3 ms·

Absolutely. And generally great treatment of gender, and none of the Disney obsession with royalty.

by dcre 3y ago

astrange 3y ago
There's a Western/Japan cultural gap here. Ghibli movies are not different from other anime. The reason anime stars women is because the animators are horny and like drawing women first, marketing second, and because they're feminists maybe like tenth. (Miyazaki's waifu is Clarissa from Castle of Cagliostro.) And the opposite happens too; a work where all the characters are men is usually by/for women, and a lot of things Japanese women love to write look like "ugh some perverted guy did this" to unfamiliar Western readers, making it tricky to localize romances.
- dcre 3y ago
  I think you can give Miyazaki a lot more credit than that for the girls and women in Totoro, Kiki, Mononoke, and Spirited Away.
  - astrange 3y ago
    I'm basing this comment on an interview I read where Oshii makes fun of him for it. (Which unfortunately I can't link because it's on my own website, where Wordpress auto-updated itself and broke and I haven't fixed it.) I think their thesis was that Miyazaki was most like this in the 80s-90s (see Porco Rosso, which stars a self-insert of himself), then was a dad in the 2000s (Spirited Away), then later entered a second childhood (see Ponyo and Wind Rises, which is mainly about how cool planes are.)
    - serf 3y ago
      >Wind Rises, which is mainly about how cool planes are. if that was your main take-away from that movie, I suggest you re-watch it. it reminds me of the meme that Gundam fans ignore the fact that the story is about the brutality of endless human conflict for the fact that there are shiny robots and cool technologies.
      - astrange 3y ago
        It's a synthesis. War is bad because it detracts from the purity of thinking about how cool planes are. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/hayao-miyazaki-film-wind-rises https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/hayao-miyazaki... The Gundam meme is an over-simplification; Tomino is moralistic but he's far too weird to just have a normal moral like that. Typical Tomino morals are like "all old people are evil, including myself", "we should have a matriarchy", and whatever Brain Powerd was about.
- spywaregorilla 3y ago
  Have you considered that some works may focus on women without any underlying motive or intention
  - astrange 3y ago
    Yes, I have considered that. But Ghibli doesn't do things without intention, I would say that's what people like about them. (Though you might say that about Goro Miyazaki's Earthsea movie.)
  - mango7283 3y ago
    Make of this article what you will... https://kotaku.com/hayao-miyazaki-wants-you-to-know-why-nausicaa-has-large-1791368978 https://kotaku.com/hayao-miyazaki-wants-you-to-know-why-naus...
- armchairhacker 3y ago
  Apparently a lot of writers and animators are actually women: https://gamerant.com/great-series-written-female-mangaka https://gamerant.com/great-series-written-female-mangaka I have no idea how accurate this claim is (it’s a survey on a random news site) especially because in most anime women are indeed very sexualized. But I wouldn’t be super surprised. I think part of it is that anime artists just drop realism and like to draw idealized versions of women and men, whatever makes the most interesting story. And maybe women being the heroes and doing everything is a lot more interesting than men, at least to the writers.

Absolutely. And generally great treatment of gender, and none of the Disney obsession with royalty.

by dcre 3y ago

Absolutely. And generally great treatment of gender, and none of the Disney obsession with royalty.

There's a Western/Japan cultural gap here. Ghibli movies are not different from other anime. The reason anime stars women is because the animators are horny and like drawing women first, marketing second, and because they're feminists maybe like tenth. (Miyazaki's waifu is Clarissa from Castle of Cagliostro.) And the opposite happens too; a work where all the characters are men is usually by/for women, and a lot of things Japanese women love to write look like "ugh some perverted guy did this" to unfamiliar Western readers, making it tricky to localize romances.

dcre 3y ago
I think you can give Miyazaki a lot more credit than that for the girls and women in Totoro, Kiki, Mononoke, and Spirited Away.
- astrange 3y ago
  I'm basing this comment on an interview I read where Oshii makes fun of him for it. (Which unfortunately I can't link because it's on my own website, where Wordpress auto-updated itself and broke and I haven't fixed it.) I think their thesis was that Miyazaki was most like this in the 80s-90s (see Porco Rosso, which stars a self-insert of himself), then was a dad in the 2000s (Spirited Away), then later entered a second childhood (see Ponyo and Wind Rises, which is mainly about how cool planes are.)
  - serf 3y ago
    >Wind Rises, which is mainly about how cool planes are. if that was your main take-away from that movie, I suggest you re-watch it. it reminds me of the meme that Gundam fans ignore the fact that the story is about the brutality of endless human conflict for the fact that there are shiny robots and cool technologies.
    - astrange 3y ago
      It's a synthesis. War is bad because it detracts from the purity of thinking about how cool planes are. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/hayao-miyazaki-film-wind-rises https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/hayao-miyazaki... The Gundam meme is an over-simplification; Tomino is moralistic but he's far too weird to just have a normal moral like that. Typical Tomino morals are like "all old people are evil, including myself", "we should have a matriarchy", and whatever Brain Powerd was about.
spywaregorilla 3y ago
Have you considered that some works may focus on women without any underlying motive or intention
- astrange 3y ago
  Yes, I have considered that. But Ghibli doesn't do things without intention, I would say that's what people like about them. (Though you might say that about Goro Miyazaki's Earthsea movie.)
- mango7283 3y ago
  Make of this article what you will... https://kotaku.com/hayao-miyazaki-wants-you-to-know-why-nausicaa-has-large-1791368978 https://kotaku.com/hayao-miyazaki-wants-you-to-know-why-naus...
armchairhacker 3y ago
Apparently a lot of writers and animators are actually women: https://gamerant.com/great-series-written-female-mangaka https://gamerant.com/great-series-written-female-mangaka I have no idea how accurate this claim is (it’s a survey on a random news site) especially because in most anime women are indeed very sexualized. But I wouldn’t be super surprised. I think part of it is that anime artists just drop realism and like to draw idealized versions of women and men, whatever makes the most interesting story. And maybe women being the heroes and doing everything is a lot more interesting than men, at least to the writers.