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Follow the Moon Rabbit
United Kingdom
Приєднався 10 жов 2016
UA-cam channel for www.followthemoonrabbit.com, where film analyst Adam Dobay combines a decade of research and experience in film and mythology to arrive at new ways to experience the stories you know and love.
Howl's Moving Castle: A film about people who don't want to be adults
In Howl's Moving Castle, Hayao Miyazaki flips his own script and instead of making a coming-of-age film, he makes a film-where-people-should-have-come-of-age-but-didn't, shaping his story around how to grow up if you're already an adult.
Howl is unique in the sense that it's like a setup for a sitcom: it takes characters that have the same problem and literally puts them under one roof.
In this final video of my Introduction to Studio Ghibli Storytelling series, I reveal:
* how Miyazaki seamlessly integrates fairy tale storytelling with archetypal mythology
* the interview quote that sheds some light on the perspective to apply when watching this film
* the big reason why the characters don't want to grow up and how that ties into Miyazaki's lifelong anti-war stance
* and how the ending is actually not that weird if you pay attention to how the film sets up its storylines
And don't forget to grab the Studio Ghibli Secrets guide over at my website www.followthemoonrabbit.com !
Video credits
Written and performed by Adam Dobay
Recorded by Livia Farkas
Editing by Gabi Trost and Eszter Vermes
Special thanks to Flick Beckett and the Duke of York's cinema staff
Timestamps:
0:00 How Hayao Miyazaki matures as a director
0:30 How Miyazaki matures as a director
1:40 Things to look out for in Howl on subsequent viewings
2:05 Why Myazaki references his own earlier films
3:05 "In reality, I often forget about the children"
3:40 Coming of age stories in earlier Miyazaki films
4:16 A film whose characters actively avoid becoming adults
4:45 Sophie - the girl who leapt through adulthood
5:11 Howl - the person permanently stuck as an adolescent
5:58 Markl - the boy who had to grow up too quickly
6:18 Calcifer - the fire demon with an existential crisis
7:00 Heen - the dog with the blink-and-you'll-miss-it storyline
7:26 The house is a character in its own right
8:09 The thematic link to Spirited Away - honne and tatemae
8:37 Why are all these people trying to avoid being adults
9:52 Howl's adults
10:11 The coping mechanisms in 'Howl' don't work
10:51 Howl's learning curve from aggression to pacifism
12:15 Why Howl's "weird" ending isn't weird at all (spoiler-free)
Howl is unique in the sense that it's like a setup for a sitcom: it takes characters that have the same problem and literally puts them under one roof.
In this final video of my Introduction to Studio Ghibli Storytelling series, I reveal:
* how Miyazaki seamlessly integrates fairy tale storytelling with archetypal mythology
* the interview quote that sheds some light on the perspective to apply when watching this film
* the big reason why the characters don't want to grow up and how that ties into Miyazaki's lifelong anti-war stance
* and how the ending is actually not that weird if you pay attention to how the film sets up its storylines
And don't forget to grab the Studio Ghibli Secrets guide over at my website www.followthemoonrabbit.com !
Video credits
Written and performed by Adam Dobay
Recorded by Livia Farkas
Editing by Gabi Trost and Eszter Vermes
Special thanks to Flick Beckett and the Duke of York's cinema staff
Timestamps:
0:00 How Hayao Miyazaki matures as a director
0:30 How Miyazaki matures as a director
1:40 Things to look out for in Howl on subsequent viewings
2:05 Why Myazaki references his own earlier films
3:05 "In reality, I often forget about the children"
3:40 Coming of age stories in earlier Miyazaki films
4:16 A film whose characters actively avoid becoming adults
4:45 Sophie - the girl who leapt through adulthood
5:11 Howl - the person permanently stuck as an adolescent
5:58 Markl - the boy who had to grow up too quickly
6:18 Calcifer - the fire demon with an existential crisis
7:00 Heen - the dog with the blink-and-you'll-miss-it storyline
7:26 The house is a character in its own right
8:09 The thematic link to Spirited Away - honne and tatemae
8:37 Why are all these people trying to avoid being adults
9:52 Howl's adults
10:11 The coping mechanisms in 'Howl' don't work
10:51 Howl's learning curve from aggression to pacifism
12:15 Why Howl's "weird" ending isn't weird at all (spoiler-free)
Переглядів: 22 983
Відео
Spirited Away: growing up in modern Japan
Переглядів 4,5 тис.5 років тому
As his career progresses, Hayao Miyazaki just keeps piling on the complexity of his films, and trying to see how many characters, plotlines and themes he can put in there and get himself out of it - and every time he manages to pull it off so effortlessly, he creates another masterpiece. Like with Totoro, don't even get me started on those 'rumours' about 'what Spirited Away is really about'. F...
