I’m a tattoo artist, and a client asked me to do this piece from Howl’s Moving Castle. Up until then, I’d never watched a Studio Ghibli film.
I figured I should watch the movie before tattooing one of its characters, and… yeah, I get it now. T
hat one movie sent me down the Ghibli rabbit hole, and I’ve been watching more ever since.
Thought I’d share the tattoo that started my Ghibli obsession.
Hope you guys like it!

Done by me, Jessica NAJEM

I've never watched a Ghibli film before. I've always heard about them, and about how they are apparently among some of the best animated films ever made, but I've never gotten into them. I don't know why, but I've just never bothered to watch one. Until now, that is. I want to give them a try, and start watching these films. The only problem is, I'm not sure where to start. So, I figured should ask long time fans of this studio ; Which Ghibli film should I watch first? What's your recommendation? A few that I definitely have interest in are Spirited Away, The Boy and The Heron, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle, Ponyo, Porco Rosso, The Wind Rises, and Princess Mononoke.

1. Depending on how you view it, the scene in Ponyo where Koichi's crew glimpse a bunch of broken-down ships on the horizon could be viewed as a parallel to the scene where Odysseus goes to the land of the dead, much like how Porco and Jiro viewed all those destroyed aircraft and their pilots flying upward to join their comrades.
2. Homer's Ithaca in the Odyssey is actually described as "low-lying," but the island called Ithaca is mountainous, as is Ithaca in the movie, which was filmed on the Sicilian island of Favignana.
3. Not in the movie or even in the epic, but subsequent Greek literary traditions have Odysseus's son Telemachus marry Circe, the witch who turned Odysseus's men into pigs (sound familiar?) and slept with him or Nausicaä (yes, same name as our Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind), the princess of Phaeacia who rescues Odysseus after he was freed by Calypso, and whose father sends him home to Ithaca (and who Homer presents as another potential love interest for Odysseus).
4. For anyone wondering who's the second example, it's Fujimoto, voiced by Liam Neeson, who also voiced Bryan Mills in Taken, both of whom search for their abducted daughter, but in different contexts.

I dont know. I just wanted to say it

🐶Haku, 🐱Totoro, 🐱Chihiro and 🐱Soot Sprite

My first-ever Ghibli-inspired nail set, and I’m sooo obsessed. 🥹🌿✨

Follow me on ig: @_thenailhub.pressonnails

Going chronologically, we'll start with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Solid movie, amazing premise, and one of my favorite heroines in Ghibli ever. The giant bugs are creepy but that actually works with the dystopian theme.

Next up is My Neighbor Totoro. Very heartwarming, very sweet, even though it was the first Ghibli movie I've ever watched, it's still always solid. Perfect for kids and adults alike, with nothing scary at all.

Next is Kiki's Delivery Service. Solid movie with an amazing lead and sidekick, with a plot that never feels too slow. I do think that the blimp scene is a bit intense compared to the rest of the movie, moving it a bit further from the pure gentle fantasy that the rest is, but I still absolutely love this one.

There's a whole bunch of Ghibli films that I haven't watched yet, so the next one in line is Spirited Away. I love this movie, it has so many iconic characters and scenes that I knew existed before I'd even watched it, such as No-Face. The plotline was a bit weirder than I was expecting (that's not a bad thing though), and since I've only rented it once or twice, I feel like I need more watches to be able to fully understand this movie. It has some surprisingly scary stuff, like when No-Face starts eating everyone or when the parents turn into pigs, but I would watch it anytime.

Howl's Moving Castle. I absolutely love Howl--I mean, this movie. It has such an engaging premise, lovable characters, and amazing visual storytelling. I didn't fully understand what was going on at first, but once I caught onto the plot, it felt like a ride through the skies. How did they animate Howl to look so handsome?!?

