Why can't Miyazaki's "cold rice" get tired of eating?

In Miyazaki's view, every character he writes is an individual with feelings, even if it is "air" that he has never met. Every morning when he first arrives at the studio, he greets the "air" around him while opening the window. Perhaps it is this way of thinking that makes his works full of warmth.

Author|Leon\Editor|Lone Dove

On Children's Day, a new digitally restored version of "Sky City" was released in the mainland. This is the fourth time in five years that Chinese mainland has introduced an animated film by Hayao Miyazaki.

In fact, every year, the mainland will come up with some classic works to do re-screenings, but most of them will be cold in the market, the box office is not ideal, and it is considered "fried cold rice". "Sky City" is Miyazaki's work 37 years ago, and it is also cold rice, but the audience loves to eat it.

Because Miyazaki has been seeking the "realism" of animation all his life, the seemingly fictional animation world has rich realistic content, and the audience can always find what they need in the film and gain a lasting power.

In particular, the delicate and fresh hand-painted surface in the film is pleasing to the eye and not outdated, but it shows a natural beauty today, when the technology is highly developed.

Therefore, being able to see the floating city of Laputa in the sky on the big screen and hear Hisaishi's ethereal soundtrack is indeed a great attraction for the audience.

Also the movie tickets owed before

"Sky Castle" is Miyazaki's fourth re-release of Hayao Miyazaki's films in Chinese mainland, and almost every one of his works can set off a lot of fluctuations in the mainland market.

In 2018, "My Neighbor Totoro" received 173 million yuan at the box office in the mainland; in 2021, "Spirited Away" cut 488 million yuan; the slightly inferior "Ponyo on the Cliff", re-screened in 2020, also had a box office of 28.41 million yuan.

Miyazaki's movies are so magical that the audience can't get tired of watching them. On social media, as long as it is about him, it is often on the hot search, which shows everyone's attention.

Miyazaki's film creation road is synchronized with the growth of the "post-80s". In the eighties and nineties of the last century, Chinese local animation has not really started, and Japanese animation across the sea has entered the climax of development, and Studio Ghibli, with Miyazaki as the core, was founded in 1985 and has produced dozens of movies over the decades, slowly building an animation kingdom.

Hayao Miyazaki

Castle in the Sky was Studio Ghibli's first project after its founding. "I want to make an adventure story of a young hero who keeps fighting for his dreams, a movie for elementary school students!" This was Miyazaki's original intention at that time.

After the film was released in Japan in 1986, the local area only received 580 million yen at the box office, and the number of moviegoers was only 770,000, and the box office failed miserably. However, time can tell, after experiencing precipitation, "Sky City" has a great reputation and is regarded as a classic by fans, with a current Douban score of 9.2, ranking 48th in the Douban TOP250.

Next, Kipling launched classics such as "My Neighbor Totoro", "Witch's House", "Princess Mononoke" and so on. In 2002, "Spirited Away" won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, becoming the only animated film to win the highest award at the three major European film festivals so far. The following year, he won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, bringing the reputation of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli to an all-time peak.

A long time ago, Miyazaki asked a Chinese reporter a question: "My book has never been translated in China, and my film has never been released in China, why do so many Chinese know me and are familiar with my work?" ”

In fact, Miyazaki's "Sky City", "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Valley of the Wind" were all introduced to the mainland around 1990, but the scale was very limited at that time, and very few people saw it. Therefore, today's re-screening has become a "movie ticket that is still owed".

Most of the post-80s and post-90s audiences met Miyazaki's animation through DVDs, the Internet, etc., and were touched by his wild imagination and beautiful animation world at the beginning, leaving a deep imprint in their hearts.

A still from "Valley of the Wind"

Miyazaki's animated films are successful in breaking the boundaries between children and adults, and are suitable for all ages. Even if the audience grows up, it does not affect their liking for the work, and there is a feeling that they are always watching and always new.

At the same time, Miyazaki has long collaborated with Japanese music master Jean Hisaishi, who created a series of beautiful soundtracks for the film, especially the iconic piano songs, which have long echoed in the audience's ears, and whenever they hear it, animation clips can appear in front of their eyes.

Therefore, even if Miyazaki's animated film is screened decades later, the audience is willing to pay because it is worth it.

Influenced a generation of medieval animation practitioners

In 2015, at a Tokyo auction in Japan, Miyazaki personally drew six drawings of "Sky City", starting at 80,000 yen (about 4,752 yuan), and a buyer from China held up a total of 291 times, and finally won the auction at a high price of 20.5 million yen (about 1.21 million yuan).

The Japanese media exclaimed, "Looking at Miyazaki's original manuscript in the future, I will actually run to China." ”

Manuscript drawing of "Castle in the Sky"

Miyazaki's manuscript was filmed by an anime artist named Kaneshiro, who has experienced Miyazaki's works and always has a dream in his heart, hoping that he will always live in his heart as an innocent child.

Miyazaki's works have indeed influenced many Chinese practitioners, and it is a mountain that many animators look up to. The most representative can be described as animation director Tian Xiaopeng.

In 2015, when Tian Xiaopeng's "Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Sage" was released, some people pointed out that the characters in the film were suspected of imitating Japanese anime, Tian Xiaopeng frankly said that he loved watching anime since he was a child, especially Miyazaki, but these elements actually came from China. It can be seen that Miyazaki is not light in his heart.

Stills from "Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Sage"

In 2016, Tian Xiaopeng came to Japan to visit Studio Ghibli and commissioned director Hayao Miyazaki to dub the Japanese version of "Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Saint". On that day, he also met Miyazaki and took a photo with him.