The many layers of Princess Mononoke
Переглядів 13 тис.5 років тому
By the time they started making Princess Mononoke, Studio Ghibli was a big name - but their reputation was based on the cute fuzzy Totoro toys they were selling. Hayao Miyazaki, being quite irritated at the simplification of his work, set out to make a film that revisit's My Neighbour Totoro's themes through a more mature lens, more directly asks the question, "What decisions are we making as i...
How Kiki's Delivery Service grounded the Magical Girl genre
Переглядів 2,5 тис.5 років тому
With Kiki's Delivery Service, writer-director Hayao Miyazaki took a close look at the modern and peculiarly Japanese genre, the "mahou shoujo", or "magical girl", and how to use this genre as not only a vehicle for female empowerment but how to ground the magical girl's adventure in a peacetime setting where there are no enemies to defeat but there is a balance to be struck between following yo...
Totoro is underrated: the mythology & meaning behind the film explained
Переглядів 20 тис.5 років тому
My Neighbor Totoro is regarded as one of the more simple Studio Ghibli films. It's actually one of the most complex. On the surface, it really is about two young girls meeting a fluffy forest creature and having some fantastic fun in the Japanese countryside. Below that surface, there's a lot more going on if you know a bit about Japanese mythology and how this film connects to the studio's com...
The secret link between Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbour Totoro
Переглядів 5 тис.5 років тому
Grave of the Fireflies is known both as "the greatest anti-war film ever made" and "saddest animated film ever made", but there is a link between this film and Hayao Miyazaki's iconic "My Neighbour Totoro" that Western audiences usually completely missed because of the way these films were brought to the West in the first place. In this video, Film analyst and Ghibli geek Adam Dobay reveals the...
Totoro has been inspired from panda kopanda and peter pan
Excellent talk.
THAT WAS WONDERFUL! great for our current times… The world is entering its collective Fireflies stage… …we must prepair for its Totoro stage.
Totoro is the most boring waste of time movie I’ve ever had to sit through watching. Absolute trash.
Such an amazing analysis, thank you so much for your work. Truly inspiring.
If we see how long, how many generations, it has taken, for the Japanese to process their collective trauma, can we imagine how the kind of collective 70 year trauma the people in Palestine is still experiencing now. Mind blowing. Sobering as well about how we can decide what we want to do to create the society that could have been and can be.
What a great talk, you should share more analysis about the films!
Fireflies made such a big impression on me... I feel that its a tragedy in two senses, the tragedy happens because the kids didnt have support from society and didn't had a parental figure or a guide... Also it happens because of the misery that war generates. Its heartbreaking the more you analyze it.
Thank you for your analysis no wonder totoro is my healing film .
Which one is your favourite Ghibli movie?
Ooooohhohohohho, thank you for asking this most intriguing of questins! :D I've long given up on picking just one. I think with Miyazaki's work being so varied and so deep, my resonance with each of them has changed over time. Not to mention that the world has changed a lot since these films were made and I myself have gone through many different layers of understanding who I am as the decades have gone by. As I write this I've watching these films for 25 years, and many films have grown in my eyes, Spirited Away and Howl being two which I didn't connect to that deeply twenty years ago but I feel much more connection to them now. If I had to choose the one scene that has had the most impact on me, that would be Totoro's culmination in the tree rebirth ceremony (that I talk about in my Totoro video) that gained more and more layers as time went on. But the film which has gone through the most transformation in my experience of it has to be Nausicaä. When I first saw Nausicaä as a teenager, it was a beautifully drawn adventure film for me, the art and the music and the story was calling out to me but I did not yet know what to do with it. In my twenties, as I studied Campbell, Jung, Buddhism and Shinto, I started to grasp how deep the folklore and mythology of it is and started to look at the film as Nausicaä looks up at how deep and tall the crystallised forest is. Later I started to connect deeply with the film's therapeutic theme on the loss of 'mother' (symbolically and in real terms), and the related theme of having to work through childhood trauma through self-reliance. And when I did a big podcast special about the film at the end of the last decade it started feeling almost prophetic with how the world was going. And then 2020 happened, and the changes from that have yet to settle for me to be able to re-evaluate what Nausicaä says to me now. Hope that answers your question :)
@@followthemoonrabbit thank you very much for your reply! It was deep and thorough, just like your reviews. As for me my favourite studio Ghibli film is and will always be Porco Rosso. It's the most underrated Ghibli movie in my opinion. Unlike the other ones is far simpler, lighthearted and doesn't contain profound themes of environmentalism or capitalism, but it has grown to me the most probably because I share those qualities as well as a person XD The other films call out to me in the same way they did with you but without all those reviews to draw upon I would be lost. Nausicaa is my second favourite Ghibli film and yes it was damn right prophetic. Perhaps Miyazaki is a prophet among the mangakas lol 🤭 I love Miyazaki's films so much cuz I strongly share his notions with regards to respecting the nature and I too despise war. I wanted to say thank you for your reviews and also congratulate you about them! Keep up the great work 💪
How do you spell the professor's name?
