Spirited Away

In the two decades since its release, Studio Ghibli's best film has become more than just an animated hit. Spirited Away, the story of a 10-year-old girl named Chihiro's journey to her own spirit-filled Wonderland after moving to a new village, has become a modern classic. People hold it up with beloved Disney animated movies in a way that makes it feel more a part of cultural history than anything released this millennium. Why? It distills everything we love about Studio Ghibli into one experience.

First, it doesn't talk down to its audience, allowing young viewers to be legitimately scarred by some of its haunting visions. Second, it presents a willful yet vulnerable female protagonist. No animated studio comes close in the department of empowering stories for young women. Third, it embraces fantasy in a way that makes it feel as essential as breathing, not merely escapism. Finally, it contains artistry on a visual level that rivals any animated film. You can take frames from Spirited Away and hang them on your wall, and yet it is never merely an exercise in style. It contains everything we love about Ghibli, from its deep empathy for human fragility to its empowering message of our need for imaginative, inspirational journeys.

Kiki's Delivery Service

Children's films have a habit of either leaning too hard into vulnerability or individuality. Their kids either need saving or need to stand on their own. Few films are better at blending the two than one of Ghibli's biggest early hits, the story of a young witch finding her way in the world. As Kiki makes friends along her journey, Miyazaki and his team deftly capture that in-between time in which a young person is carving out an identity but reliant on adults at the same time.

Kiki's Delivery Service says a lot about the creative process and even assuming a career in a broader sense. Kiki reflects fearing the effects of mixing work with pleasure and the possibility of witnessing the creative magic disappear. One could draw parallels between Kiki's status as a witch to Miyazaki as a writer/director and how they address the label. Kiki seems to have some degree of public anxiety stemming from the clothes and presentation of being a witch. Kiki also confesses at one point not enjoying the act of taking flight as much now that it is her job. Kiki's non-traditional story structure stems from the conceit of the film being that it's essentially an allegory for entering the workforce and how diligence and endurance ultimately ends in a rewarding experience. This is a movie that understands that empowerment doesn't have to extinguish vulnerability, a message that's hard to convey in any form of fiction, especially a genre of fantasy kids' movies that usually traffics in simple ideas. Studio Ghibli doesn't go for simple ideas, imbuing even what appears to be a straightforward children's story like this one with a complexity rarely seen in fantasy fiction.

Grave of the Fireflies

Isao Takahata's adaptation of the short story of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka may be the most “not exactly for the little ones” films in the entire Ghibli catalogue, and yet its antiwar message is something to be considered by all demographics. As bleak as animation gets, this is the moving story of Seita and Setsuko, two siblings in Kobe, Japan, during the final months of World War II. They lose their mother early in the film after a bombing and face hunger, disease, and worse as the world around them almost crumbles to dust. It opens with Seita dying of starvation and then flashes back to show us how we got there; you won't find talking cats or moving castles in this one. You will find two of the most unforgettable animated characters in history. Takahata does something that filmmakers have done for generations now in detailing the human cost of war, but he does so in a way that live-action film can't. Animation trains the viewer to expect magic, but none comes for Setsuko and Seita, making their tragic end all the more haunting.

It tells a simple story of survival. The boy and his sister must find a place to stay, and food to eat. In wartime their relatives are not kind or generous, and after their aunt sells their mother’s kimonos for rice, she keeps a lot of the rice for herself. Eventually, Seita realizes it is time to leave. He has some money and can buy food–but soon there is no food to buy. His sister grows weaker. Their story is told not as melodrama, but simply, directly, in the neorealist tradition. And there is time for silence in it. One of the film’s greatest gifts is its patience; shots are held so we can think about them, characters are glimpsed in private moments, atmosphere and nature are given time to establish themselves.

My Neighbor Totoro

My Neighbour Totoro is about the enchantment of childhood and, as so often, presents us with a supernatural world which has made visible to children because of some pain or trauma in their ordinary lives, a world which exists midway between hallucination and reality. University lecturer Tatsuo has brought his two young daughters, 10-year-old Satsuki (Noriko Hidaka) and four-year-old Mei (Chika Sakamoto) with him to a ramshackle rented house in the farm village of Matsugo, 25 kilometres from Tokyo, so that they can be close to the hospital where the girls' mother is now a patient.

All three are happy enough, but Mei, while wandering in the local countryside, enters a kind of secret part of the woodland and encounters a huge, gentle creature with two little friends; she calls him “Totoro”, partly because of his roaring sound and partly because this is how she mispronounces the word “troll”. When Mei goes missing as a result of a bitter quarrel with Satsuki about their mum, it is Totoro who must save the day, along with his friend the “cat bus”, a feline creature that grins just like the Cheshire cat.

Every parent should pick a day and make their young kids watch My Neighbor Totoro. They won't ever be the same. The gateway drug for an addiction to Studio Ghibli, this is quite simply one of the most delightful and enjoyable children's films ever made. It's a movie that can be watched over and over again, losing none of its power to inspire wonder. At its core, it's a simple story of an imaginary creature discovered by two girls dealing with the emotional stress of a sick mother and a relocation. How we use fantasy to deal with reality has always been a theme of children's entertainment, but Miyazaki and Ghibli don't see that fantasy purely as escapism. They see it as something essential to human life, something beyond our control yet more essential than mere imagination. And Totoro remains one of the most iconic characters of modern animation. He has taken on a life much bigger than just one film, appearing on Ghibli merchandise for decades now. After you fall in love with this movie, you'll understand why.