// Preamble
My first memory of a Ghibli movie was seeing the trailers before watching my VHS copies of Pokémon: The First Movie, Digimon: The Movie, and/or various Disney movies when I was a kid.
Anyone who was once a child, which likely includes you, is familiar with the feeling of Nostalgia. It’s something I have in abundance for many different things: video games, songs, movies, family vacations, etc. Perhaps more unusually, it occurred to me when thinking back on my earliest Ghibli memories that these brief glimpses I got into these worlds really stuck with me. I was nostalgic for them, for that feeling of awe they left on young me.
I don’t even remember which movies the trailers were for (although I’m fairly confident one was for Castle in the Sky, because the narrator’s voice saying the title has been burned into my mind ever since).
All I remember is seeing these worlds on the television and thinking, “wow, I don’t know what this is, but I love this.” Being a small child, I had no money or even the knowledge of where to buy things, so I just stuck with watching the aforementioned movies 829 times. As I was only slightly older than an actual baby, I had the brainpower of a caterpillar and immediately forgot about these trailers once the feature presentation started.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Miyazaki had his hooks in me. Not only would I enjoy his films, but they would emphasize something that became crucially important to my everyday life.
Fast-forward 20-something years. I am no longer a child and have managed to expand my brainpower to slightly beyond that of a caterpillar. I have also seen most of the Ghibli movies.
From time to time, I’ll re-visit properties I used to get lost in as a child. Sometimes, I realize the things aren’t actually that good, and I wish I’d left them alone. Others, I’m pleasantly surprised at how well they hold up. Regardless, it’s unlikely they carry the same weight as they did when I first engaged with them. They would have been more whimsical had they been left in my brain’s nostalgia-filled-storage-compartment.
Ghibli movies break the rule in this regard. The unbound wonder I imagined these movies having from the trailers on my VHSs is fully present.
Whether it’s something lighthearted like Ponyo (which also happens to be my favourite Ghibli movie) or something more intense like Princess Mononoke, they all carry this feature; they all carry an embedded whimsy that forcibly sucks you into your viewing screen like a black hole, across the event horizon, and into a new world fuelled by Hayao Miyazaki chain-smoking and grumbling about the miseries of life.
A world that feels like home.
// It’s Like We Never Left
I want to talk about the reasons why Ghibli movies have this effect on us, why they pull us in, and why they seem to touch people on a much deeper level than just being a good movie.
Well, there are lots of answers to that. Answers that will vary from person to person.
It could be their worldbuilding. Each movie feels strange but consistent, unpredictable but fair. This is often shown by giving us the viewpoint of a child who explores and learns about the world as we do. Chihiro is thrust into a strange world of spirits where everything makes sense to everyone but her. She is forced to try and adapt as she goes along. Mihito has a very similar experience in The Boy and the Heron. But the trials they are put through never seem unfair. They never seem random.
This is thanks to good worldbuilding, an aspect you have to nail if you really want people to buy into your story. Ghibli’s masterclass worldbuilding has been documented and written about extensively, so I will not rehash those points here.
Another reason could be their iconic hand-drawn style of animation. It’s safe to say – now more than ever – that nobody else is making movies in the same way as Studio Ghibli. Their technical expertise across all aspects of the animation process is tremendously important, and a key factor in what makes them so incredible.
The list goes on and on. But the aspect I want to focus on is this: Studio Ghibli breathes life into the inconsequential, and it forces the viewer to be mindful.
// Mindfulness in my life
Ha! Jokes on you. You thought I was going to talk about cartoons, and here I am talking about myself. This is also the part where I talk about things that I’m not smart enough to talk about. So let me get this out of the way: I don’t know shit about shit.
This is all just how I feel in my funny little brain. I practise mindfulness in my own way and it works for me. With that said, let’s get a professional’s definition.
This is from Brian Luke Seaward, PhD in the book Managing stress: principles and strategies for health and well-being.
“Mindfulness meditation means to be conscious of the present moment in all that you do, to fill your body’s senses with what you are experiencing at the present moment.”
