Hayao Miyazaki | The Mind of a Master

do you remember the first time you saw a film by hayao miyazaki i do and i think i was honestly too young to appreciate them i just thought they were wonderful because i felt like i could escape into their worlds and also because i was told they were good but the older i get the more i realize just how magnificent his animation is so today i want to try and understand what makes his work so special and just as equally important what drives him to continue making them there's been a lot said about hayao miyazaki and really what i want to do with this video is dig as deep as i can layer by layer and also to reveal the essential elements of what make his work so unique and i think we all know that feeling of wonder just staring at the sheer force of imagination on showing his work so i think i'll start there miyazaki's visual creations are just on a different level his worlds became more and more populated with interesting creatures and beautiful flights into a dreamer's mind certainly a deep part of that imagination is rooted in aspects of the shinto belief that there are spirits everywhere and that they deserve awe and [Music] respect this gives him a license to be creative with bizarre but appealing characters it's important to note that he doesn't actually write a script he might write an outline with his plan for a feature but generally he draws an image and works from there he aims to capture your interest with intriguing visuals he builds the stories around these visual scenes i mean totoro was originally just the image of a girl and totoro at a bus stop and the story grew out of that it's really important to understand that he allows these visual montages to lead us through his work foreign [Music] and working this way allows the animation to grow and change with its development in a very visual style like any great animator he can sit and observe the world from a place that interests him and then he begins filling the world with life i think one of the essential elements of the success of miyazaki's work is that his worlds feel full starting with the worlds they're even just set in with that everything in the frame seems to just add to the story there's a japanese word which translates to atmosphere or mood it's part of the reason why often these spaces just feel so real because of the rich atmosphere they strive to create yasuo otsuka believes that japanese animation emphasizes this idea of strong emotional resonance rather than just gag based cartoons which feeds into the deep worlds and atmospheres developed in japanese animation bearing that in mind you can see why it's important to emotionally anchor these stories in a true world [Music] eleanor cameron calls it the particularity of place the sense that there is a narrative anchored within a larger world and in order to see that you have to be an excellent observer which is what hayao miyazaki is miyazaki was originally influenced by european architecture and setting and in a lot of his earlier work you can see that optimistic view of europe coming through but into the 90s and onwards as he became disillusioned after the collapse of the soviet union the japanese elements began to take a more prominent role as well as the more immediate space that he lives in what's interesting as well is that it gives us the space to breathe in the world that he set the story in while some deemed this technique the pillow shot a moment of peace between all the action miyazaki refers to it as ma like a space between a clap you take a second to break the tension and allow the film to grow in a deeper dimension and as well as the feeling in the worlds created the people that populate them are equally important crowds bustle and every character's movement shows motivation [Applause] he's very particular in background animation and checks each set of key animation personally retouching scenes he's not really happy with it [Music] bear in mind this is happening while he's doing the storyboards he hasn't even finished the story yet but they're animating in the background he expects a lot from his staff but he's very good at describing what he wants and will push people hard to get there and underneath that push there is a fundamental rule that miyazaki has when it comes to drawing [Music] storytelling is about the characters so they need their vigor to leap off the page here's where the wider depths of miyazaki kick into gear he knows that it's important to understand his characters and let them grow organically as he draws at the heart of his work of very motivated protagonists they inspire action and are generally not passive at all they don't tend to sit around and just run things through their mind over and over again considering things internally no matter what they're faced with they just get up and go home who may happen and this is where his true mastery shows boiling all that motivation down into how they move take satsuki and may running here although they're both performing the same action you can see a lot of their character and how they move what their choices are the younger sibling following the older one repeating what she says just to be part of the funeral he pays very close attention to movement ensuring it goes beyond just a movement but make sure it's anchored in a real world observation you're not just turning for the sake of turning foreign even when he was producing only yesterday not directing i want to point out he couldn't stop himself teaching the new recruits about true observation rather than just assumptions if you're not achieving the level he wants he can turn from the kind of santa claus vision people have of him into a very hard taskmaster [Music] foreign [Music] now these strong characters seem to be projections of what he wished he was despite all his mistakes it roots directly into his childhood where the community had to face ruin in post-world war ii japan but an essence comes through it concentrating of what remains rather than what is lost and in this sense the strong female characters that permeate his films are also thought to be a representation of his mother a strong independent woman who developed spinal tuberculosis when hayao was very young he still keeps her in his mind these elements shine a light on a deeper motivation in his work [Music] [Music] foreign foreign so i think with this in mind i really start to understand his push for an incredibly high standard in