Hayao Miyazaki

"We each need to find our own inspiration. Sometimes it's not easy" ("Kiki's Delivery Service" 1989). This line is from one of Miyazaki's own films. It expresses how it is sometimes hard to find something to reach for, but Miyazaki was able to. Now, others have been able to as well. Miyazaki was born in Tokyo on January 5, 1941. He spent his early childhood during World War II, which was around the time when animation, or anime, began to grow popular. After the war, his mother fell ill with tuberculosis, but remained a positive presence in his life. ("Hayao Miyazaki." Encyclopedia). "Perhaps Miyazaki's most famous film is Mononoke-hime (Princess Mononoke), which he made in 1997. .Set in feudal Japan, it centers on a young princess who is raised by wolves, and who tries to defend the forest from encroaching human occupation." (Ashbolt). A hero can be anyone, even if they do not mean to be. They simply need to help and serve as an inspiration to somebody. They may also spread their hopes and opinions throughout the world in some way to help and inspire others. Hayao Miyazaki is an inspiration because he keeps to his own style, has overcome obstacles to follow his dreams, and expresses the corruption of the world through his movies.

In Miyazaki's work, he stays true to his own style instead of following a normal trend. In his films, it is already obvious that he took a different route. "Miyazaki did away with the common association between anime and a metallic, high-tech look, offering fungus-covered forest trees instead." ("Miyazaki, Hayao."Encyclopedia.com). In this simple quote, it is already shown how he does not want to be just another stereotypical anime artist. Many of his works revolve around naturalistic scenes and settings, rather than in futuristic eras. While futuristic scenes are not common in his works, he also avoids the use of too much digital animation in the drawings. "As Melanie Goodfellow wrote in Variety, 'Miyazaki is an old fashioned craftsman who insists that all his characters and backgrounds are drawn by hand.'" ("Miyazaki, Hayao." Encyclopedia.com). When creating his movies, he has a majority of the film drawn by hand instead of using more modern methods. Drawing in this old-fashioned way only adds to his unique style. "Miyazaki is considered one of the pre-eminent creators of anime. He also has a very distinctive style. He has ruled that no more than ten percent of any of the work that is produced at Studio Ghibli can be computer generated, and he has been outspoken in his support of hand-drawn animation." (Ashbolt). Again, it is stated that along with his unique style, he has a different way of creating his movies as well. Using hardly any computer generated work, he and his team at Studio Ghibli work hard on the many hand-drawn scenes. Miyazaki strays from the normal path and forges his own as he creates hand-drawn animated movies with little assistance from modern technology.

Miyazaki overcomes obstacles, big or small, to follow his dreams. Though he had some trouble believing his animation could seem realistic, he was able to get back on track with new ideas after seeing a Russian animation film, Snezhnaya Koroleva (Snow Queen). "Miyazaki saw this film when he was unhappy about his job and wondering if he should continue working as an animator. Miyazaki was so moved by it, he 'decided to continue working on animation with renewed determination.' He says that he learned that characters in animation can act if they are animated well enough, and animation can move people as other media can do. We can see its influence on Horus, such as the design of the Forest King; and the two sides of Hilda." (Johnson). With this new discovery about animation, Miyazaki was able to improve his style in order to create better films. Earlier than this bump in the road, he had already run into some trouble at the beginning of his career. "At first, Miyazaki wanted to become a manga writer. Ever since his childhood, he loved Tezuka's manga. But one day, he realized that his manga were just an imitation of Tezuka, and he burned all the manga he had written. He says he struggled to write his own manga, but found that he couldn't. As for Tezuka as a creator of animation, Miyazaki is harder on him. He criticizes Tezuka's work as no good, and blames Tezuka for ruining the Japanese animation industry by dumping." (Johnson). When Miyazaki realized how his style was not his own, he made an extreme decision. To burn all of his works that were created in someone else's style. After this drastic measure, he could not find his footing in the manga business, so he turned toward animation. Still, before all this, some of Miyazaki's hardships came from his early childhood. "Miyazaki was born on the outskirts of Tokyo in 1941, and thus spent his early years in a country at total war with much of the rest of the world. Evacuated from the Tokyo region in 1944 to avoid Allied air raids, Miyazaki and his family returned to their home in 1947. That same year his mother contracted spinal tuberculosis, an illness that kept her bedridden for the next eight years. His mother was a woman of wide interests and strong character, and had a strong influence on the young Miyazaki." ("Hayao Miyazaki." Authors). Born during a war, Miyazaki already had an interesting childhood. After their evacuation, the changes only continued. When he and his family returned, his mother fell ill, but still continued to influence him. In the midst of these troubling times, and afterwards as well, Miyazaki has been able to overcome both big and small misfortunes throughout his life.

Through his movies, Miyazaki has warned us about the slow destruction of the environment. This common theme already had a place even in his early works, "In 1978 Miyazaki directed his first television series, Future Boy Conan, for Nippon Animation. ...The series followed the adventures of two children looking for hope amid world destruction. Miyazaki would return to the themes of ecological disaster in his later films." ("Miyazaki, Hayao."Encyclopedia.com). Even when he first started out, Miyazaki already had themes of environmental destruction, which would only continue to appear. In his movies featuring these disasters, there is also a theme of hope telling us that there is still hope for our planet. Even in his more recent animations, the environment seems to be a strong setting, including: "The new film [Ponyo]... ...shares thematic and visual similarities with his earlier work, notably its emphasis on the natural world, its tumults and fragility. (As Mr. Miyazaki once put it, 'All my animation and comics involve land, sea and sky - they all revolve around what happens on earth.')" (Dargis). Again, it is shown that nature is a common theme in all of his works. In Ponyo, this is also a theme here, relating to the pollution of the oceans. "From the prow of a submerged vessel, Fujimoto... ...releases potions that restore the health of the pollution-choked waters. It's hard not to think of the wizard, particularly when he gently and very cleanly curses the human world and its harmful ways, as something of a Miyazaki self-portrait." (Dargis). Once again, in Ponyo, there is a slight theme of ecological disaster, where one of the characters are trying to change this. This is a small warning and a plea to do something about the destruction of the planet Earth.

By keeping to his own style, overcoming obstacles to follow his dreams, and expressing the corruption of the world through his movies, Hayao Miyazaki has become an inspiration to me. Through his movies, I have been able to see all this, and because of those things, it inspires me to want to create works of my own that can hint at messages that the world needs to know. "Because that's the kind of movie he wants to make. He says that he wants to make films that say 'I wish that there were such people/things/a world," rather than "this is the way things are.'" (Johnson). He creates films to show people that it is important to think positively in the world we live in, and to have hope that we can change it for the better. Hayao Miyazaki serves as an personal inspiration because of all these reasons.