For me, it means I take a deep breath and listen to the sound of tires on pavement as cars drive by, gravel crunching under the tread. Or I close my eyes and feel the suede fabric of my couch by running my thumb along a cushion. It’s taking a moment to ground yourself and finding the beauty in what’s around you.
There was a point in my life – approximately around the age of 17 – when I decided that life was too short to spend it being stressed out, sad, or regretful. I was going to live my life appreciating everything I could, even if that meant finding things to appreciate where there wasn’t any, or rather, where I hadn’t thought to look.
I think I’ve been quite successful at this. If I come across something I don’t like, I ask myself, “Well, there are people who do like this, what do they like about it?” I will extract that element and try to focus on it; try to appreciate what it offers. This doesn’t always work, I still can’t acquire a taste for olives, but I generally find myself appreciative of most things.
I think one day I may write more extensively about this, given that it is critical to how I approach media, and this is a platform for talking about media. But for today, I’ll leave it at that.
This would in time evolve into me trying to find something to love when there was just nothing around. I loved – and still love – just taking a moment to observe the world around me. There’s solace in the quiet moments once you know how to see it, hear it, and feel it.
I always knew I liked doing this, but I never knew why. I just knew it made me feel good. I used to think to myself, “I love listening to the sound design of real life.”
// Life, Larger
Studio Ghibli excels at bringing these inconsequential moments into the forefront of their films.
In The Boy and the Heron, Mihito meets his new mother (his aunt, because his dad apparently has no chill) and they board a carriage headed for her home in the countryside. When he hops aboard, it creaks and shakes below him, as if he was trying to clamber aboard a water bed or a bouncy castle. It feels alive.
Perhaps one of the most famous examples of this is anytime an engine appears in a Studio Ghibli movie. When turning over, they pop, stutter, and puff like a living creature. Planes, trains, and automobiles – they are infected with personality.
How often do you think about what your engine does in real life when you start your car? When I’m starting up my car angrily on a brisk Canadian February morning, I have other things on my mind (read: trying not to freeze to death).
But this moment – this passing nothing to most people – is turned into a beautiful work of art. They take the passed-over moments of the world and shove them into audience’s face, saying, “Look! Isn’t this beautiful? Look how alive this is!”
They animate these aspects like they were characters themselves, injecting life in the grass, the water, fish guts – pretty much anything they can.
By treating things this way, they are essentially giving you a primer for mindfulness. See how amazing the world is when Ghibli-ified? Well, it can be like that all the time.
// All the Small Things
Furthermore, it’s not just that Ghibli brings these background elements into the foreground in a larger-than-life way that supports this idea of mindfulness. They hit you on two fronts; they also provide you the opportunity to take in the small things, as they are.
Let’s start with sound.
Take special care to listen to the pattering of feet anytime someone moves across a wooden floor. Mihito’s soft shuffles and bumps as he sneaks back to his room after seeing his father and aunt kissing in the entrance way in The Boy and the Heron, Chihiro’s hard stomps as she frantically propels herself down the room cleaning the floors in Spirited Away, or the off-beat childlike stumbling of Satsuki and Mei as one chases the other around their home in My Neighbour Totoro.
Each of these will sound different, and Ghibli gives each moment this level of care.
Do you notice things like this in real life? Do you consciously take in the subtle differences of a teenager dragging their feet versus a toddler tromping around? Odds are you hear it, just as you hear everything else around you, but I would bet most people don’t make a conscious effort to focus on it. To digest it. Really, why would they? They’re probably having a conversation, or working, or doing anything else besides sitting there just listening to things. Maybe you’re watching a movie. A movie, now there is something people will focus on.
When you’re sat down to watch a movie, you actively take in everything you see and hear. If the movie includes things you would normally only passively take in, then you are interacting with them in a new way. You’re made aware of things that normally take the fast track to your subconscious. The film becomes a conduit for mindfulness.
Paying attention to these nuances of the world around you is key to really living in the moment. So by that logic, if you’ve bought into the world of a movie, would paying attention to its nuances not scratch that same itch?
