From ‘Totoro' to ‘Heron', five Ghibli classics that changed anime forever

Malay Mail

06-06-2025

TOKYO, June 6 — Japan's Oscar-winning anime house Studio Ghibli turns 40 this month.
Here are the studio's top five films that have delighted fans over the decades:
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Studio Ghibli was founded in 1985, but this post-apocalyptic story featuring a young, independent princess curious about giant insects is considered its first film.
It was based on a comic-strip series that Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki wrote for a magazine targeted at anime fans.
Set 1,000 years after a war that destroyed human civilisation, the story takes place in a valley protected from toxic air emitted from poisonous forests.
Miyazaki won critical acclaim and a cult following for the film about Nausicaa, who discovers the forests' secrets after getting embroiled in conflicts between countries trying to revive a lethal 'giant warrior'.
My Neighbour Totoro (1988)
This beloved Ghibli classic is set in the 1950s Japanese countryside where two young sisters with a sick mother move from the city.
They encounter the cuddly yet mysterious forest spirit Totoro and Catbus, a 12-legged grinning cat with a hollow body in the form of a bus — two characters who have become the Studio Ghibli mascots.
The film was turned into a play for the first time by Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company in 2022.
Princess Mononoke (1997)
The tale of a girl raised by a wolf goddess in a forest threatened by humans was a smash hit in Japan and raised Miyazaki's profile internationally.
A young prince on a journey to find a cure for his curse meets San, also known as Princess Mononoke — meaning a spirit or monster in Japanese.
The prince sets out to find ways to avoid wars between destructive humans and animal gods, centred around the ultimate god which is nature itself.
Ghibli expert and Tufts University professor Susan Napier described Princess Mononoke to AFP as 'serious, dark and violent'.
Spirited Away (2001)
Miyazaki won his first Oscar with this film about a girl who gets lost in a mystical world of gods and spirits where she tries to save her parents, who are turned into pigs.
In order to survive, 10-year-old Chihiro is told by a mysterious boy to get a job at an enormous Japanese bathhouse run by a witch.
In a story infused with Japanese beliefs and traditions, Chihiro gains confidence through her work and solves the boy's curse before rescuing her parents.
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Miyazaki's second Oscar-winning film — and likely the 84-year-old's last feature — follows a boy struggling to accept his new life after his mother dies in the haunting fire-bombing of Tokyo during World War II.
Everything changes when he meets a talking heron and embarks on a journey to an alternate universe, shared by the living and the dead, to find his missing stepmother.
In a documentary, Miyazaki, visibly affected by the 2018 death of Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata, said the pair had had a 'love-hate relationship' and that he had based the character of the grand-uncle on him. — AFP