animation he understands that it can be impossible to untangle a director from a film and he wants to stand behind his work not make excuses be proud of what he's done [Music] foreign but he's not the only person working on a film and this expectation of a super high standard can create a lot of clashes foreign but he feels the weight of his own expectations too [Music] that anxiety definitely seeps into his work lining the edges with a deepened message but another element of hope blossoms in his [Music] works foreign remember when i said that he empowers his protagonists with a sense of action the power to surpass adults and do what is right that feeling that motivation seems to stem from one incident when he was a child something he's talked about several times before and academic susan napier feels that it's a really central point to all his motivations when he and his family were escaping firebombing of his hometown during world war ii in this tiny truck [Music] it was a super significant event and looking at this really helps to understand miyazaki's motivations that's why the movement is so important because it speaks for the will of his characters [Music] so he creates these worlds not just for him but to inspire the next generation and in this sense his films really are for kids drawing them in with wonder knowing that they possess an observational power to pick up the details that he puts in but more than that he remembers the openness and sense of wonder that they have it's the reason why may seize the little totoro because she has not had her childhood violated by adult common sense my foreign and here is where i just want to step a little deeper again at the core of his films there is a central optimistic message [Music] originally naoko's line was kite as she called him to her a more romantic idea but his overwhelming belief of how we should fight to live would never just let a character walk into death so he changed it to ikkitay me he believes that in order to live you have to continually fight to be better foreign understand the vitality these characters show the worlds they exist in life literally screams from his movies [Music] the question of living life fully is so important to him partially out of questioning his own reason to exist but also his mother's life he puts everything he can into careful observations of each scene i think there's no greater demonstration for his love of life than than when these guys turned up to show them new ai deep learning technology foreign foreign originally i thought his reaction was interesting because if how he immediately saw that they were disregarding basic consideration of people but then he said and it was in that that i understood that it goes against everything he knows it completely throws away the careful observations that he puts into his animation and it disregards the value and love that he placed on life specifically people who struggle to live and they still live fully and it opens the door to make the light of their struggle on top of that they had a machine generated rather than a person's hard work and attention to detail you can actually see the seeds of his next feature develop right here his next feature is reportedly being developed slowly for two reasons first is hayomi zaki's age and second is the vast amount of drawings being done because they're animating at a higher standard with more images per second his study of people and their nuances led to a real respect of their nature i mean even the film was called how do you live and as miyazaki says [Music] [Music] so now more than ever he wants to invite people to discuss how he can live in difficult times he notes that he did try to ask this with the wind rises saying i thought about how we should face these chaotic situations we face right now how we should live in such difficult times i thought the discussions would be deeper in that sense so i suspect his next feature will probably be a tour de force about life itself and the dominance of the human spirit and despite retiring several times the man cannot stop working and for a very simple reason foreign miyazaki wants to create that responsible child that told his parents to stop turn around and pick up those people let them on their small van he still feels like he has more to give lessons of hope to pass on despite the threats circling him with all that in mind it's clear that miyazaki is a master it's even clearer why his animation is loved so much around the world there's so much vitality squeezed into his work each frame is carefully crafted with a visual wonder but underneath all that is his deep personal message a message of positivity put together with fun animation literally means to give life to something and i can't think of anyone else who does it more than hayao miyazaki so i can't wait to see his next feature even if it's going to take years [Music] foreign hi everyone thank you so much for watching as always this video was a big monster to complete um but i just want to give a shout out to a specific book here that actually really helped me guide through this laborious endeavor and that book is miyazaki world by susan napier i really can't recommend it enough i also just want to shout out my two favorite youtubers brent and max over at bam animation their video about drawing in miyazaki style oh my god it's packed with so much information and it's just unbelievably funny as well miyazaki but of course the biggest shout out goes to my patreons your continued support means the world to me and thank you so much you guys are seriously amazing and if anyone else wants to get involved there's a link in the description below thanks for watching

Channel: Any-Mation

Views: 732,272

Keywords: miyazaki, anime, video essay, analysis, the miyazaki problem, spirited away, princess mononoke, Howl's moving castle, toei animation, Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki, Ghibli, Isao Takahata, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, anime was a mistake, Miyazaki's Career, animation history, anime directors, legacy, studio ghibli, 宮崎 駿, retrospective, スタジオジブリ, 宮崎駿, リラクシング ピアノ, スタジオジブリ宮崎駿リラクシング ピアノ音楽, Joe Hisaishi, The Wind Rises, my neighbor totoro, kiki's, Any-mation, How Do You Live?, A.I., Suzuki

Id: 1zi7jIZkS68

Length: 28min 50sec (1730 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/mayan_havoc]

This was beautiful. Thank you 🙏🏻

[u/Any-mation]

Thank you for sharing this :)