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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

The "problem" is that, in Japan, Ghibli is much more than a studio movie. It's a profit machine for merchandise, books, and theme parks. You can't just let that fade away.

Disney itself went through rough patches, where the new generations either defected (Don Bluth) or disappointed. Ghibli started going through that; Gorō Miyazaki can keep the flame alive for the time being, but nobody is under the impression that he can take it to new and sunny uplands. The question is whether they can find somebody who can, in the way Disney got Michael Eisner. What they really need now is a successor to Toshio Suzuki who can attract new talent the way Suzuki used to do.

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> You can't just let that fade away.

A westerner would say that, but it's far more appropriate for Disney than Ghibli. Ghibli will fade away. Miyazaki is an auteur. You won't recreate him.

That's rose-tinted glasses speaking. Ghibli today is not just Hayao and Gorō Miyazaki like it wasn't just Hayao and Isao Takahata before. Everyone likes money, even (or rather, especially) Japanese animators; the Japanese have a very prosaic approach to their IP. All the moves from Toshio Suzuki over the last decade indicate that he is trying to negotiate a creative transition to keep the show going. Whether he can do it in his lifetime or not, that's another question, but IMHO there is no doubt that he's trying hard.

While Eisner was great at keeping the lights on, Lassiter was the one who brought back the magic. I didn’t care much of any of Bluth’s work either, but you are absolutely right about a long “rough patch” and it’s existence does not mean the end.

I don't know man, Aladdin was a masterpiece. Lasseter is cool but some of the '90s stuff is <chef kiss>

Shifting from being a movie studio to an IP management company might make sense.

Yeah but they don't really have a leadership that can countenance that at the moment. Everyone, from Suzuki and old man Hayao down, is fundamentally a creative, not an admin.

Yes. Nintendo spent decades as an also-ran novelty company before Hiroshi Yamauchi had the foresight to go all-in on video games. Ghibli is obviously a very different company, but with Goro's continued involvement, it seems like it will follow the example of many Japanese firms of essentially being a legal business entity that represents the founding family until - and even after - it happens upon an application that can be sustained by personnel outside the family. In other words, what Ghibli makes doesn't necessarily matter to its continued existence, I think.

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