My first exposure to the work of Hayao Miyazaki occurred when I was around 11 years old. Cartoon Network was showing a different Studio Ghibli film every weekend for a month. I watched the beginnings of My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Sky but they were shown too late for me to stay up and watch them all the way through. However when I turned the television on to Spirited Away I had to watch it to the end. I enjoyed getting lost in my own imagination a lot as a kid, and loved movies with fantasy elements in them. Spirited Away was like no other film I had watched before though. There were so many new creatures and situations that I had never thought of or seen before. It was like looking into the mind of another person who like myself was always imagining new things and new stories.
Unfortunately I did not see any other films by Mr. Miyazaki until I was in college. My good friend in the dorm room next to me put on Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and I loved it. Next we watched Castle in the Sky (all of it this time) and Princess Mononoke (my favorite) before the school year was over. Now it is summer time and I have been exploring the entire catalog of Ghibli movies. The films created by Miyazaki and his fellow creators of Studio Ghibli are some of my favorite films. They are most well known for their stunningly beautiful animations, but are also full of great story telling, truly human characters and settings that are the stuff of dreams.
Starting with my viewing of Nausicaa for the first time, I began to write pieces of music in homage to the films of Studio Ghibli. You see I am currently a student at Berklee College of Music, majoring in Jazz Composition. These movies have so much pure emotion that sometime I cannot resist the urge to compose pieces inspired by them. Studio Ghibli’s films are all so unique that each piece also becomes one of a kind. Some films inspire me to write with a specific genre or instrumentation in mind, while others move me to create pieces that I cannot categorize. My emotional reaction to each film is so strong that I must create my own music to honor the films (though I adore the compositions of Joe Hisaichi as well.)
The films of Mr. Hayao Miyazaki and the other creators of Studio Ghibli are amazing. They stand out as unique among other animated films, and even among all great films. Even as they grow older they remain fresh and vibrant, proving that imagination lasts forever.