At that time, he posted a Weibo message saying, "The old man came in an apron, so kind, I felt like I was in a fairy tale world." I haven't cried in more than 20 years, and I'm just a schoolboy in front of him. ”

In 2019, when "Spirited Away" was released in the mainland, Tian Xiaopeng attended the premiere and praised it as a movie so powerful that it made his peers "desperate". And this year's Spring Festival, Tian Xiaopeng's 7-year-old animated film "Deep Sea" was released. In the film, a little girl only 8 years old, Betelgeuse, mistakenly enters the Deep Sea Hotel and starts an adventure journey.

At first glance, the setting is very similar to "Spirited Away" more than 20 years ago, and the restaurant of the Deep Sea Hotel also pulls the audience back to the familiar scene of strange food in the soup house. Moreover, in "The Deep", humans and animals live in harmony, without regional and racial restrictions, which is also deeply influenced by Miyazaki's worldview.

"Deep Sea" uses the dreams of little girls to show heavy topics such as growth trauma and depression of children in reorganized families, and "Spirited Away" also explores the inescapable parting of growing up and the growth process of facing society alone through a little girl's misentry, all with a sad background.

No wonder some people praised Tian Xiaopeng as "China's Miyazaki Hayao".

Both Deep Sea and Spirited Away have cafeteria scenes

In addition, many anime creators have expressed their love for Miyazaki. Zhang Zhe, executive director of the animation "Inhuman", said that he watched Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke" when he was in college and was moved to tears.

The director of "Nezha: The Devil Child Descends", Gyozo regarded Miyazaki as an idol, and paid tribute to Miyazaki in the end credits of his first animated short film "Hit, Hit a Big Watermelon".

Director Wang Chuan opened his eyes after seeing "Sky City", and in 2011, at the beginning of the creation of the animated film "Quiba", he carefully studied Miyazaki's works, focusing on his style of using comic realism to the extreme. After the movie "Kuiba no 100,000 Fire" was released, it won a lot of praise with its exquisite pictures.

In recent years, domestic animation is on the rise, and from time to time there will be a work with a double harvest of word-of-mouth and box office, and the audience is also proud of it. In fact, many domestic animated films have more or less Miyazaki's shadow. It can be said that his creation has established an aesthetic benchmark for animated films, and it is also a master that animation creators cannot avoid.

"The Devil of Animation"

The reason why Miyazaki's works are hard to see is because they are filled with his world view of goodness and beauty, and his creative attitude of pursuing the ultimate.

Born in Japan in 1941, Miyazaki was born during the war years and grew up in the ruins of the postwar period, calling himself a "Japanese who hates Japan." Opposing war, loving nature, and revering life were his eternal themes in animation creation.

For example, in 1988's "My Neighbor Totoro", the story is set as a forest spirit that only good children can see, bringing the innocence and childhood to the extreme. There is no deception, no war and no death, only children's hearts full of childlike fantasies, cute totoro and beautiful scenery in the Japanese countryside.

In the 1992 animated film Porco Rosso, Miyazaki turned his perspective to the adult world for the first time, expressing his hatred of war. The protagonist of the film, Rosen, was an ace pilot of the Italian Air Force in World War I, who was transformed into a pig by magic because he refused to fight for fascism. Miyazaki creates an anti-hero who deconstructs war in self-exile.

"Porco Rosso" stills

In terms of work attitude, Miyazaki has been adhering to a craftsmanship spirit for decades, and he is strict with the details of his works. All of his animation works are hand-drawn, with 110,000 drawings for Spirited Away and 170,000 drawings for Ponyo on the Cliff. At the slightest dissatisfaction, he would tear up the repaint, and the workbench was often filled with boxes of scrap papers.

The ultimate pursuit of details makes the staff around him miserable, and even his son Miyazaki Goro, who has worked with him, will complain that he is a 0-point father. People privately gave him the terrible name "The Devil of Animation". Miyazaki relentlessly lashes out at every animator who works at Ghibli, doing his best to "squeeze" their potential and time.

In the anime "The Wind Rises", there is a picture of a crowd scattered, and unimportant characters could have been roughly brushed over, but this picture, which is only 4 seconds, Miyazaki led the team to draw for a year and three months, so that the expressions and movements of each character are clearly visible.

A still from "The Wind Rises"

In Miyazaki's view, every character he writes is an individual with feelings, even if it is "air" that he has never met. Every morning when he first arrives at the studio, he greets the "air" around him while opening the window. Perhaps it is this way of thinking that makes his works full of warmth, even bad people have a very gentle side.

Miyazaki has announced his retirement from animated films 7 times and made a comeback 7 times. For his vacillation, it can be understood that Miyazaki Hayao has a long struggle physically and mentally, his aging body is difficult to maintain high-intensity work, and he has to choose to quit, but the spiritual freedom and inspiration make him choose to continue to move forward.

Since joining Toei Animation in 1963, Miyazaki has been engaged in the animation industry for 60 years, and his contribution to the animation industry in Japan and the world is undoubted, especially in the nearly 40 years since the establishment of Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki and his team have dedicated countless classic works to the audience with their dedication and love for animation.

Animation creation is a long and consuming process, and for creators, it is necessary to endure loneliness and suffering. Just like the line in "Spirited Away": "No matter how bumpy the road ahead, as long as you go in the right direction, you are closer to happiness than standing in place." ”

Perhaps, Miyazaki's words can be shared with domestic counterparts and with each of us.