MisterSpook
I always liked Kiki's Delivery Service. The city that she goes to live in is uber awesome.

Plus Miazaki does some bitchin' flying scenes. I want a broomstick that flies... :(

Most of his films have a thing with flying in them, especially Porco Rosso and Castle In The Sky.

mm..my top three:
Mononoke Hime
Spirited Away
Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind

mm..I love Mononoke for the plot and the little clicky-headed forest spirits. Spirited Away comes in second only because I liked the plot of Mononoke slightly better. Nausicaa comes in third because the only other Miyazaki films I've seen are Howl's Moving Castle, which has STUNNING animation, but as others have said ..not so strong a plot, and Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which I just couldn't get into.

Laputa was just so ...flat to me. Where the other Miyazaki films I saw were so much more interesting, even if it was just in scenery or character design. :o

Funny how so far the only Studio Ghibli movie to have a sequal done was Whisper Of The Heart with The Cat Returns. Princess Mononoke left room for a possible sequal though.

Panda, go Panda (1972) for the high brow option

http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/panda/ [nausicaa.net]

It's hard between Naussica, and Princess Mononoke.

(My usage of words is not meant to sound perverse.)

jalford
Funny how so far the only Studio Ghibli movie to have a sequal done was Whisper Of The Heart with The Cat Returns. Princess Mononoke left room for a possible sequel though.

Hmm, it's not really a squeal at all. They're completely unrelated in every single way... Well they're a both stories featuring young girls finding their way in life (sounds like all of his movies), both set in modern Japan (again, not that unique), and they both feature the cats: The Baron and Muta. Except in The Cat Returns, the Baron is an actual character and not just a wooden doll sitting in a shop, and Muta is also a character and not just an ordinary cat who occasionally pops in. So the only real "sequel" part are those two and they weren't even really "in" the first movie anyway! :lol:


Wow, I'd never heard of that Panda movie. Looks good ^^
Like a proto-Tottoro!

Wow, I'd never heard of that Panda movie. Looks good ^^
Like a proto-Tottoro!

It's one of Miyazaki and Takahata's earlier collaborations (Early 70's) and is actually two shorter films (about half hour each). Pioneer/Geneon picked them up a while back along with the old Sherlock Holmes series that Miyazaki had a hand in in the early 80's (renamed to Sherlock Hound in the West). Both should be pretty easy to find.

.: isukun :.

My opinion on the title of this topic: I like Howl's Moving Castle o.o

So why does Nausicaa not count?

Mirai Shonen Konan features neither talking trees nor giant mecha. Laputa had no talking trees and the robots in it were much closer to human size.

.: isukun :.

I think what you're referring to is Warriors of the Wind. The original movie title was Kaze no Tani no Naushika (Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind), but New World renamed it to Warriors of the Wind when they released their hack-job dub of it. They cut 21 minutes of footage to make the movie more action-oriented. This is hardly Miyazaki's fault, though.

It's a little hard to track down these days. New world isn't around anymore and Disney has the distribution right anyway. A better version has since come out and is fairly easy to find at local video stores. I still have my old Beta copy, though, complete with the amusing cover art featuring five characters, only one of which actually appears in the movie. The really sad thing is, Warriors of the Wind is what got me into anime. It was the first animation I ever recognized as Japanese.

.: isukun :.