Miyazaki

It could have been the perfect send-off – recognition at the Academy Awards of the artistry of Japan’s peerless animator Hayao Miyazaki.The moment The Boy and the Heron was named the winner of best animated feature in Los Angeles last weekend gave Japan a chance to reflect on Miyazaki’s towering influence, and contemplate whether the 83-year-old is truly finished making films.Studio Ghibli, where Miyazaki has performed his alchemy since the mid-1980s, had barely cleared a space for its second Oscar when talk turned to his…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeHayao Miyazaki, the legendary Japanese filmmaker whose anime classics have enchanted fans around the world for decades, has won his second career Oscar.At 83, Miyazaki won for helming the best animated film, The Boy and the Heron, the long-awaited fantasy from the director of Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service.He is the oldest director ever nominated for the…

Hidetaka Miyazaki has said there is a “high possibility” he won’t be involved in future “Souls-ish” FromSoftware games. Between Elden Ring and Dark Souls, FromSoftware has become the go-to studio for “Souls-ish” games, with regular director Miyazaki defining the soulslike genre as “those dark fantasy third-person action games with a higher focus on melee combat and sense of accomplishment.” And he knows what he’s talking about, having directed almost every Elden Ring and Dark Souls title. The exception to the rule is…

The Bloodborne community is the equivalent of a dog losing its absolute mind whenever it catches wind of a remaster or PC port of its beloved title. “Bloodborne!? Bloodborne! BLOODBOOOOOOOOOORNE!” Such was the case when the FromSoftware darling was brought up with director Hidetaka Miyazaki during the Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC reveal. I’ve had enough of this dream… The night blocks all sight… While speaking with Eurogamer during the aforementioned Elden Ring DLC announcement, the topic of a potential…

Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese are one of the most revered actor-director pairs working in Hollywood right now. They have worked in six movies together, their latest being Killers of the Flower Moon. In an interview with Letterboxd, the actor has now revealed that he introduced Studio Ghibli movies like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke to the director. Both these iconic animated feature films are helmed by the influential Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki. Let's us do a quick dive into his oeuvre to find…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeHow does a film that shunned all advertising break records in Japan, end up No 1 at the US box office, and become a serious awards contender? Because it’s a Hayao Miyazaki film. If you don’t know the name, make no mistake – this is a big deal. Miyazaki is the talismanic co-founder of Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli, and his latest film, The Boy and the Heron, is finally out in…

There have been so many words written about the expanse of genre here at io9, and 2023 was a wildcard of a year for entertainment (including Marvel Studios, Star Wars, DC Studios, and Max), theme parks, and games. We covered a lot of ground, from union-strong solidarity during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes to…Read more... There have been so many words written about the expanse of genre here at io9, and 2023 was a wildcard of a year for entertainment (including Marvel Studios, Star Wars, DC Studios, and Max), theme…

It’s the film that the revered animator and co-founder of Studio Ghibli Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement to make, and it’s arguably one of his most personal. The Boy and the Heron is a strikingly beautiful, densely detailed fantasy that revisits themes and devices familiar from previous films and ties them together with elements that have a clear autobiographical resonance for the director. The dream logic of the narrative seems to have been born from the untrammelled imagination of a child rather than that of a man…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeHayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron contains multitudes. It is beautiful, tortured, whimsical, and stoic. Not unlike his 2001 classic Spirited Away, it blends traditional Japanese constructs with Lewis Carroll’s wit. An angry but vulnerable young boy, Mahito (Soma Santoki), is brought out to the countryside after his mother’s death, only to be tempted into following a gravelly…

When Hayao Miyazaki, the world’s greatest living animator, approached his longtime producer Toshio Suzuki in July 2016 and told him that he wanted to make another film, Suzuki was not enthusiastic. “I said: ‘Absolutely not. This is a bad idea,’” Suzuki recalls. He had his reasons. “I’ve seen many, many great directors, who feel that they can make one more great film and most of the time they fail. I didn’t want to see him go down that road.”Besides, Miyazaki had supposedly already made his final film. Three years…