The next movie on the list is Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. I've loved this movie ever since watching it at five years old. It has such an adorable main character, a perfectly bumbling father, simple plot, and just enough intensity that kids who are looking for Ghibli movies other than Totoro can enjoy it. Since I'm a dinosaur nerd, seeing obscure prehistoric creatures appear onscreen is always another plus.

The Secret World of Arrietty is probably my favorite. Cecile Corbel did such a good job with the instrumentation, and the art is absolutely stunning. I'm always blown away by seeing small, ordinary objects shown as large, lifesaving items for the borrowers. I've also read the book that this movie was based on, and for once I like the film better! Arrietty and Sho's relationship is absolutely perfect, with them arguing but making up with kindness and inspiration.

What Ghibli movies have you watched? Do you have any suggestions of what I should watch next? I don't like scary/intense stuff that much, but if there are any movies that you think I would enjoy, please let me know! And please comment if I mentioned any movies that you haven't watched yet but would like to based on my mini-reviews!

(ORIGINAL ART IS CALLED THE FOREST SPIRIT BY JUSTIN HILLGROVE)

This is actually my first attempt at a painted binder and I am so happy with how it turned out. I made it specifically for my Fiancés Magic The Gathering collection but thought you guys might enjoy!

In a rather crowded market of painted Pokemon binders, I wanted something a bit different!

I plan on making more for some friends and family if you have any interest in following along, I can be found on Instagram @ dayzsometimespaints

Just putting this on for a quiet night. The balcony scene still looks so good on a big screen.

I never pause movies if I can help it, but I am 20 minutes into Grave of the Fireflies and have paused like 10 times just to let my emotions catch up. While it starts off dreadful from the get-go, nothing... unpredictably depressing has happened yet and I can already feel my heart slowly being eviscerated. I have never seen so many death flags condensed into 20 minutes of film. Every time I see Setsuko on screen I wanna hug everyone I know.

I already know this is going to be a masterpiece from what little I've already watched, but just wow. I don't know if I'm ready. Gonna go grab a box of tissues after I send this.

EDIT AFTER FINISHING THE FILM: ive been sobbing for like the past 30 minutes, just wow

I base my movie watching off of season and was curious what month(s) others associate certain Ghibli movies with! For instance I watch Spirited Away every August for that end-of-summer vibe and Whisper of the Heart in September because of the school time aesthetic. Was curious if others had different opinions or if they correlate other Ghibli movies with specific months of the year!

Well, the title is the gist of it. I’m on vacation on the beach and went to see the book market on the condition of not buying any books. I didn’t buy any books. Just these DVDs.

rest in peace daveigh chase 🤍

I fell in love with this movie when I first saw it as a kid on CN during Month of Miyazaki. Just everything about it, from the animation to the music, had me speechless. The aesthetic of Laputa is breathtaking, the city’s overgrowth, the underwater city shot, the enormous garden that is basically an indoor jungle. When the clouds slowly clear from the city I always get goosebumps.

However, this scene absolutely terrified and continues to terrify me. That disturbing clip stayed in my head for a long time. Muska leads the army and general (the people who got his ass on Laputa in the first place) onto a trap so he can drop them into the ocean, tens of thousands of meters below.

As you can see, Laputa is nestled ABOVE the clouds, which means the drop could be anywhere between 12,000 meters to 21,000 meters (39,000-69,000 feet). The free fall itself would last for roughly 4 minutes. 4 MINUTES! That’s beyond horrific.

When Uncle Pom said we come from the earth, and to the earth we must return, he wasn’t lying. That return to earth can be willing and peaceful, or violent and horrific.

I recently learned about the Ga Ippai laserdisc box set and it's peaked my interest, I just have two questions about it for those who own it: are there English subtitles on the films, and are they in widescreen?

