Anime Studio Evaluation #8: Ghibli

Studio Ghibli, the once Disney of Japan, is no more for several years now. As it happens with most studios, their success is based on the talent of a few men and not the combined effort of thousands of people. When those talents leave the studio, or troll that they do in the case of Miyazaki, there is no way for the rest to continue producing equally good titles. Even if they keep notes and try to imitate them, true talent is not something they can copy.

The financial problems of Ghibli have a lot to do with their newer movies not making enough money to sustain a business that was refusing to go fully digital. As much as most of us prefer hand-drawn animation, it costs a heck of a lot more money, and the breath-taking detailed sceneries translate to expenses far beyond reasonable limits.

As for why the studio lost connection with mainstream audiences, it’s a generational thing. The themes of their movies are about anti-war, pro-ecology, slice of life about children. All those don’t interest modern audiences. The cold war is over, ecology is now a meme most make fun of, and people no longer go to cinema for watching slice of nothing happens with kids. The age of family-oriented animation is no longer a thing.

Now it’s all about violence, sex appeal, and selfish protagonists. And nobody wants to see kids anymore; they wanna see teenagers and romantic tension. The Ghibli heroes are too innocent, too plain, too good-y for modern standards, and the themes feel dated and boring. It was working while Disney, their biggest competitor, was making much tamer movies, but modern Disney is much more action oriented and even bothers to give some grey morality to its villains, while Ghibli removed action almost entirely and the conflict is almost non-existent.

The disconnect with modern audiences gets even bigger when you see how much they mellowed down over the years. Their older movies were exciting action adventures with some tension and creepy atmosphere. Later movies are cheery, calm, and safe. At an age when everyone is addicted to Michael Bay explosions, Ghibli expected to stay afloat with sleep-inducing fairy tales. The themes are still interesting, but because of the light presentation you won’t care about them. I am not blaming the producers for not making Michael Bay trash. It’s just idiotic to expect movies that cost more than the annual income of small cities to make their money back without appealing to mainstream audiences.

But I understand that Miyazaki is no Michael Bay. He is not a person who would decide the content of his movies based on what would please the audience but rather on what he would like to make. There is nothing wrong with not being a sellout and betraying the beliefs with which you began your career, but you can’t expect running a multinational, multimillionaire business aimed at mainstream entertainment with anachronistic ideals alone. That’s not how capitalism works. You are not supposed to be yourself, you are supposed to asskiss your audience.

Miyazaki not only didn’t do that but was also honest. He openly stated in the beginning of 2014 how modern anime suffer because the industry is full of otakus. Something we already know, but also something the industry does not want to talk about. Especially if you are businessman who promotes his movies to a mainstream audience. You are basically making creators and core buyers to look bad for focusing too much on escapism and fan service instead of characterization and important life lessons. And yes, it was the truth, but honesty won’t make you money. If you are selling candies, you don’t go around telling children that they make them fat and ruin their teeth. They won’t be buying candies from you and instead go buy them from some other guy telling them it’s magic and full of surprises or some shit.

And it goes even deeper than that when Miyazaki deals with stuff his country systematically ignores. The Wind Rises is a movie that enraged a big portion of his fanbase. Not because it lies (everybody knows of the numerous atrocities it committed in the name of fascism) but because it makes Japan to not appear as an amazing and heroic military force during WW2. It hurt their pride and made many to not support his next projects. Kantai Collection on the other hand is super amazing and makes a shitload of money for making Japan to appear cool, even if it’s technically sexy bimbos and no plot. This is what the majority wants to see; not the truth.

And yes, it did pass the Sturgeon test despite all the negative things I said about it. Later movies are nowhere as good as the older ones, but very few are actually bad.