I don’t like much American animation either. Basically, I just don’t really love cartoons. I think part of that (especially with American animation) is that it’s almost all geared at children. I don’t want safe, family friendly entertainment. I want violence and profanity. Nobody ever says “fuck” or shoots anybody in the face in a Pixar movie.
Dude, you need to see Ghost in the Shell if you haven’t already.
(If you have, pretend I didn’t say this and I’ll go play with my Tachikoma plushie)
I didn’t get Spirited Away the first time I saw it. The second time and each time after that I watched it I enjoyed it a lot more. I don’t know if I get it but I love the visuals and the story and the fantasy.
Funny, Porco Rosso is the only one that I like.
It’s kind of weird you dislike anime then.
I first got hooked on anime in the 1980’s watching Robotech (aka Macross). It’s pretty cheesy by today’s standards, but I remember being blown away that they actually killed off main characters during the course of the series. How many American cartoons would do that?
To be fair, anime that gets widespread publicity in America generally is geared toward children. That’s starting to change, but the animation-is-for-kids mindset is still pretty strongly entrenched here.
It’s been a few years since I have seen it but I think it’s a great film though not as good as Princess Mononoke IMO Miyazaki’s best. I agree there is not much of a plot and what story there is does end rather abruptly. For me the main pleasure lies in sitting back and enjoying the extraordinary fantasy world that Miyazaki has created. The train ride in particular is one of the most hauntingly beautiful scenes I have seen in any film.
Good question; we watched “Wall-e” this fall, and absolutely loved it. I do really like animated films (but like DtC, I would prefer ones made for adults, too), but I guess I like a more linear narrative. I like the fluidity and flow of animation - characters move so easily and beautifully, like very little does in real life. If they do things that you can’t do in real life too, that’s also engaging (like flying or changing bodies), so I guess I like the creativity of animation.
On thinking about it a bit more I think what Miyazaki does is to take the notion of a fantasy world seriously and to its logical conclusion. In a conventional plot a character who is thrown into a fantasy world will after a few scenes of initial bewilderment, quickly get the hang of things and join the goodies and go ahead and beat the baddies in the triumphant conclusion.
In SA, however you can’t have a conventional plot because neither the main character nor the audience understands how the fantasy world works or what the motivations of its characters are. Instead you explore how the main character adapts and grows as a person while all the time dealing with situations which don’t make a whole lot of sense to her. So the absence of a plot is a logical consequence of throwing an ordinary girl into an extraordinary world.
I’ve tried. I’ve tried to watch stuff like Princess Mononoke and Grave of the Fireflies, but I find them personally difficult to access. I think the different approach to narrative structure has a lot to do with. It seems like Anime always just starts in the middle and leaves the audience to muddle out what’s going on. I find that frustrating. I’m always like “What is that flying snake thing? Oh, that’s a demon? Really? It doesn’t look like a demon. What’s with those robots? Is this supposed to be the future? A different planet? Why does that guy have that thing on his face? What’s going on?”
It drives me nuts.
But Grave of Fireflies is pretty much a standard story told through the medium of animation - it’s nothing like Miyazaki’s fantasy stories.
Maybe I’m thinking of something else then. What’s the one with the scientist and the female cyborg? Ghost in the Machine? I was lost from the word go.
Miyazaki’s imagination starts from scratch; he takes nothing for granted. Stay away from Miyazaki movies if you just want the same Disney formula over and over, which, obviously, lots of people do.
Possibly, I’m not familiar with it. Grave of fireflies was the story of two Japanese orphans during world war two.
*Spirited Away *contains a lot of imagery I don’t understand. Nevertheless, I am a huge fan of Miyazaki based on the sheer inventiveness and integrity of his works. I love seeing what fantastical scenarios he can cook up, and I happen to have a special place in my heart for surrealist, nonsensical environments. (Salvador Dalí’s Soft self-portrait with a side of bacon has intrinsic value to me regardless of whether I understood what the hell he was smoking when he painted it.) The bottom line is, much like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Miyazaki is telling a story about a little girl coming of age, growing up, finding strength she didn’t know she had, facing terrors, making allies, finding her place in the world. The actual events don’t matter so much as the emotional impression of the instant.
I think a person’s feelings on that film don’t come down to whether or not you ‘‘get it’’ – it comes down to whether you like abstract art forms and enjoy stories that stray from the concrete. I think the film is genius, but it’s something my engineer grandfather would look at with absolutely no grasp of its relevance and possibly a fair amount of disdain. It doesn’t make one perspective any better or worse, it just means people perceive the world differently and differ in how they would like their movies to perceive the world.
If I had to rank all Studio Gibli films I’ve seen, I’d go
- Nausicaa of the Vally of the Wind
- Howl’s Moving Castle
- Spirited Away
- Castle in the Sky
- My Neighbor Totoro
- Kiki’s Delivery Service
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is much more direct in its narrative, with less confusing symbolism and more compelling plot. It’s definitely on my list of five favorite movies ever. I am absolutely riveted by Princess Nausicaa and her mission. And also I love it because of the Ohmu. Oh, the beautiful Ohmu. Seriously, it’s the best movie ever.
Try Trigun. There’s a lot of anime that I think is ok and a lot of anime that I think sucks, but this is the only one that I really LOVE. It starts out kind of childish (which you’ll see is for a reason and fits the story), but it gets much more serious. There is plenty of Shit, at least one Fuck IIRC, and people definitely get shot. It’s 26 episodes and it tells a single linear story so you have to start from the start and work your way through it, but it was so worth it to me that I’ve done it 3 times, and I’m not the kind of person who does that.
If you’re suggesting that anyone who doesn’t “get” Miyazaki is just a drone who wants only to stay in the safe Hollywood world of paint-by-numbers movie making, I’d say your comment is rather insulting and condescending. I, for one, have a pretty short attention span for movies that just pander to audience expectations without ever challenging the viewer. But I still didn’t like Spirited Away.
If, on the other hand, I’m reading too much into your post, I would also generally agree that the statistics indicate that the average movie goer prefers the tried and true to the unique and nuanced. 
I think youre right - my tolerance for abstract art is not high (I like some abstract art that is beautiful or evokes a sympathetic response, but much of it just looks silly and self-indulgent to me). I would also agree that criticizing people for not liking an esoteric movie or abstract art is pointless - what a boring world it would be if everyone liked exactly the same things as everyone else.
Can I just say that this point is pretty much what I meant by that comment? Which is very much my taste–I love the more abstract stuff where anime is concerned. Other people don’t, and that’s fine.
I should know better than to post. I’m hiding until January.
I haven’t seen Spirited Away, or Howl’s Moving Castle, yet (I really ought to)…or even Totoro (shocking, I know), but, I have to admit I’m a bit confused by the idea that Miyazaki is typically abstract and confusing. From what I have seen of his work - Kiki’s Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky, Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, Princess Mononoke, and Castle of Cagliostro (a Lupin III movie, but one with Miyazaki’s fingerprints all over it) - I have to say, however strange and abstract the other 3 are, they can’t really be taken as representative of Miyazaki’s oeuvre.
Not to say those 5 movies are any more representative of the whole, but, on the whole, I’d say the balance appears to show Miyazaki, if those first 3 movies are, in fact, abstract and confusing, having no particular standard in that respect.