time), but there’s a lot of good stuff out there. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/47e85d/32.png) [@Captain\_Lance\_Murdoch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Lance_Murdoch)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/17 "2008-01-15T16:37:01Z")
[QUOTE=OtakuLoki] I want to second this. IMNSHO, “Whisper of the Heart” is the best of Miyazaki’s works. Though you may want to find a primer somewhere about Japanese cultural norms before viewing it. A lot of the powerful scenes won’t make sense until you know what the cultural norms are. [/QUOTE] Whisper of the Heart is not a Miyazaki film. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/18 "2008-01-15T16:47:51Z")
I’ll add another vote for **Whisper of the Heart**. I think it’s my favorite of all the Studio Ghibli films. Of course there also the saddest movie ever made: \*\*Grave of the Fireflies \*\* … . ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/19 "2008-01-15T18:19:54Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Lance Murdoch] Whisper of the Heart is not a Miyazaki film. [/QUOTE] Well, that depends how you want to define “Miyazaki film.” He did [write](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113824/) the screenplay, and was listed as the General Producer for the film. He wasn’t the director, but I don’t think you can claim he wasn’t involved with the making of the film. ---
**Author:** ![randwill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@randwill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randwill)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2008, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590/20 "2008-01-15T20:00:31Z")
I think a “Miyazaki film” would be defined as a film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. You can look here to see which Studio Ghibli films are his and which ones he was involved in but was not the director of. [http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/films/](http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/films/) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anyone-out-there-at-all-like-miyazaki-creator-of-princess-mononoke-etc/433590.md?page=2)