- If you've never been introduced
to the fantastical world of Hayao Miyazaki,
now is the time to start.
Miyazaki, often called the Walt Disney of Japan,
has been making fantasy anime films for over 35 years,
beloved by people all over the world.
Miyazaki's films are known
for featuring strong female characters,
complex worldbuilding,
and unbelievable attention to detail.
Luckily for you,
all of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's films
are streaming on HBO Max right now.
In fact, we're such die-hard fans at Mashable
that we've decided to give you
a personal rundown of our top picks
that you can stream right now.
- I saw "Spirited Away" for the first time
when I was a budding animator,
and I was not familiar with Miyazaki,
nor the Studio Ghibli films, when I saw it.
"Spirited Away" is about a young girl named Chihiro
who is moving with her parents into a new home,
and her parents eat some food that they shouldn't eat.
They turn into pigs, and Chihiro gets trapped in this world,
and she discovers a bathhouse that is for the spirits,
and Chihiro has to work inside this bathhouse
to try to free her parents, turn them back into humans,
and eventually get back into the human world with them.
The animation is so incredibly detailed.
The atmosphere, the bathhouse, the steam,
it's like nothing you've ever seen before,
and you just want to crawl up inside of the film
and stay there.
- You know how some movies become your childhood favorites
just because they were on a loop
and you would watch them every time
you went over to that one friend's house?
Well, that was "Kiki's Delivery Service" for me,
and I'm very, very grateful.
Kiki is a 13-year-old witch who leaves her hometown
to embark on the customary year of solitary training.
Kiki doesn't know what her specialty will be as a witch,
and she's not even that comfortable flying yet.
But, in a town that hasn't seen witches in generations,
she notices that there might be something she can help with:
deliveries.
She learns that a witch is only as strong
as the community around her
and the people who she wants to help.
As a child, I couldn't wait
to be a grown-up 13-year-old like Kiki
and fly off on my adventures.
- Here we go!
Whee!
- I'm still waiting on that, by the way.
- One of my favorite Miyazaki films is "My Neighbor Totoro."
The story is about two young sisters, Satsuki and Mei,
who, along with their dad, move to this,
you know, beautiful rural countryside.
We later find out that the mom is in the hospital
and the kids, along with their dad,
have moved here to be closer to her.
Totoro is like this really majestical beast
who the girls befriend.
- Yay, we did it!
We did it!
- They're such beautiful creatures
that have been developed in this film.
Totoro, the Cat Bus, the soot spreader,
cute, cuddly, small, fuzzy black balls that go around.
- I caught one!
- Miyazaki made sure that everything was hand-drawn,
like, frame by frame.
There's a whole different charm to that.
- One of my favorite Miyazaki films
is "The Secret World of Arrietty,"
and it's an adaptation of the novel "The Borrowers,"
which follows tiny people who are about four inches tall
as they live inside houses.
- We borrow things
like soap and cookies and sugar,
things that humans don't miss if they're gone.
- So Arrietty's a young girl
who lives with her mother and father,
and the film follows her
as she pretty much starts her own borrowing journey.
The thing I like about it is that the animation style
with the scale of the borrowers and the humans
is really cool,
because you get to see how they utilize small human objects.
I just love the film.
It's something that I think all ages can enjoy, you know.
I watch it with my little sister,
and it's a cool take on the whole, like,
"Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" type of thing,
but in more of a magical, beautifully drawn way.
- "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind"
is definitely in my top list when it comes
to talking about favorite Studio Ghibli films.
At that point in time,
the founders of Studio Ghibli were working
for a different studio,
and "Nausicaä" was so successful
that they just ended up breaking away from that
and making Studio Ghibli as we know it today.
It's very dirty, it's very grungy.
It takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting
where everything is poisonous and dangerous,
and resources are scarce.
Its protagonist, Nausicaä,
it really sets her apart compared to,
I think, a lot of the other heroines
that show up in the rest of their films.
