The pre-Ghibli work of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata | Hacker News Reader

The pre-Ghibli work of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata

vulture.com

237 pointszdw37 comments

I very heartily recommend the first Lupin the 3rd TV series [1]. The Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata episodes are of course excellent, but what surprised me when I watched the series (almost 20 years ago by now) were the first 6-7 episodes, directed by Masaaki Osumi, they had a (slight) bleakness to them that was really special.

Also, Future Boy Conan is really excellent, too. Its ending/credits song is one of the best ever when it comes to anime.

[1] https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=8...

[2] https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEq7m_6odoc

The early episodes of Lupin III, especially the first ones, are something of an acquired taste. 1970s animation is so much more sparse than the bubble economy anime later on. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine captures a lot of the feel of the early episodes but with modern animation and themes.

It is a great show, it’s just… variable. Some of this is by design, as a Jigen plot is going to be darker than a Fujiko focused episode. Every once in a while there will be an episode that’s pitch perfect and has a Spruce Goose (I wonder who directed that one?) but then the next episode is a bit lame.

Or there’s the version with better music, Cowboy Bepop. The tone is a bit darker because the Lupin analogue is age twelve but it’s still fun.

The original manga of Lupin III, by the late Monkey Punch (Kazuhiko Kato), is basically a psychedelic '70s Bond with heavy noir undertones. It's also very adult, with pretty explicit sex scenes and jokes.

The TV series obviously toned it all down, but the first season is the closest to the original material - hence the bleakness and the crazy jazz score. Unfortunately it's also the worst one from a technical perspective, although it's one of the few products of that time that will continue to be watched probably forever, hence acting as a document.

I really enjoyed the first season / series. I feel the earliest episodes often had a great cinematic feel to them, and would in their short runtime take time to show long, wide shots to establish atmosphere.

I felt as the show went on, it became more and more silly, and I lost interest. I'm not sure how many episodes I ended up watching and at what point Miyazaki and Takahata left.

The movie is they directed was also very good.

I did enjoy the dark themed, somewhat recent spinoff "A woman named Fujiko", which is also recommended by a sibling comment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt2tm9B6A4E is a pretty good video essay which discusses Miyazaki's Lupin TV work, and of course Castle of Cagliostro.

Another good one is The Last Unicorn. While Miyazaki himself wasn't involved, it was animated by Topcraft, the company that did Nausicaa, and most of them would go on to be the core team of Studio Ghibli.

As a side note, Topcraft (of which many animators later formed the Pacific Animation Group) also designed and animated the original ThunderCats and Silverhawks.

definition of slick

Topcraft also did the more lackluster (though personal favorite) Flight of Dragons, as well as the Rankin/Bass productions of The Hobbit and Return of the King, which bookended the aborted rotoscoped Lord of the Rings by Ralph Bakshi.

Loved that movie as a kid and just played it for my gf who hadn't seen it (but grew up watching The Last Unicorn).

Definitely simplistic compared to some more modern material, but I think it still holds up as something for younger kids who might not get more complex storylines. It's a cool modern fairy tale even if a few of the characterizations might be a bit iffy to modern sensibilities.

The theme song to The Last Unicorn is something of a meme, isn’t it?

Is it? The soundtrack is done by America, and the film itself is excellent, with a great cast (Angela Lansbury, Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow, Christopher Lee and Alan Arkin). It's also fairly scary for what's nominally a kids movie.

Fun fact: Christopher Lee also took his part in the German version of the movie. What a talented man he was.

TIL Thanks!

This article forgot to mention the first Japanese adaptation of the Moomins (1969) (https://myanimelist.net/anime/8234/Muumin)

A few years ago I watched the entirety of Ghibli's collection (besides Tales From Earthsea) with my family, having only seen Grave of the Fireflies and Spirited Away previously.

Every single film was fantastically unique and worth the watch.

I've recently gone through a couple of the "must watch" Ghibli films, as well, and they really get you hooked into the story and you immediately forget that no, you shouldn't go to some guy and apply for a job just because you just got thrown into a fantasy world and it's the thing to do. Really good stuff.

