This time, nonetheless, it is a theme intertwined with Miyazaki’s personal reflections on legacy. At one level in the course of the movie, an outdated man poignantly begs Mahito to take over this incredible world he has created – represented right here by a small tower of precariously balanced blocks – so that every one its wonders disappear endlessly. It is a scene that implies a person coming to phrases along with his personal mortality, with the concept that as soon as he dies, there might be nobody left to steadiness the nice blocks of Studio Ghibli. Or maybe the movie’s ending, with out going into particulars, suggests a distinct interpretation: legacies, successors, even the artwork itself, none of it issues. All that issues is that folks – Miyazaki’s household, his associates, even the viewers – proceed to stay on, participating with the actual world as a substitute of retreating into fantasy.
“I do not suppose he thinks he is carrying this torch of Japanese animation,” Nishioka says. “He additionally would not take into consideration his successor. However there are actually moments when he thinks: ‘What is going to occur to Studio Ghibli after I am not right here?'”. The reply, Nishioka provides, is not going to lie with Studio Ghibli’s outdated guard, however with the youthful technology, together with Miyazaki’s 56-year-old son Goro. In a transfer harking back to Mahito himself, Goro, additionally an animation director, has declined to succeed his father at Studio Ghibli. As a substitute, Nishioka says, he’ll do it in partnership with Japanese broadcaster Nippon TV, which lately acquired a majority stake within the studio. “No matter they plan to do sooner or later, I do not suppose it is our enterprise to intrude, however we’ve got sown the seeds to offer them selections,” he provides.
“[The future direction of the company] could possibly be at Ghibli Park [the theme park that opened in Japan last year]. It could possibly be with new movies that they are going to produce and make.”
Acknowledging Miyazaki’s advancing age, Nishioka compares Studio Ghibli’s future to the state of American animation large Disney within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies. “After Walt Disney died,” he says, “their gross sales had been fairly low for 10 years. However then that they had producers, that they had this new theme park. They had been in a position to chart new paths for themselves, in order that they weren’t depending on It is simply their classics. And whereas I am speaking a few fully completely different scale right here, I believe Ghibli would in all probability do one thing like that.”
However in fact it’s far too early and much too unlikely to consider the unthinkable. In any case, Hayao Miyazaki nonetheless has one final movie to make.
The Boy and The Heron is out there now within the US and might be launched within the UK on December 26.
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