Gone Ghibly

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

So, I should write a post, but I’m feeling downright peculiar. I think I’m coming down with whatever is going around. It’s that or the thyroid meds suddenly stopped working (Honestly, could be either.)

Normally I’d spend till 2 pm writing a post, but we have guests coming this weekend and the house must be useable. Okay, no way the front room is getting done. That’s where I’m unpacking the library. However it is a goal not to put everything that doesn’t fit the rest of the house in there.

Honestly, just dusting, running the vaccuum and sorting laundry is going to be a chore.

So:

1-why is everyone on line suddenly making pictures in the style of Studio Ghibly?

2-Is it a bastardization of the studio’s art?

3- Why is everyone putting it on memes?

4- Can it be taken too far?

5 – OMG Sarah, why?

1- Well, so far this is our best guess:

2- Yes. Absolutely. And? Look at it this way, Studio Ghibli is getting more publicity than it’s had in…. well. than it’s ever had. If it’s somewhat smart, it can make money from this.

3- This is my best guess:

4- oh, Lord, yes.

5- Did you see the thing up top? Right now I’m coming down with something bad. I thought I was just very depressed (had some bad and utterly unexpected health news for someone in birth family. No, not parents. They’re in their nineties bad news is not unexpected.) Then yesterday I found myself just watching endless stupid you tube videos about lost civilizations and catastrophes.

I’ll grant you it’s not so bad as when I spent a 2 months last winter watching videos of someone walking through cemeteries and talking about old graves. But then again, I’m hopefully not as ill as I was back then. I hope. Since that almost put me in the hospital and whacked my thyroid. (Which would explain why my hair is falling out again.)

Instead it was an endless array of “why the CIA is suppressing proof of Atlantis.” (I mean for all I know the CIA thinks it is. I mean, they believed that the Soviet Union was unbeatable!)

But once I realized I was doing that, I decided to Ghibli myself. Which, yes, I do realize is restricted in five states and illegal in New Jersey. But there it is…

The results are …. weird. I mean, it strangely does better at this than at doing a pen and ink sketch of me. It only Ghiblis me alone, though. If I try to use one in which I’m with Dan, it either turns him into a bunny or a giant Pikachu. Why? I DON’T KNOW. Studio Ghibli have something against mathematician?

Anyway, here’s what I got other than the picture above:

It looks more like M. C. A. Hogarth!
This one doesn’t look very far off me at about 26 or so….

The last might be my favorite. I’m fighting an urge to replace my icon with it on all social media, honestly.

Okay. I’m going to quick-clean the house then take a long nap. Maybe when I wake I’ll feel better.

See you after the Ghiblificallypse.

120 thoughts on “Gone Ghibly”

  2. I need to go find this thing and make a ghiblified Sith Kermit saying: Dew it!

    On a complete tangent, I would buy a Studio Ghibli version of The Hobbit. That book has the right vibe for it, I think.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Heh.
      Do I have news for you.

      The animated version of The Hobbit was made by the studio that later became Ghibli.

      Look at the watercolor backgrounds, and you’ll see it.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Studio Ghibli makes movies. I don’t think they have much control over where/when those movies are shown, or in what combinations. That would be up to the distributors and theater chains.

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    2. Yeah that is kind of evil. At least in early 2000’s had the rights to displaying Studio Ghibli (in particular Hayao Miyazaki’s films) in the US though I don’t think Disney ever optioned Grave of the Fireflies. That said Totoro is not without strain (SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!) it has the extremely ill (Tuberculosis perhaps, Miyazaki uses that theme in at least one other place) Mother giving us classic Disney like separation from the parent(s) and the near loss of the younger daughter Mei (which does bring a reprise of one of the most favored Totoro characters, the Catbus). It is perhaps NOT for younger children, it can be stressful if they are emotionally sensitive.

      I do remember someone rating movies for their small child stress factor in the unit of bambis with Disney’s Bambi (and its effect on an average 5 year old) being the basis of the unit. The Grave of the Fireflies was rated at 7 !!! bambis, the highest I remember seeing. This rating is unsurprising with its scenes of WWII Japan (Kobe?) and firebombing. Miyazaki’s art is NOT necessarily meant for children. It is gorgeous though and I have blue rays of My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Howl’s Moving Castle which I think surpass even the best of Disney’s work like Fantasia or SLeeping Beauty. Someday I’ll gird my loins and watch the whole of Fireflies, but likely not with Wife or daughters present :-) .