I don't think I've watched Totoro more than five times, the last time well over twenty years ago. I think I've only seen it in Japanese without subtitles and the Fox dub. I've watched GotF multiple times introducing it to friends. I knew about the double-feature release but never attempted to draw any parallels especially having not watched Totoro in so many years. I will have to do a rewatch with different eyes!
11:37 Tell that the US goverment xD
This was a very well thought out assessment. Thank you
My husband and I absolutely bawled our eyes out watching this video. He's very into WW2 history, and I'm very into Japanese history. We watched this video right after watching Totoro the first time, and it could not be more perfect. ❤ Thank you for answering all my questions, and then some.
This film has always resonated with me as someone who moved to a different country. From having to buy new pots and pans to feeling lonely and isolated. I adore this film, it was a great comfort to me during those lonely times. Thank you for this video!
Wow that analysis was GOOD! Thanks!!! I love geeking out over the inner details of movies, and this was incredibly satisfying
So this explain why Totoro my neighbor has more depth than Wakanda forever
I am Totoro for someone hope someone will be mine.
I am writing a 4000 word essay on Spirited Away and this is a MASSIVE help, thanks so much for doing this talk!
I need more clarity on something... Specifically when howl throws a tantrum about not feeling life worth living after his hair changed orange. Was that vanity or am I missing something about the character....? :^| just to be clear...plz if anyone can explain
This video deserves more views.
*looks at thumbnail* WOOOO HOOOOO!!!!!!! Sailor moon is there!!!
I would love to hear a talk from you about all the topics you mentioned at the end--the name seal, shinto origins of the characters, etc Ive been going through your playlist of ghibli analyses and each video is so well researched and presented, and fascinating!
Look at all my many friends pretty set let's go
Thank you for this insight. Especially about the mushroom cloud/healing tree switch up. Really interesting!
I just cannot believe how you could draw the connection to grave of the fireflies. And speaking of grave of fireflies i have try to forgotten the movie since it was too dramatic and depressing for me. I had a depression state for a full 1 week after watching that. Even watching you connect both two movies made me a little bit depressed by watching some of its scene
Let me just say that this is the best breakdown of Howls Moving Castle I've seen on here. I watched it once about a year ago and didn't understand most of it but recently it's grown on me, I can't stop watching it. Thank you!
love this movie, thanks
I've seen both of these films many times, but I saw fireflies for the first time several years after totoro, and I never made these connections. You've really opened my eyes to appreciate them on a very different level.
Thank you for your comment! This is exactly why I do these talks. :)
What is the part one of Miyazaki egg trilogy?
The first is Laputa: Castle in the Sky -- in the mines, Pazu and Sheeta split a fried egg on a piece of bread. The second fried egg is in Howl's breakfast and the third fried egg is in the absolutely delicious looking ramen that Sosuke's mother Lisa makes in Ponyo. I don't know of other fried eggs in Miyazaki films so I've jokingly named them the Miyazaki Egg Trilogy. And if you watch all three of the scenes together, the effect is that you'll probably want to eat fried eggs. :)
@@followthemoonrabbit thanxx
This should really have more views
I know right? I'm always surprised how little traction Kiki gets next to the Big Three (Howl, Mononoke and Totoro).
@@followthemoonrabbit I meant your video deserves more views. But yes, Kiki is underrated. I think it’s because the English dubbed version is that much worse than the subtitled original. I just saw it in theaters again and was reminded of how much better the voice acting is, how much the dialogue was changed and how much better the pacing is with certain scenes being lengthened for a few seconds at a time.
@@ghiblinerd6196 Oh, thank you, that's very kind. It is true though so far that the view rate of the videos on my channel roughly correspond to the relative popularity of each film in the English speaking regions that I know of. That said, it's a great point you make about how the popularity of the films also correspond to the quality of their dubs, and most English language viewers will watch these films dubbed -- not unsurprising as most people under 10 will not prefer original language with subtitles :). And Kiki's dubbing is especially problematic both with the tonal changes and the re-edits. I mean it never ceases to baffle me what audacity they must have had to take a finished film meticulously edited to perfection and cut out bits here and there for arbitrary reasons...
