Nowadays we can watch more than enough animation anytime we want. But no matter how good the animation is, when we have too much, it is no longer of good quality. When you listen to music on a Walkman from early in the morning to late at night, your ears start to hurt. It’s exactly the same with an overdose of animation. It’s an oft-repeated aphori

Miyazaki: I’m fascinated by wars, and I read a lot about them. People therefore often ask me, “Miyazaki-san, do you like war?” and I respond by asking if they think AIDS researchers like AIDS.

It takes a hungry heart to achieve one’s goal!

There’s no need to understand everything. When I’m asked what a totoro is, I don’t know myself.

For the finish inspector, that meant that an extraordinary situation essentially became a normal condition. And she adapted to it. I haven’t worked with her since then. When I drop by, though, she is, as always, working in a pile of thin sheets of paper. I call out hello, and she turns around and smiles at me. [laughter] And she offers me tea and s

What really makes me mad about most TV anime, to the extent that I have watched it, is that the shows don’t have any sort of purifying or cathartic effect at all. I really can’t stand them. I think they don’t have any respect for real humanity.

There is also a large, latent audience of older viewers who yearn for a film to enjoy with a more naïve, childlike spirit. The future of animation is threatened by the fact that for most films being planned today the target age is gradually creeping upward. More and more animated films are being made to cater to niche interests, and there is ever m

Miyazaki: I tried drawing a variety of weird aircraft, but I wasn’t sure how far I could take the designs. If I had used too many different designs, the world I was trying to depict might have looked too ridiculous. I only fully realized that halfway through the production. If, for example, I had shown a beat-up old aircraft in the shape of a sparr

And to be quite frank, the moment I actually decided to finish the serialization, I already felt as though I had turned into a real wrinkled old geezer. That stated, my work has by no means ended. And I’m really in a bind, because as a result I don’t truly feel liberated either. I wish I could say that I’ve just had a heavy load lifted from my shou