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        1. It may be Toddler crack, but it is also animation fan boy crack. The backgrounds alone are worth the price of admission. It matches and even surpasses peak golden age Disney for backgrounds.

          And yes, we don’t take Satsuki and Mei’s dad Prof. Kusekabe out and shoot him nor do we lose mom in a forest fire (I had horrible fire nightmares as a kid from that for years thank you very much Mr. Disney :-) ) but the parental separation thing is strong. Like Disney, Miyazaki does this ALL THE TIME . Witness Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Spirited Away at a minimum. But Disney did do it first, I mean how much more dysfunctional can you get than a step mother ordering the huntsman to bring back her step daughters heart in a box although perhaps the Bros. Grimm are ultimately to blame for that. It is like you can’t have great animation without some horrific familial stress. And yes let’s not go into Watership Down or the Secret of NIMH.

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        1. Indeed it looks like Miyazaki was a toddler when he was in Utsunomiya and it was bombed near the end of WWII. Also interesting is that his mother suffered from Tuberculosis in the 1947-1955 period so is quite probably the source of Miyazaki’s tendency to have female characters with tuberculosis( Totoro, The Wind Rises ). Amazing that such horrible situations would give rise to such transcendent beauty.

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        1. Having listened to bits and bobs of the book when my wife got an audio version on libby I would say that’s true. That said Miyazaki’s interpretation is still interesting (including his inevitable anti-war rant) and as animation it is drop dead gorgeous. It is probably my favorite of the Miyazaki films (with Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service tied for 2nd).

          On the theme of animation with annoying underlying themes this year’s winner at Golden Globes and the Oscars Flow is awesome. 90 minutes with no dialogue about what appears to have been some ecological catastrophe. It’s a buddy movie with a Capybara, a black cat, a bird, a lemur, and dog like some deranged Incredible Journey, and yet it works. 90 minutes with not a word of dialogue (well, except some cat noises) and it works, heck it rocks.

          And yes if you have a cat they may watch along. My black cat saw the black cat in the movie and was riveted. He popped into my lap (which usually he DOES not do) and sat for the whole 90 minutes. His body language included a fair bit of tension in some of the scenes where the screen cat was in trouble or stressed. It was like watching a tense film with a toddler or a small child in your lap. There was far more apparent comprehension than I expect from a cat. Its on MAX streaming, It was like $9 on Amazon when I saw it.

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      1. My Neighbor Totoro is one of the greatest movies ever made, and toddler crack into the bargain.

        And I’m not the only one to think so. Akira Kurosawa, arguably the greatest filmmaker ever to live, made a list of the hundred greatest films ever made, sometime in the 1990s, and Totoro made the list.

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  5. Such great images, and it is so…not quite innocent, but they seem to come from a much better world that has much fewer fools, idiots, and morons. And most of those people are so obvious that they can be watched easily, and the rest of our time is spent doing better things in the world.

    (And yes, replace the icon.)

    Liked by 1 person

        1. Yeah. A seventy foot long dragon bouncing off the walls like some Kaiju ferret with a sugar rush is not something I ever want to see again.

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  8. OT, but I just added to Drury’s comments over on X. He doesn’t seem to realize the optics of his position work out to, “It’s different when we do it!”

    I wish I could remember the conversation my beloved had with a Canadian gentleman who builds spinning wheels in his garage (I have one. They are very good quality and as it happened I had had a part break and we discovered we were near his place. He replaced the part without question). The conversation was about the milk board and they way it routinely distorted prices and milk availability in Canada. This was back around 2012.

    As for the Ghibli, they all look good but I think I like the first one. And hope you get over the crud soon. We have all managed to get it, or some variety thereof.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I found that the more I looked at his comment, the more I went “Is he a troll or an ass?” And then I realized I didn’t care.
      Though I normally wouldn’t be that rude, except for being sick.
      And of course… that’s the comment that goes viral.

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      1. Not that you need it, but having looked at all of them again I think the last one would make a great avatar. They’re all good, mind you.

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  14. I apparently do not need to be Ghiblified. Long ago, my daughters watched My Neighbor Totoro with me (long ago enough that it was a Netflix mailed rented copy of the Disney dub). (potential Spoiler) In the scene where Mei wakes up the Totoro from his(?) sleep they decided I behaved and looked like a waking Totoro. Thus I am often identified as a Totoro by my daughters.

