Hayao Miyazaki: The Japanese Disney

(The following artice was originally written as a creative project for Film Studies)

Hayao Miyazaki is one of the most well known names when it comes to the world of animation. His films have received praise worldwide for both their animation and stories, eventually leading him to be compared to that most famous of western animators, Walt Disney, especially for those newly introduced to Anime. There are definitely similarities between the two, but differences can arise in the existence of Disney as a company rather than the man himself. Is the title “Japanese Disney” really suitable for Miyazaki? Disney holds distribution rights after all.

The main focus film of my project is the 1988 film "My Neighbour Totoro", Totoro being the forest creature you just saw. My neighbour Totoro is one of Miyazaki’s most well-known movies, the character Totoro being synonymous with Miyazaki’s name and the film company, Studio Ghibli. The film’s simplistic nature is its charm, added to by the film’s central child characters Mei and Satsuki in their innocent and imaginative exploration of the forest surrounding their home.

You would think with the film’s success Miyazaki would be more than happy to cash in on various pieces of merchandise, especially given Japan’s love for cute culture, but this is where Miyazaki and Disney begin to differ. Miyazaki only agreed to have merchandise produced from his films due to the reality of not being able to make back a films budget on ticket sales alone, Miyazaki wants his audiences to value the real world over the worlds of his creation and not indulge themselves in merchandise; you won’t find Totoro on the shelves of a mass produced Disney store.

Both Disney and Miyazaki embrace a simpler enjoyment of being a child, but Disney does so in a more manufactured manner. Disney has theme parks all over the world and produces Disney branded merchandise, Miyazaki with studio Ghibli has the Ghibli museum in Japan which he designed himself to embrace visitor’s imagination in a more naturalistic way. The visitors experience is not given to them in the guise of singing animatronics, but through simplistic elements using natural wonder and beauty to their advantage.

The official Totoro can be bought from the Ghibli museum in Japan.

Simplicity in storytelling, although it may not feel like one in recent years, is a trait that Disney and Miyazaki share. Disney’s earlier works were simpler and embraced the medium of animation to a masterful level. Miyazaki’s works continue to portray this stunning level of animation today, much due to his continuous involvement as a perfectionist animator; if he isn’t happy with what animators have done he frequently reanimates the frames himself. He contributed to over half of the 144,000 frames animated in his 1997 film “Princess Mononoke”. He believes that the physicality of the characters is important to communicating a sense of realism in his fantasy worlds; movement of creatures will be based on how real animals move and react and is provided through a much smoother animation and stylised art style than in a lot of other anime.

Seen in the clip are sisters Satsuki and Mei, waiting at the bus stop for their father, alone apart from Totoro. Despite the colourful and magical worlds provided by the wonders of the forest Totoro, the film’s story is really a focus on the two young girl’s struggle with life’s realities. Their mother is sick in hospital and unable to see them; their father constantly having to work. The story is not one of good VS evil, but the threat of loneliness in these children’s separation from their mother, taken directly from Miyazaki’s childhood. Totoro helps provide relief for the two and shows that no matter how dark life may seem, there is still beauty in the world.

The two main characters are simply two little girls acting like two little girls; if they were Disney characters they would probably be stereotyped in to wanting nothing more than to be princesses. There are so few female Disney protagonists that they are referred to as princesses, even if they are not; Mulan and Pocahontas being prime examples. It seems that Disney has no problem in stereotyping its characters, something that Miyazaki avoids. That being said, his movies have their fair share of princesses. The difference between Miyazaki’s and Disney’s portrayal of heroines is that Miyazaki aims to portray a sense of reality through them. Although Miyazaki’s heroines can be or referred to as princesses, their characteristics and personalities are not defined by this. They exist as equal human beings to the point where the fact that they are princesses is completely irrelevant. Miyazaki uses female protagonists as he feels portraying male protagonists has become to canon and stale, so female protagonists can show more purpose and impact. 

Here we see Princess Mononoke, visibly far from anything we see from Disney. Her title of Princess of the beasts is far from endearing and only has the purpose to highlight her feral nature. She is not a princess as Disney has us see them, but this is exactly why Miyazaki’s heroines are so real; they are human beings acting on circumstance, they act as humans rather than stereotypes with little ties to gender. So why would Satsuki or Mei need to be any different?