There's an annual coordinated showing of Ghibli films in various theatres in America, spread out over the months of each year.

https://www.ghiblifest.com

If you enjoy the grounded magic of Ghibli, check out the works of Yuri Norstein. He was a big influence on the studio. Judging from the exclusivity of the 4k blu-ray of all his work to Japan (last I checked), he's evidently appreciated there.

I would recommend this video https://youtu.be/73hip3pz0Xs by a channel called Atrocity Guide about Yuri Norstein. It was my introduction to his amazing work.

Crazy they put Conan so close to the bottom imho. It's absolutely amazing. And they recently (finally) dubbed it and rereleased it bluray.

I didn't know Nausicaa wasn't animated by Ghibli! I just assumed cuz it's been promoted with Miyazaki's name on it.

It is generally considered a Ghibli movie because the producers and director formed studio Ghibli on the back of the success of this movie. According the other comments, they even hired animators from the animation studio.

So in a sense, Studio Ghibli is the product of Nausicaa, and Nausicaa is the product of the not-yet formed Studio Ghibli.

So kind of like how Daicon III/IV lead to Studio Gainax then

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daicon_III_and_IV_Opening_Anim...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDN68LxWW-8

I discovered Nausicaa on Netflix last year, and was so impressed! Incredible world building, and you can see so much of its DNA in other media which has come after. Rey from the new Star Wars for example seems almost directly lifted from the film.

I recommend reading the manga (written and drawn by Miyazaki) on which the movie is based, which is on another level, and has a nice English edition from Viz: https://www.viz.com/read/manga/nausicaa-of-the-valley-of-the...

Iirc, the manga was started shortly before or even during actual production of the movie, but completed and published much later. So it's not a straightforward "based on", in many ways - it's a bit like the latter part of Game of Thrones. But I agree that the manga is better, simply because it has time to fleshen out every aspect of the story.

It was designed by Miyazaki though, who also wrote and drew the manga (which is better than the movie, having space for more material, of course). You can see Miyazaki aesthetic throughout all his works, pre and with Ghibli.

interesting, these are more 'western' than the ghibli catalog as a whole, which does have some western stories. it almost seems like they were looking for less familiar material, much like i've been doing for the past number of years by watching more 'eastern' (chinese/japanese/korean) content. still, looks like i have some watching to do!

as a sidenote, i'm happy vulture put "spirited away" and "my neighbor totoro" at the top of their ghibli rankings[0]. these two films are amazing. i wouldn't have ranked "castle in the sky" at 3, but do agree that "grave of the fireflies" and "princess kaguya" should rank highly. "howl's movie castle" or "ponyo" would probably be #5 for me. "arrietty" would be last, despite me not having seen 5 of the films yet.

[0]: https://www.vulture.com/article/best-studio-ghibli-films-ran...

> these are more 'western' than the ghibli catalog as a whole

Up to the Disney contract, the Ghibli heads (Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki) were explicitly interested in exploring japanese issues. Their priority was always to do well in Japan, and to communicate their views on japanese problems (like environmental and societal pressures typical of the country) and japanese lore. Some of the later tensions with Disney producers, which eventually resulted in them parting ways, were precisely due to pressure from the States to make the material more accessible to international audiences.

i'm very glad they stuck to their guns and resisted disney's crapification (aka cultural hegemonization).

Nausicaa is the go to movie for me these days even though I love Spirited Away and all the other movies.

This is a fun article. One of my favorite youtube videos is a collection of scenes (presumably) animated/directed by Miyazaki before he started Ghibli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SANfYqmNz6U

I watched many of them as a kid and I had no idea they were by Miyazaki and Takahata. I loved to watch Lupin after school.

He also directed a couple of episodes of one of the shows, IIRC. So they might have also seen those.

He directed the second half of the first (full) TV series and a couple of episodes of the second series, apparently. His Lupin work also probably had a fairly big impact on later film and TV versions of the character. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt2tm9B6A4E is a pretty good little video essay.

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