accepting miyazaki's words at face value might be a hard pill to swallow when we live in a world
where you can do anything you put your mind to is constantly being drilled into us from a very young
age but is becoming a genius on the level of hayao miyazaki really just a matter of practice when you
first start learning a new skill the distance between you and a professional in the field
might seem unfathomable but i would argue that it is much smaller than the infinite gap between
a professional and a genius something i've been thinking a lot about lately is how people know
the things they know and can do the things they do and it took me a while to realize but for the
most part i think it's just a matter of practice and education it's all attainable maybe not for
me or for you given our circumstances but nobody was born knowing how to draw build airplanes or
edit videos they all started at zero staring up at the monumental task in front of them
but the incredibly steep curve from here to here isn't the hard part it's the fun part when you
first try to take on a new skill there's so much to learn and as the fundamentals and rules start
to click into place you feel like you're picking up speed and everything might come together
but then things start to flatten out and the novelty turns to repetition and it is this phase
of learning that is the most difficult and i think this holds true for anything in life from learning
a new language to being healthy picking up a new skill or even relationships the saying starting
is the hardest part is just nonsense anyone can start that's easy the hard part comes when you
feel like you're no longer improving but when you look at miyazaki's four decade long career as an
anime writer director i think few people would argue that the quality of his films has steadily
increased but they also haven't decreased either obviously certain stories hit people differently
but the overall quality has stayed fairly consistent pretty much whichever movie i've
watched most recently becomes my favorite which is not something i can say about many artists and
he's not even my favorite director shinkai is but what makes them so different is the consistency
how thematically and stylistically cohesive all of miyazaki's films are despite the stories being so
unique whereas shinkai tells the same beautiful story over and over again which is not at all a
complaint but you can watch so clearly as he honed his craft and almost linearly improved
his anime but the first feature miyazaki ever made was lupin III and then nausicaa valley of the wind
how is that even possible was he just born to make anime no obviously not genetics actually have next
to nothing to do with creative ability so why does every frame of his work make our hearts light up
while others fall flat because miyazaki didn't spend his life practicing at craft until he was
good at it he created the very thing that future generations will strive to become and that's not
to say he didn't work hard and put in his 10,000 hours but i believe there is something inherently
unique in certain people like miyazaki that make them operate on a level that is genuinely
unattainable which might sound discouraging but i actually think it's quite freeing you don't need
to be the next miyazaki in fact you probably don't want to be the idea of perfectionism
is really sort of demonized in the art world which makes sense when you first start creating
the final product won't even begin to match the vision that you had in your mind unless you're
miyazaki so trying to make everything perfect will just result in not making anything at all
but once you're at the level where your ability has caught up to your imagination without a little
bit of perfectionism you'll just end up spinning your wheels you need to continuously push yourself
further and further which might end up in your ability surpassing your creativity which i think
is where collaboration can come into play i've always felt that my talents are much better suited
for helping someone else accomplish their vision rather than coming up with my own making a studio
ghibli film is not a one-man job in fact it takes over 150 employees years of work to make a single
movie but the one who brings all those people together and unites them towards a single goal
is always miyazaki it is his unique talents that bring to life the characters stories and worlds
that we all know and love and obviously there are a ton of extremely talented anime creators
but a genius can be defined as the ability to look at what everyone else is looking at
and see something different someone who has changed the course of progress
and it is undeniable that miyazaki has done that when i put up my last video on miyazaki
i got a lot of comments criticizing his behavior particularly the way he treats his son and i'm not
justifying it or saying it's right but i really don't think you can have one without the other
if you look at anyone who might be considered a genius they aren't typically well-rounded people
their obsession with their craft causes them to neglect the things that others can't live without
his purpose in life is what nurtured his talent and that comes from the combination of every
experience he's ever had his view of the world was uniquely shaped by growing up in a wealthy
family during world war II and seeing both the darkest tragedy and brightest humanity firsthand
if you look at the timeline of his films the gap between them has slowly been growing
larger we're at the point now where it has been almost a decade since his last movie
and although he loves nothing more than coming in and out of retirement i think the upcoming how do you live
will be his last film before he lives out the rest of his days in a little house by the sea
the pressure he must feel to not disappoint is hard to even imagine and when i say disappoint
i'm not talking about his millions of fans around the world who look up to him
i'm talking about himself from everything i've heard about miyazaki his movies are his life and
it takes a special kind of genius to finish just as strong as they started thanks for watching