                                                                                
  The two sisters do what children do. They are not trying to act like adults, but when they do it’s to pretend they are not scared or in sibling rivalry. These little details in character relationships really help to portray a level of humanity as opposed to a manufactured reality, and who would expect from a movie involving a magical forest Totoro?

Mei and Satsuki’s roles as both children and sisters feels incredibly real, and with so much care taken in to making sure the film’s original beauty remains in the script in western distribution it’s no wonder. The characters of Mei and Satsuki are played by actual young children, it may sound trivial but this isn’t something that is usually done; especially in anime. Dubbing anime from one language to another requires matching mouth movements of pre-animated characters on screen whilst maintaining a quality standard of acting, this can be difficult so roles of young children can often be played by adult women. If Mei and Satsuki were played by adults rather than children, the sense of realism would be very low and the audience may not identify with the characters. The wonder of Totoro really does come from the two young girl’s performances and if you don’t believe their characters are having fun onscreen, you’ll believe their actresses had fun in the recording studio. Part of why the two sister’s relationship feels so genuine may be due to the fact that their voice actresses are sisters. Sisters Dakota and Elle Fanning provided the voices of Satsuki and Mei and so they could apply their own sisterly relationship to their roles, they could even interact and record lines together naturally in the booth, again something that is happening less in the world of animation.

Although the film is happy enough on the surface, its darker themes are still present. In wanting to show that hope can spark from darkness it would be out of character to have had the mother die in this movie, but Miyazaki doesn’t refrain from showing the young girls struggling to deal with the threat that she might. This can’t exactly be said to be un-Disney like because we all know what happened to Bambi’s mother, but what Miyazaki does is show that it’s ok to be scared and feel sad about life’s problems; whatever “distraction” the forest Totoro’s may serve as, Miyazaki makes sure that the realities are not brushed over or substituted, but shown as things to overcome and live through. The two express their feelings as children would, through tantrums and yelling, once again contributing to the creation of two realistic and human characters.

This level of humanity and strong links to nature are clear traits of Miyazaki’s work and communicate his concern with the environment and modern society in a creative and unique style sparked from his own personal views and experiences. Whereas his childhood struggle with his own mother’s illness is presented through Mei, the beauty of the forest represents how beautiful life can be despite its hardships and portrays a once greener Japan from Miyazaki’s childhood.

Despite differing from Disney by being personal to the director in charge, Miyazaki’s more recent films can be said to seem more similar to Disney, especially as they are adaptations with the directors own unique take on pre-existing stories much like the majority of Disney films. Miyazaki has taken influence from western authors, one being Dianna Wynne Jones, the writer of the book “Howl’s moving castle” which he made in to the 2004 movie of the same name.

 

Despite featuring levels of feminism and a lack of an antagonist, this film actually differs from Miyazaki’s other works and seems closer to a Disney film. Firstly the film not only has a happy ending, but the two main characters Sophie and Howl end in a genuine relationship as opposed to an ambiguous one in a Disneyesque style happily ever after. Miyazaki’s usual traits of beauty in the natural environment are still present, but to a lesser extent. Lush thick forests are instead replaced with fields of flowers and mountain landscapes. Clearly environmental themes are present, but they do not serve as much a part of the story as they did in Totoro or Mononoke. Instead the focus is on the characters and their strength to overcome the threat of war in a world of magic and wizards, as well a focus on a more prominent love story. Miyazaki’s own views naturally influence the film, but with a fairytale ending with the first “true love’s kiss” for a Miyazaki movie to top it off, this movie doesn’t really differ too much from Disney.

So is Miyazaki the Japanese Disney? His films remain very personal to him from their writing to their animation, an advantage he has over the films made by Disney as a company. Disney movies are very moralistic but follow stereotypes that Miyazaki’s films don’t, he shows more of a realistic portrayal of both characters and situations; he also has a greater level of involvement in his films. Whereas both Disney and Miyazaki have had a profound effect in the world of animation, the title of “Japanese Disney” can be suitable in the way that Miyazaki is to Japan what Disney is to western audiences.