Studio Ghibli are possibly the best known anime studio outside Japan. Many of their films have achieved great acclaim around the world, and each new release has been awaited with great anticipation both in Japan and abroad.
The studio has had more than its fair share of problems and failures, and it seems there are rumours virtually every year that it has folded, or it will fold, and there might not be any more Ghibli films. Each obstacle has been overcome (so far).
Although I have seen nearly all the Ghibli output – most of them many times – I haven’t read much about the studio or the films’ genesis. So I picked up this book when I saw it in a bookshop.
It’s put together by Mike Leader and Jake Cunningham, who produced a podcast of the same name. Leader had always been a Ghibli fan, and Cunningham hadn’t, so each episode allowed the expert to outline the film and its place in Ghibli history, and the novice to give a review of his first viewing.
The book follows the same format. Each film takes a chapter, and there is information about the studio’s decisions and backroom details, followed by a detailed review of the resulting film.
This approach has its problems. Anyone who has read books created from a series of newspaper columns or radio pieces will recognise them immediately. There is a huge disjoin between each chapter, and the result is very bitty.
The story of the studio, fascinating as it is, becomes almost something to wade through before the review appears. For me, it would have been far better as a separate section of the book.
The reviews themselves are the best parts of the book. They are thoughtful and detailed, without being too long, and the way Cunningham relates the films to each other certainly made me think and see connections I hadn’t seen before. I came away with a much better understanding of some of the films and their meaning, particularly within a Japanese cultural framework.
The book is lavishly produced, with lots of great pictures, and I rarely criticise the design or form of a book. Tastes differ, and that’s fine. But I must take issue with whoever designed this book. The main text is probably the smallest I’ve ever seen in a mass-released work, and the chosen font is a light one. It is a difficult book to read, and that’s never good.
I know I’m getting old, but there’s really no reason for it. Enlarging the text would not have increased the page count by very much, and would have made it a more pleasurable experience. There are also some random blocks of text on coloured ground, which are unreadable under artificial light. Why?
If you’ve seen a few Ghibli films, and would like to know more, then this isn’t a bad place to start. It’s far from perfect, and could have been a lot better if the authors had decided to start afresh and not merely transcribe their podcast format into print. Indeed, it may be better to hunt out Leader and Cunningham’s original episodes, and listen to them instead.
If you’ve never seen any of the films, I urge you to give them a try. There is something for everyone, from those aimed at younger viewers, to one or two that are deeply harrowing. Most are somewhere in between, and all are well worth your time. They are (nearly) all available on Netflix and HBO for the foreseeable future. Otherwise, most are available on DVD, though the quality can be very variable.
This is a review of the 2021 Welbeck Non-Fiction Ltd hardback edition.