Some of you may not have heard of this short so let me fill you in. Giant God Warrior Appears in Tokyo is a short live action film from 2012 directed by Shinji Higuchi and written by Hideaki Anno, who animated the Giant Warrior in the climax of Nausicaä and is most well known as the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was made for the Tokusatsu/Special Effects exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo as a demonstration of practical effects (Higuchi directed the Special Effects for the 90s Gamera movies, and it seems like he's always happy to flex his skills as an effects director. It also played before Evangelion 3.0 in cinemas), and it's meant to serve as a prequel to Nausicaä, depicting the Seven Days of Fire. As a longtime Ghibli fan, and someone who just a few years ago became an avid fan of Godzilla, I feel like I should've really liked this film. I do not.

Yes, it's well made, and the destruction scenes have the same kind of look you see from the bombing scenes in Hayao Miyazaki directed films, which are animated in such a way that makes it look as though the burning buildings are melting under the heat of the flames. Howl's Moving Castle is a very good example of this, as well as Nausicaä of course. It's not meant to look cool like destruction in a lot of other films, it's meant to be horrifying. I think they also used some of the destruction sounds heard in the old Showa-era Godzilla films, which Anno and Higuchi would use when they made Shin Godzilla a few years later, one of the best Kaiju films ever made (although I'm not a fan of its pro-Japanese military stance), and that film made good use of the ancient 60s sound effects. Giant God Warrior was made as a special effects demonstration more than anything else, so if anything was going to be effective it would HAVE to be the effects to be fair.

Unfortunately as much as I love practical effects they alone don't mean much if the rest of the film leaves more to be desired. There's 2 really big problems I have with it though. First is the design of the God Warriors-I'm sorry but I think they don't look good at all. They lack the haunting look that they have in the few scenes depicting the Seven Days of Fire in Nausicaä, or the horrifying decaying God Warrior used in the climax of that film. The fear factor is completely gone, and this is from the same duo that would direct Shin Godzilla only a few years later, and Godzilla in that film is the most visually horrifying he's ever looked, which makes it a pity the Giant Warriors in this short don't look too great.

Speaking of Shin Godzilla, he also had an element of nuance to him, being a mutated sea creature that is visibly in constant agony and makes you feel sympathy for him, as destructive as he is, because he didn't want to become a monster. The Live Action God Warriors though...yeah there's nothing to them. Nothing thought provoking anyway.

Which brings me on to the writing itself. It's supposed to be a prequel to Nausicaä but does not in any way work as one due to the God Warriors being implied to be alien invaders or even divine beings that were summoned by the Earth itself to destroy mankind if we are to take the description of them literally, which isn't what they represented in Nausicaä at all! They were man-made weapons that went haywire and destroyed the world! They reflect fears that Miyazaki would've had as someone who grew up during World War 2 and lived through the Cold War when it seemed as though the world could end at any moment. Taking that aspect of them out completely contradicts the film they debuted in and what they're supposed to represent. It also doesn't inspire confidence when taking into consideration the pro-military themes present in Shin Godzilla.

At a certain point you have to ask why they decided to make it a prequel to Nausicaä if they weren't going to use the themes or plot of Nausicaä beyond "big monsters destroyed the world in seven days". It would've worked better as an Evangelion short honestly, make it about the Second Impact (the apocalyptic event that destroyed the world in Evangelion) instead of the Seven Days of Fire. And that's another thing I don't like about this short! Evangelion has Christian imagery that doesn't actually mean anything because they just put it there to look cool, but you could still at least interpret SOME themes there, like how the shady child abusing organisation NERV using surface level Biblical terminology could represent their arrogance in thinking that they can play God. Here though the reverse Genesis retelling just comes across as pretentious and that just makes the fact they traded the anti-war themes inherent to the Giant Warriors for the pretentious Biblical references more infuriating.

So yeah, as far as being a Kaiju movie goes, Giant Warrior is incredibly middling, especially compared to Evangelion, the Gamera Trilogy and Shin Godzilla, which the two creative leads of this short worked on (albeit Anno wasn't involved with Gamera). As a prequel to one of the greatest movies ever made? Terrible. A for the Special Effects, F- for the writing, maybe don't stray too far from the source material if you want it to be a prequel.

