Molly - Ghibli Adults
Yesterday I saw this note from Henry Oliver on Substack:
I might write a long essay about why you should show you children Studio Ghibli films instead of Disney Pixar.
They are morally and aesthetically superior in every way.
Children deserve better films!
I agree*.
*Whenever a version of Ghibli vs. Disney comes up, I think about whether there might be a counterpart to "Disney Adult." What does a Ghibli Adult look like? I used to work at Kinokuniya and observed countless times how people would yelp with glee and head straight to the Ghibli merchandise section. They often seemed kind surprised. But this is already an example of why it's harder to be a GA. There is much much more available now of course, but it's more difficult to get quality knick knacks and toys in the United States for Ghibli movies. The fancier items at Kinokuniya were often hugely marked up for international shipping, too. Along with plushes and keychains, we would sometimes get things like hanko stamp holders with delicate totoro or mononoke charms - things most Americans have no use for. The majority of the section was art books and puzzles, which unlike a lot of Disney merchandise, doesn't really reinforce a personal identity. Even if you are an adult with a room full of Jiji the cat detritus, I guess that's a little obsessive, but it doesn't strike me as that different from a room full of Sanrio items.
The Ghibli museum and park in Japan is also harder to get to - even if you're already in Japan! Tickets must be bought in advance, photography is discouraged in many areas, and the destination doesn't have Disney's surrounding ecosystem of all-inclusive resorts. It's a day trip, not a major vacation. It certainly doesn't have luxury vacation homes available to buy in its own branded gated community. And despite Miyazaki's many flaws, I'm guessing he's not a fan of golf courses.
My husband's answer to "what is a Ghibli Adult" was "an adult whose favorite movie is still Totoro." His comment points to what I actually find to be the most interesting difference between Ghibli and Disney's output. When I was little, my aunt lived in Japan. She gave me beautiful Totoro plushes when I was about three - they had soft fur and their little bags were made of canvas instead of just more plush. This kicked off a phase of me wanting to watch the movie literally every day. Totoro remains unseeded as an all-time perfect film for toddlers and young children. It will undoubtedly be the first Ghibli movie I show my son.
There is a perfect Ghibli film for many stages of life. For kids, Castle in the Sky or Spirited Away are great choices. For preteens, Kiki's Delivery Service. Then comes Whisper of the Heart. At first glance, the last two might seem to both be Teen Girl movies, but Kiki's first steps into independence still cross the threshold out of childhood. Whisper of the Heart's Shizuku has some very nuanced, very teenage concerns: not so much what is her passion as finding a path to fit that passion into a real future.
There is a whole selection of Ghibli for people with fully developed prefrontal cortices. Only Yesterday is one of those movie that even a precocious teen wouldn't understand. The decibel of some emotional registers can only be heard by people old enough to know adult disappointment and compromise. Princess Kaguya strikes me as an "adult" Ghibli movie, too, even if its painterly animation and fairy tale origins might enchant young audiences. At some point you reach the middle aged Ghiblis: Porco Rosso and The Wind Rises. They are mature, gently tragic, almost...Divorced.
The Wind Rises is one of my top Ghibli films and I had the serendipity of not seeing it until I was 30 and even that might be a little young. It and Porco Rosso seem to me two sides of a coin dealing with how to hold childhood dreams in adulthood. It's interesting that they both deal with life under fascism, even if Porco Rosso is more fantastical. Porco Rosso, the character, is a sort of power fantasy for 40 year old men in that he achieved the dream of being a badass of aviation and a pretty young woman thinks he's cool for that.
The teenage Fio's admiration of Porco Rosso reminds me a little of one of my favorite anime, After the Rain. It explores the relationship between Akira, a high school track star waylaid by an injury, and her boss at a family restuarant, Kondo, who hides thwarted literary ambitions. While Akira first understands her connection to Kondo as a crush, it becomes clear that they both need acceptance, for someone else to see them as they are in their respective purgatorial states. From the manga:
Porco Rosso has a shade of a scene from season 2 (the Italian one!) of The White Lotus that I think about all the time. The grandfather of the trigenerational boys' trip, Bert DiGrasso, is dejected after a disastrous attempt to connect with his Sicilian relatives - a household of women who want nothing to do with these presumptuous Americans. At dinner with his son and grandson, he says, "You always think there's gonna be a homecoming. The embrace of a woman... who tells you you've done all right." I'm not interested in whether or not the validation and recognition sought by these loosely grouped adult men is ok to want. That they do is deeply moving to me.
The Wind Rises presents another side of the inevitable corruption of dreams. Jiro Horikoshi, voiced by Hideaki Anno in a genius stroke of nepo casting, fantasizes about becoming a pilot even though his poor eyesight would disqualify him. He has vivid dreams of meeeting Giovanni Battista Caproni, the Italian aircraft engineer who, he tells dream Jiro, has never flown a plane and thinks building them is much more wonderful. These dream sequences are gorgeous and fanciful, embodying the purity of imagination and ambition that can only exist apart from the material world. Jiro grows into an engineering prodigy. Because of the unavoidable facts of the era he lives in, he is destined not to design beautiful passenger crafts, but a groundbreaking figher plane. It's a masterful story about the pain of having your genius, your dreams, limited and deeply morally compromised by the constraints of time, place, and circumstances. Is getting to do the only version of your dream possible better than nothing at all? It's a very adult question to grapple with.
All this is to say that, yes, if your favorite movie is Totoro well into adulthood I might regard you as a much less offensive version of "She Ra came so close to getting war crimes right*" (iykyk). It doesn't make child-centric Ghibli films any less magical or touching, but we have more complex needs as we get older and Ghibli is already offering to address them. Why would you turn that down?
I agree that Ghibli films are morally and aesthetically superior to Pixar films in every way, lol. One of the many reasons my husband is the love of my life is that my being an unrepentant Pixar hater has never caused tension in our relationship. Please spare a thought for younger me, suffering under the oppression of exes telling me no, this one is really good! My only hesitation is that Ghibli superiority evangelists run the risk of committing the sin their own beloved films so beautifully discourages: a failure to move on.