Character

Character like narrative, is such a crucial element to making a good story, the character is key to creating a connection with the audience. Miyazaki’s characters tend to be youthful, and good hearted by nature, I think this for a majority of people is something that is easy to empathise with. Whether it’s the desire to act more like these characters in our own lives, or because of their innocence we automatically want them to be ok and to watch their story. Of course the character can only express these traits well through a narrative crafted around them. For example, in ‘Laputa, castle in the sky’ Sheeta, the main young female protagonist is put into many scenarios and challenges in order for her to show us her true character. We can already gather from her initial introduction that she is a caring and soft spoken young girl, this is shown through her interaction with Potsu and the doves he cares for. But it’s when she is truly challenged when she reaches Laputa is where we as an audience fully understand who she is. I think although for some of Miyazakis film’s this is the case, a life and death scenario isn’t always necessary in order for a character to show their true traits and personality. But it could be said to have more of an impact. A film rather different to Laputa but still made by Studio Ghibli is ‘Kiki’s delivery service’, like any good story the narrative is constructed to show the character having to go through personal conflicts as well as other challenges. Kiki, who is the same age as Sheeta, are both similar in the sense that they are both kind, caring and good at heart, but due to their age and other limitations don’t always get things right. But this makes them human, and overall more endearing, no one wants to watch a movie or animation, or read a book where a character gets everything right all the time as this is simply not realistic. Miyazaki allows for negativity and for things to go wrong for these characters so that we can watch them deal with them and overcome them.
Design: Design for Studio Ghibli is something that they’ve made into what I would refer to as the iconic ‘Ghibli’ style, Miyazaki’s animations are constantly highlighted on their compelling story telling through the use of 2D animation. The team behind Studio Ghibli’s animations are incomparable to many other Japanese animation companies, in fact they are rather in contrast with one another. Nowadays a lot of anime companies are stretched when it comes to finances, the state of the economy and the ever growing market in consumerism. For example, many anime companies are having to resort to either recycling old animation (the same way Disney did), Lowering the overall quality of the animation (less frames per a second) Or having to stray away and leave out details in the anime in order to get the episode/series out in time (Gaps in the narrative and character development). Studio Ghibli don’t seem to ever be faced with this problem, so yes they may not be making anime episodes that need to be pumped out monthly in order to meet tight deadlines, but when they do work on an animation there is already a buzz of excitement from fans as there is already a high level of expectancy from a Studio Ghibli film. So how do they achieve this? Well from what I can gather is, a highly skilled team, and constant direction from Miyazaki. Once the narrative and characters are ready and designed, it’s time to work on the animation itself, A lot of the backgrounds are hand painted by artists working for Studio Ghibli, through constant painting, changes, direction, precision and of course skill, they are able to produce beautiful surreal worlds for the narrative to take place in. A beautiful visual which is fitting for a beautiful story. For me, studio Ghibli is a prime example of character, narrative, music and design working fluently together to form a masterpiece.