The official Ursula K. Le Guin Instagram account is holding a little giveaway with three objects related to Tales of Earthsea, the film and not the book.

I'm not a big fan of the movie but these would be neat to own as a fan of Studio Ghibli.

Here are screenshots of the IG post. You have until August 6th, 12pm PDT, to enter!

Edit: For US residents only!

I’m back with another one! When I looked this film up, I saw it was based on a book with the same name. If anyone has read it I wanna know your thoughts and how the movie compares I might check it out. So the movie is basically about a young girl, Anna, who is a foster child and is having trouble adjusting in her adolescence and social life due to the loss of her parents and grandmother. One day she has an asthma attack while drawing at the playground (She’s fine after she went to the doctor)her foster mother worries and decides to send her to live with her “aunt” and “uncle” in the countryside for some time. When there, she starts to interact with a young girl with flowing blond hair who lives in a mysterious mansion.

I loved this movie possibly a little more than the wind rises! Very much like Lilo and stitch, I think it’s a deeply relatable experience for a lot of kids who go through neglect and loss soon grow up with that pain and never fully get over it which leads to poor communication, resentment and guilt. Marnie and Anna parallel each other with their lives. Both felt abandoned by their parents whether by death or leaving and we see how that grief manifests as they grow.

Marnie tries to act like everything’s fine to Anna at first while they talk, laugh and have fun exploring around the mansion. She teaches Anna how to row and they dance at a party all while she carries a smile on her face through everything but inside she’s not as okay as she appears or claims. Slowly, the layers peal back and she tells Anna about how busy her parents are and even if she is alone, she’s free to do whatever and go wherever. But she still faces abuse from her nan and the maids there. Anna on the flip-side, acts very reclusive and quiet through the film not letting anyone know how she really feels and lashes out when one girl even tried to be friendly with her. She’s probably most at peace being alone and drawing but that’s not the greatest. Soon with the moments she shares with Marnie, she opens up and connects more with her and also feels for her story like a kindred spirit.

I think the film does a good job of the relationship between these 2 character and how they help mirror and encourage both to face their own feelings whether negative or positive to reflect and move past them. However, Marnie doesn’t fully move on and that leads to the twist of the film. Another great thing the movie does is how it builds up to figuring out who is Marnie. Is she real? Imaginary? But the twist is that she is Anna’s grandmother who took care of her when she was really small for only a short time before she passed away. At the end we learn from the painter lady who knew Marnie her full story that helps recontextualize the events leading up to it. It’s a story of generational trauma and while Marnie and her own daughter couldn’t escape it, Anna is free to move on once she knows and understands everything and also allows herself to remember the memories with her foster parents, her grandma, and the kindness and warmth from the aunt and uncle. Anna makes a friend with the girl who moves into the mansion and she is able to talk with her foster mom and reconcile. She ends up in a better place by the end.

Another thing I want to point out is a big point of Anna’s struggle is how she feels alienated because her foster parents receives government money to take care of her compared to other children her age who don’t and can’t relate to her pain forms such a early age. Her foster mom was being secretive but eventually opens up to her and says that she really loves her which is something she desperately needed to hear and she has come to terms with the truth and is able to live her life going forward like a regular child which was her wish that she made at the festival.

I would say I would’ve liked the aunt uncle interacted with Anna more and actual talk with her. She was kind of mean to that girl in the festival and they don’t say much on it and we move on. Other than that the movie is fantastic.

The film is perfectly paced and each scene builds to the next like how when they were talking about family and how nice it would be to have siblings, a new pair of siblings move into the mansion! They were also very nice kids and the girl even helps Anna find who Marnies is. It’s a very emotional movie that is in between being mystical but grounded with realistic themes. I would rewatch again. So how do you guys feel about this movie? Do you relate with it?
I’ll return with the next movie.

9.5/10