    Liked by 1 person

        1. I tried in ChatGPT but instead of an image it gave me a quite polite argument, as apparently its terms of service prevent it from generating such from a picture of “an actual person”, though it offered to create an image from a text prompt.

          If I’d wanted an argument I’d have asked for one.

          Grok worked first time, giving me two pictures. No arguments included.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. I did it in Grok. Uploaded a picture and asked it to Ghiblify it. The wife did one of me from the Rugby Club dinner in my Captain Kangaroo jacket. The program had some fun with that one.

        Liked by 1 person

  16. I love all the yous above. The last/youngest version just made me smile immediately. Use one! G-d bless and get well!

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Ron Howard told a great story about working with George Lucas on American Graffiti. He wanted to become a director, and asked George if he had any advice about whether film school was worth it. George answered “Yes, go to film school, and take an animation class. That way, you can make a film without any interference from the actors.”

      Howard then says “He was telling this to the lead actor of the film he was making!” I wasn’t sure if that was A Message or not.

      (Paraphrasing all of this from memory, quotes won’t be word-accurate.)

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  19. The last one looks just how a Beautiful but Not Evil Space Princess would look.

    I think you should use that one to throw the stupid and unwary off the trail. Sometimes it’s best if people don’t know with whom they are dealing.

    *bats eyes innocently

    Liked by 1 person

  20. Sure, I’ll take a crack at the questionnaire.

    1 — Because Studio Ghibli’s artistic style is beautiful and distinctive, as Disney’s once was, and this is, in part and subconsciously, a reaction to and protest against what philistines* have done to Disney.

    *I feel like I should capitalize that, but if “cretin” and “vandal” are lower-case, that is too.

    2 — Technically yes, the same way a Disney-izing meme would be, or a Simpson-izing or South Park-izing meme.

    3 — For the same reason everybody was putting J.D. Vance into memes two weeks ago. In the future, everything will be a viral meme for fifteen minutes.

    4 — Literally everything can be taken too far. If the next season of Gray’s Anatomy is done in Studio Ghibli animation style, you’ll know this meme has been taken a few light-years too far.

    5 — {Gandalf} Don’t tempt me, Sarah! {/Gandalf} I resisted the siren call of AI art once before, for someone better looking than me. (Though Ghibli-izing might–no! Stop!) I’ll resist it again, but it will hurt. Again.

    Because I could stand to be flattered that way.

    Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Literally everything can be taken too far. 

      —

      Too far?

      Was just thinking all movies could be Ghiblied. Shawshank, Pulp Fiction, Soylent Green, Urban Cowboy, The Godfather, Predator…

      :D

      Liked by 1 person

        1. Magnificent 7? So we’d have a japanimation of a cowboy film of a samurai film? Or even better Battle Beyond the Stars so we add a pseudo Star Wars layer

          Godzilla with a 300 ft tall Totoro spewing radioactive breath over Tokyo while a quarter mile long Catbus Rampages?

          The mind boggles.

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    2. As much as I enjoy Toy Story, there is one thing that drives me nuts about it: it seems to be the thing that ushered in the “3D CGI all the things!!!!!1!!!1!” era.

      I like 3D animation (at least when it’s done right) — but I also like the aesthetics of good 2D animation. Sadly, not only has all the new stuff been 3D animated … but Disney in particular thought they needed to make photorealistic “live action” versions of all their animated stuff — which is still beautiful in its own right!

      Well, maybe beautiful isn’t always the right word — things like the “Aristocats” can’t really be called “beautiful” — but the animation style nonetheless has a certain charm to it that you can’t get with 3D CGI. I nonetheless can’t help but wonder if that charm can’t be duplicated with animated 3D models — indeed, I strongly suspect it would be relatively easy — so I doubt “it’s technically easier” isn’t the real reason that we’ve gone down this road.

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      1. (Just to clarify, since editing isn’t an option, I meant the 2D animation is beautiful, not the “live action” stuff, some of which has been pure nightmare fuel.)

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Shortly after they bought Pixar, Disney closed their 2D animation department and sacked everybody. “2D animation is sooo 20th century, you know. 3D is Moar Bettah!”

        Then they proceeded to make ‘Home On The Range’ and ‘Chicken Little’ which BOTH SUCKED!! and not because they were in 3D. They were shitty movies that would have sucked just as bad in 2D.