@@followthemoonrabbit all it takes is holding the camera on kikis introspective face for an extra two or three seconds to let the viewer know that she’s grappling with internal conflict and not just being an annoying angsty teen, and as much as I like Phil Hartman, hearing his deep voice coming out of a tiny cute cat is oddly out of place. When they got Andy richter to play the kings assistant in The Cat Returns, that was an odd choice too but at least he tried to pitch up his voice to sound more diminutive like the original (Japanese) female voice actor
This story could easily have taken place in postwar England, France or Germany, or any country with a long folklore tradition and agricultural history and rushed from rural to modernist culture in the same decade. One country it probably couldn't take place, sadly, is the USA - most Americans haven't been living there long enough to build up any ancient folk traditions similar to the ones in Japan that inspired this movie.
my nickname's Kiki, I'm 23 and just graduated 1 month ago. I've watched almost all Ghibli's movies, over and over. Lately, I've seen Kiki is just like me, trying to find out what to do, the loneliness (when she lost her magic), and everything else :")
Great analysis. I do disagree though with the notion that Totoro is supposed to be the "fantasy" where Fireflies is the reality. From the way the two films are presented, both films are just as much about reality as they are fantasy. Fireflies is supposed to take place in 1940s Japan, showcasing the collapse of societal order, while Totoro takes place in 1950s Japan during the rebuilding and healing stage. And the healing and rebuilding that occurred in the countryside did occur as it did in the movie Totoro. Just because there is a cute and fluffy magical creature, doesn't mean that it's not a reflection of reality.
That's exactly how I taught these films in the first 5-6 years before I met Dr. Shiraishi who I quote in this video as well as the Totoro one. Obviously I can't personally speak to what the Japanese countryside looked like in the 1950s (for the two reasons that I wasn't there at the time and also I wasn't born yet). So I saw these films also as a death and rebirth of Japanese society during and after the war. However, my view on the landscape of Totoro changed fundamentally when she told me that realised Totoro is a fantasy film not when the magical creatures arrived, but much earlier when the children arrived in the very beginning of the film, with plentiful rice fields where in reality there was still famine and not nearly enough rice to go around. The healthy state of the rice fields alone signalled fantasy to her, a world that could have been instead of the world that was -- that stuck with me ever since. And I guess this is one element that you can only really notice if you studied that time period extensively or you actually grew up there.
Haven’t seen an analysis this well-expresses and delving on points that other video essays missed entirely. Amazing video 👍
great analysis, although you should definitely give the english dub a chance i think its fantastic and Christian Bale's Howl is surprising good
I love Totoro so much.
I came in here after seeing the growing tree in Totoro just because it was an obvious symbol. I was not sure if it was a mushroom cloud or not but now that I know the movies are mirrors of each others it seems kind of obvious :)
Exactly! It's one of those "you cannot unsee it" moments. And I'd know, I had seen the film at least 35 times before I learned this about it, and never made the connection.
I thought it said "... People that don't want to GROUP up" and clicked immediately 🤣
Ahahahaha... well. They're certainly not a superhero team voluntarily coming together in a time of crisis -- but they're also not a group of rugged detectives forced to team up by their captain when they just want to work alone. :D They end up together in a much more organic way, over time, and they really only become a "group" by the end. I'd characterise their early reaction to each other to be close to "bemused neutral" more than anything else, especially when Howl first meets Sophie in the house. "Oh, you're here, well, that's weird, but okay, let's have breakfast." A good Japanese example of a story of people that don't want to group up but do it anyway would be Cowboy Bebop. Or Evangelion. :D
no body want to be adults
Brilliant
Subscribed.
Thank you so much for doing this.
I feel iluminated by this analysis
Wow, thank you! <3
Same, it was fantastic!
This is beautiful. Subbed to you man.
The seriousness and the attention to detail as well as the maturity of these films is something we don’t get in the west, essentially what I get from the story is that it takes an intelligent individual (the popular term used now a days is sigma males) to understand what true love is.
I don't think they have to become each other's therapists but it's more like they help guide each other through the things they aren't facing and finding themselves. In our lives as we go on, isn't that the exact same role of our friends and family? I did like you exposing the parallels to therapy, however.
I loved this! Thank you.
Just watched the movie and then came here to watch this, cried during the movie and cried here again. Your interpretation and the way you present it, lightly and good-humouredly, really did the movie justice. As a young woman having to face new adult problems, your analysis touched a tender part of me and I am grateful I had the opportunity to hear what you had to say.