Thematic Trajectory: Hayao Miyazaki

I'd like to talk about for a bit, the thematic trajectory of anime directors for a post. I don't want to focus too much on anime, but let's face it, they're the only industry with directors with long careers. First there's Hayao Miyazaki. I will focus mainly on his feature films but his other works are important as well, though they're not my primary focus here.

First he made a TV series called Future Boy Conan which was sci fi. He started off in films with a cartoony caper film based off of an animated franchise which was based itself on a manga. Lupin the Third: Castle of Cagliostro. His second film was, as most people know, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind which was futuristic sci fi again. After that, Studio Ghibli was founded and he directed its first film, Laputa Castle in the Sky. Here there is a notable switch from science fiction to a semi-post apocalyptic fantasy. In Nausicaa he focuses on teenagers and adults, in Laputa on children among adults, and in My Neighbor Totoro he focuses on two young sisters and switches to a recent past historical setting with fantasy elements. It's interesting how he switches from sci fi to fantasy in his films. Perhaps he wanted to do something different from the Nausicaa manga which he finished in the early 90's and was thus working on concurrently.

Then came Kiki's Delivery Service, originally supposed to be directed by Sunao Katabuchi. It was the first film of Miyazaki's with actual magic human characters. It was recent historical fiction again, this time set in a war-free Europe instead of Japan where My Neighbor Totoro was set. After this came Porco Rosso which was again set in historical Europe around the Adriatic Sea. This film was about a former war pilot who has a nose shaped like a pig's, possibly for abandoning his fellow pilots. It is a film which is dramatic, cartoony and historical. It is primarily for adults unlike his last several films. It seems at this point that Miyazaki is willing to set a film in the relatively recent past, the present, or far future and it can range from sci fi to cartoony real life to fantasy. 

For the next few years he will work on other projects but come back to feature film with Princess Mononoke, made based on an earlier manga but which evolved into a very different movie. This is Miyazaki's first film set before the 20th century and is fantasy again, but Medieval Japanese fantasy and squarely tackles the theme of human civilization and its tension with nature. The film uses more Japanese mythology than any of his earlier films, though Isao Takahata's film, Pom Poko, does so first in a present day setting. Spirited Away takes many themes explored in Princess Mononoke and Pom Poko but goes a step further into a realm of spirits that exists in the modern day. Miyazaki's next two films, Howl's Moving Castle, set in a fantastical Medieval Europe, and Ponyo, set in the modern day Japan but with oceanic magic in a film aimed at children like My Neighbor Totoro, seem to be caught under the cape of Spirited Away with their further explorations of its magical themes. Though Howl's was originally supposed to be directed by Mamoru Hosoda.

He then worked mainly in a supervisory role after Ponyo, but returned to the director's chair for The Wind Rises which combines reality with historical fiction. And now he's working on his last film which is based on a book which he read as a child. So basically, thematically, Miyazaki started with a caper, went into sci fi, gradually transitioned into deeper and deeper fantasy themes only to end up working an exaggerated historical biography until his last film which we've yet to see.