She is not only a princess,
she has to get down and dangerous.
She has to, like, kill.
A huge, huge theme in "Nausicaä" specifically
is the environmentalism,
and that's a theme that they continue to explore
in the rest of their films later on,
when they do officially become Studio Ghibli.
- "Princess Mononoke" is set in 14th-century Japan,
where the forces of nature
and industrialization are at literal war.
As a human warrior princess raised by the wolf god,
Mononoke begrudgingly works
alongside protagonist and soldier Ashitaka
to restore peace and bring balance to the natural world
whose spirits are being ravaged by human greed.
There isn't enough time in the day
to list everything that's amazing about "Princess Mononoke,"
but the best part to me is that
this 1999 movie was just so prescient
about our current climate crisis.
It used this beautiful and fantastical story
to show how capitalistic human greed
not only destroys the natural world,
but also alienates us from our own humanity.
Also, there is a group
of unapologetically horny women workers
with double-c thicc thighs
that are absolutely iconic.
- Miyazaki's eighth film produced under Studio Ghibli,
"Ponyo" was reportedly inspired
by a whole bunch of different stories,
but Disney fans are likely to compare it
to "The Little Mermaid" first,
and with good reason.
The 2008 film follows the adventures
of a fish named Ponyo,
who longs to be a little girl
after her landlocked love interest,
a little boy named Sosuke,
introduces her to life on land.
The pair's burgeoning friendship causes
a lot of complications between the sea and Earth realms,
resulting in an exquisite blend
of adorable and ethereal animation
that is at once enchanting and endearing.
The relationship between Ponyo and Sosuke is precious.
- It's ham! - Careful, it's hot.
- Ah, ah!
- Plus, it's got a credit track
that you'll be singing for hours
once the movie ends.
- So I decided to go up to my castle in the sky
to talk about "Castle in the Sky."
It's just a delightful adventure romp
where a bunch of people chase this magic, ancient MacGuffin
through this delightful steampunk world
while being pursued by a hilariously villainous Mark Hamill.
It's got so many of the key Ghibli elements,
like crazy transportation, okay?
There's sky pirates.
There's a battle on a train.
There's a giant mechanical floating city.
I've watched it with my daughter...
it's got to be 20 or 30 times now.
We even got swag from it.
- Look, my stone's glowing.
It's been in my family as long as I can remember.
- "Grave of the Fireflies" is
probably Studio Ghibli's most serious film.
In fact, it's often considered
one of the famous anti-war movies of all time.
"Grave of the Fireflies" takes place
in post-World War II Japan
and follows 14-year-old Seita and his sister,
four-year-old Setsuko.
After their home is firebombed,
Seita is tasked with keeping himself
and his little sister alive
after they've been separated from their parents.
In one really moving scene,
Seita helps illuminate a cave the two are staying in
with fireflies.
I was so struck by the beauty of the scene
that, I will admit it, I cried a lot.
At the end of the movie, the two siblings die of starvation,
and their souls are illuminated forever as fireflies.
If this film doesn't haunt you
from the beginning to the end,
I don't know what will.
- "Howl's Moving Castle" takes place in a fictional kingdom
where both magic and technology coexist.
It follows the story of a young girl named Sophie
who is one day cursed by a witch
and turned into an elderly lady.
Sophie sets out on a quest to break this curse
and along the way runs into a couple characters
who help her do so.
What I love the most about "Howl's Moving Castle"
are the visuals.
It does a great job on not only building this world,
but at making even the darkest scenes seem so vibrant.
You could literally pause the movie at any point in time
and appreciate all the details
that are in that single scene.
Each frame could literally be its own painting.
- Wow!
That's a really big list.
- Yay, we did it!
We did it!
Once you get through these,
you can actually binge the rest of Studio Ghibli's films
on HBO Max afterwards.
In fact, I'm probably going
to go watch "Howl's Moving Castle" right now.