The same is true of how these films present the ordinary visual aspects of their worlds to you. Characters will often be featured as just a small part of the frame. Viewers are allowed to take time and drink in the painstakingly created layouts. One of my favourite examples of this are the urban Japanese buildings and landscapes that come together to create the vertically-diverse cityscape in Whisper of the Heart.
Hell, even the small, cluttered apartment Shizuku and her family live in feels comforting.
At the beginning of the movie, Shizuku and her parents are sitting around their table talking. The scene runs for about 58 seconds before cutting to something else. They repeat three different angles as the conversation goes on. There is obviously not much action going on here, so once you’ve seen what these three look like, you’re left to explore the space they are in.
The tied up bundles of books stacked haphazardly in the corner, the cramped kitchen counter with a microwave and rice cooker that leaves little room for anything else, the book case, the fridge, the ceiling light – the list goes on.
You probably don’t spend much time admiring your fridge or messy kitchen when you’re hanging around your own house. But when these things are drawn by Ghibli artists, you pay attention.
You are forced to, because the movie puts you into these scenes that make you slow down. The movie invites you to look around their apartment, or to gawk at the city streets, or the pockets of nature in Tokyo.
Two of the most famous examples of this are the train scene in Spirited Away, and the bus stop scene in My Neighbour Totoro. They both illustrate exactly what I’m talking about very well.
I think you could argue that they might be the most famous scenes in all the studios’ filmography. People who don’t even know what My Neighbour Totoro is might recognize the bus stop scene from a t-shirt in Walmart.
So why is it that people have grabbed onto these particular scenes?
The visual design of them is good, of course. They also feature the most iconic characters from each of the films, so they have that going for them as well. But I think many scenes check those boxes. I think it’s that these are perhaps the most emphasized examples of what I’m talking about.
These scenes really make you sit with them. It’s just you and the ka-thunking train tracks, or you and the soft hush of rain. I think even if you’re one to gloss over the background stuff in movies, it’s very hard to do so here.
Therefore, they really make *everyone* take a moment to just sit with your senses. Everyone is mindful when taking in these scenes,you have no choice but to be. That means everyone will leave these scenes with just a little bit more of that warm fuzzy feeling.
You can take the idea behind these scenes and apply it just about everywhere.
// Concluding Thoughts
I believe the way Ghibli makes their movies resonates with people because it forces them to be mindful, even if they don’t know it.
Ghibli movies aren’t the only ones that do this, but they are consistently excellent at it. I also want to note that I don’t think this is the only reason people love these movies. There is certainly a lot to like here.
But personally, when I think back on this collection of animated features, it’s the small moments I remember. And furthermore, it’s the movies that do this most that I find myself most drawn to.
Funnily, I proved my own point by writing this article. I had the bulk of it written when I told my wife about the concept. She knew exactly what I meant, quickly pointing to the train scene and bus stop scene, mentioned earlier. The only thing is, I had completely forgotten about those!
My brain pulled out Shiziku’s family’s apartment and Satsuki and Mei running around in Totoro. I pulled a Totoro example and missed the main one!
I think this is a testament to Ghibli’s ability to make mundane moments feel special. It certainly worked on me.
Being mindful feels good, taking in the nuances of your surroundings feels good, and I think Ghibli taking these things and presenting them to people draws out that same good feeling.
For some, it’s an unexplainable feeling of bliss and ease. For others, it’s a familiar comfort. Whether people are aware of what slowing down and taking in what normally falls outside the frame does to you or not, the result is the same.
As humans, we’re busier than ever. We fall through life, ping-ponged from one distraction to another, all designed to put the “miss it” in blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of life.
So do yourself a favour: throw on a Ghibli movie.
// Afterword
Thanks for reading!
This whole thing was initially going to be the preamble for my Boy and the Heron review. It quickly became its own beast, so I broke it out. I hope this gives you a little bit of insight into what I love about these movies, and how I try to make my every day just a little bit more like a Ghibli movie.
