Best of Studio Ghibli

The Best Animation Studio… Ever

This has been an ongoing debate for some time now. I’m going to count down on my favorites. Please note that I said MY favorites; I don’t mean to offend anyone, these are just the ones that I feel are the best. I had to put a lot of thought into this list, but I feel the listings are correct. I’ve seen almost all Ghibli films, but this list may change once I watch the remaining films.

 

Honorable Mention

Howl’s Moving Castle

This often overlooked pick really delivers as a visual treat. I haven’t seen it in forever, but it has still left a lasting impression on me. The plot is pretty funky, but in the end steampunk anime saves the day.

The film follows a young woman who is cursed to look like an old woman by the Witch of the Waste. The only way she can redeem her curse is by seeking help from Howl, the wizard, on his walking fortress.

The film has it’s confusing moments, but in the end the character development lives up to the standard you would expect and the creativity is off the charts.

Thoughts on… GODZILLA

Introducing the King of Monsters

The Big G. He’s an acquired taste. Not everyone will find pleasure in watching a man in a rubber suit obliterating scale models of Tokyo. For me, it never gets old. And even if you don’t love or want to love Godzilla, many of them are worth watching for the spectacular visuals and influential special effects they contain, that, at-least to me, look great even today.

The Franchise

Ok. Time to geek out.

There have been a total of 28 Toho distributed films in the franchise. Geeks about the series, like myself, categorize all of the films into three eras:

Showa (1954 – 1975)

Heisei (1984 – 1995)

Millenium (1999 – 2004)

Each one has a different style. The Showa era contained many fantasy-like elements. Although these ones can get pretty cheesy, the art of the genre was really established, and several films of that era added on to important plot points in the entire franchise, like in Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster. In this film, Godzilla becomes a good guy (I won’t spoil why, but it’s pretty schlocky). In Invasion of Astro Monster, the first ‘spacey elements’ were introduced to the Showa series, which would really be important the rest of the series (the ‘aliens’ try to kill Godzilla with more monsters). The franchise was doing great until 1975, when Terror of Mechagodzilla was released. This flick was the least attended Godzilla film in Japan and only sold 970,000 tickets. Because of this, the series was put on a temporary hold. However, Toho had no intentions on permanently ending the series. The sad thing is that Terror of Mechagodzilla is actually a more far fetched but intelligent entry to the Showa series and is one of my favorites. Nonetheless, the series was put on a 9 year hold, until…