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Animation Legend Isao Takahata, Co-founder of Studio Ghibli, Dies at 82 (nbcnews.com)
Isao Takahata, co-founder of the prestigious Japanese animator Studio Ghibli, which stuck to a hand-drawn "manga" look in the face of digital filmmaking, has died. He was 82. From a report: Takahata started Ghibli with Oscar-winning animator Hayao Miyazaki in 1985, hoping to create Japan's Disney. He directed "Grave of the Fireflies," a tragic tale about wartime childhood, and produced some of the studio's films, including Miyazaki's 1984 "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind," which tells the horror of environmental disaster through a story about a princess. Takahata died Thursday of lung cancer at a Tokyo hospital, the studio said in a statement Friday.
He was fully aware of how the floating sumie-brush sketches of faint pastel in his works stood as a stylistic challenge to Hollywood's computer-graphics cartoons. In a 2015 interview with The Associated Press, Takahata talked about how Edo-era woodblock-print artists like Hokusai had the understanding of Western-style perspective and the use of light, but they purposely chose to depict reality with lines, and in a flat way, with minimal shading. "Pom Poko", a movie released in 1994, is often considered the best work of Takahata. The New York Times described it as, "a comic allegory about battling packs of tanuki (Japanese raccoon dogs) joining forces to fight human real estate developers. It's earthy and rollicking in a way that his co-founder's films aren't." In an interview with Wired in 2015, when Takahata was asked what he felt about people regarding him as the heart of Studio Ghibli. "Now you've both finished your final films, what are your feelings on Ghibli's legacy and reputation?, the interviewer asked. Takahata said, "I'm not sure I can respond in any meaningful way. What Hayao Miyazaki has built up is the greatest contribution. The existence of that thick trunk has allowed leaves to unfurl and flowers to bloom to become the fruitful tree that is Studio Ghibli."
Further reading: Isao Takahata's stark world of reality (The Japan Times).
He was fully aware of how the floating sumie-brush sketches of faint pastel in his works stood as a stylistic challenge to Hollywood's computer-graphics cartoons. In a 2015 interview with The Associated Press, Takahata talked about how Edo-era woodblock-print artists like Hokusai had the understanding of Western-style perspective and the use of light, but they purposely chose to depict reality with lines, and in a flat way, with minimal shading. "Pom Poko", a movie released in 1994, is often considered the best work of Takahata. The New York Times described it as, "a comic allegory about battling packs of tanuki (Japanese raccoon dogs) joining forces to fight human real estate developers. It's earthy and rollicking in a way that his co-founder's films aren't." In an interview with Wired in 2015, when Takahata was asked what he felt about people regarding him as the heart of Studio Ghibli. "Now you've both finished your final films, what are your feelings on Ghibli's legacy and reputation?, the interviewer asked. Takahata said, "I'm not sure I can respond in any meaningful way. What Hayao Miyazaki has built up is the greatest contribution. The existence of that thick trunk has allowed leaves to unfurl and flowers to bloom to become the fruitful tree that is Studio Ghibli."
Further reading: Isao Takahata's stark world of reality (The Japan Times).
If you like Japanese culture/history and haven't seen 'My Neighbor Totoro," do so.
I am glad that they did not become Disney. There has to be a yin to that yang influence.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
An amazing movie, a pity he did focus in production and not that much in direction.
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Production wise I feel they did.
Having caught up on a bunch of Ghibli movies recently I think that they share a lot with Disney in that they produce gorgeous animations but the stories they tell often is bland when they write it themselves or just a lesser version when they do a movie adaption of books.
I do not think their legal department is a rabid as Disney, but for all I know they could be except that they stick to Japan.
With that said I'd still watch anything Ghibli cranks out. Regardless of the storytelling the eye-candy is always worth it.
s/often/seldom/
Pom Poko is nice, but very few would rank it as Tahakata's best one.
discs are about $16 are everything is well done and of excellent quality. Stories have deep meaning and most definitely are not like typical American cartoons.
The Last Unicorn was animated in Japan by a studio named Topcraft. Rankin-Bass had used Topcraft for their earlier television productions of The Hobbit and The Return of the King, and this was their most ambitious collaboration. In 1985, Topcraft went into bankruptcy, at which point a team of its animators bought the studio and began a new one, including many of the same Topcraft employees. That team was made up of Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki, and the new company was Studio Ghibli.
A Ghibli-Style Movie You Might Not Have Heard Of http://jpninfo.com/11647
The Last Unicorn was nightmare fuel to a generation of kids https://film.avclub.com/the-la...