A sigh of relief and a tremor of excitement blew through the anime world today as Toshio Suzuki announced that the award-winning director Hayao Miyazaki would be coming out of retirement. Although the animator had retired, he has still been making short animated films. However, today’s announcement included hopes that a new full length film would be produced before the 2020 Olympics.
Miyazaki is known for his beautiful animation and heartwarming stories that often touch upon global issues. Well known for his environmentalist stances, Miyazaki often makes morality plays involving man’s consumption capitalist society causing the downfall of the environment. However, with films geared towards children or young adults, his movies are gentle lessons that help build up the next generation to be better than we currently are.
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Some of Miyazaki’s best known movies include My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away. With 13 animated films to his name, he has won over 50 awards for his works. Although his Studio Ghibli took a short foray into digital animation, he focuses his work on hand drawn animation having dissolved the digital department prior to starting production on Ponyo.
In 2013, Miyazaki announced his retirement. However, this was not the first retirement announcement and, obviously, will not be his last. His so-called retirement has not been one without work. Miyazaki has since filmed several shorts and appears to have been spending time working with computer animation. According to Kotaku, Suzuki reported to the Kyodo News, “Right now in Tokyo, he’s [Miyazaki] putting all his effort into making it [the feature].”
At this point, no one knows whether the new film with be digital animation or hand drawn.
Are you excited to see Miyazaki come back to film? What do you want to see – old school animation or computer animation? Why?