        Just like $300 million in special effects couldn’t save ‘The Last Jedi’ from its shitty script.

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          1. Oh, that’s right, I remember now. Disney put out ‘Home On The Range’ and it bombed. They blamed it on the 2D animation. “Nobody wants to watch 2D animation any more!” So they shut down their 2D animation shop and made ‘Chicken Little’ in 3D. Which also bombed. None of the executroids could figure out why. Because they were both shitty movies, that’s why! Specific animation technology had nothing to do with it!

            Disney is still trying to put different shades of lipstick on their pigs and wondering why nobody’s buying.

            Liked by 1 person

        2. I read somewhere that (1) in the early 2000s, they flooded the market with direct-to-DVD sequels that made audiences think of 2D animation as cheap, and (2) there was an internal power struggle at Disney that led to the sabotage and closure of the 2D division. No clue if that’s true, but it would make sense.

          I’d love to see a 2D renaissance. Japan’s been killing it with stuff like Your Name, and Klaus was a nice treat, but there’s still a gap in the market.

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  21. Sorry Sarah. I’ve never liked Tolkien or that genre. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the nearest thing to it I’ve liked.

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  22. Wow. Wife walked in and said that last looks just like our future DIL – and it does.

    Can call her that now for a while; big tough Marine finally screwed up the courage to ask. Wedding in August…

    Liked by 2 people

    2. Great! Hoping our son and his current squeeze get the same idea. (She has bumper stickers showing silhouette of various semi-automatic rifles).

      Liked by 1 person

  24. You look…ummm…

    different. Like you don’t remember when a certain former governor of Arkansas was President because you weren’t born yet.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Each Memorial weekend, I place a little plastic flower on each grave (many unmarked) in our little township cemetery. Most died before I was born. But is a warm spring day with the lilac scent in the air and the bluebirds singing. Friends I have never known. I like to think they wait for me, knowing they are not forgotten

      n our little township cemetery.

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      1. Where we spend the weekend before Memorial Day, that Saturday anyway. Cleanup – mowing, cleaning gravestones, etc. Plus annual meeting (& potluck) regarding the graveyard. Used to be an all day event, but these days the state grant funding pays for a family member to mow (that has a landscaping business) throughout the year which helps keep the weeds, grass, and most important blackberries and poison oak, down. Keeps the annual cleanup to few hours instead.

        Dad’s grave is the spot (ish) where the red flowers can be seen. Grandparents two rows up to the right (blue flowers, I think, though that could be grandma’s brother and his wife), same row.

        Jesse Applegate Historical Cemetery north of Yoncolla, Oregon, on private ranch. Not to be confused with the (now) public Charles Applegate, and Masonic, cemeteries in Yoncolla, Oregon.

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  28. Why?
    “New toy!”
    “Ohh! Shiny!”
    “Shiny? Where’s the shiny? Oooooh!”
    “I can top that!”

    Why Ghilbli?

    Because there’s exactly (photorealistic), there’s not quite per-zactly (eh, it’s AI, and looks more like oil painting), and then there’s Miya-zaki.

    Liked by 1 person

  30. Sadly only Ghibli I watched was Kikis Delivery service and there was something about it that made me forget most of it. Most anime movies are too…..downer.

    On an upbeat note, Our Hostess talked about the Scrooge McDuck Don Rose masterpiece. I dug it up and read most of it. A work of art and love. I always remembered the Christmas eve bear story which he mentioned. Its why I like Scrooge. Also watched Ducktales with my kids and Darkwing Duck. Labors of fun of love.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. And Spirited Away. Laputa was okay, but Spirited Away is incredible. I’d probably rate it Ghibli’s best work (though I haven’t seen their most recent 2-3 — harder to watch movies when you have young kids, these days we just collapse into bed once the kids are sleep — so if there’s a recent one that’s even better than Spirited Away, please let me knw).

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        1. Laputa seems to have the title Castle In the Sky in the Disney releases (that titles a subhead in the older copies, I’ve only seen the Disney releases).

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        2. Spirited Away is my favorite, followed by Princess Mononoke and then Howl’s Moving Castle. General consensus is that those are the top three, in whatever order suits your taste.

          Spirited Away can be a bit of an acquired taste. There’s a lot going on, the fantasy rules don’t make sense at first glance, and it takes a lot of inspiration from Japanese folklore. But it’s in the running for the most beautiful movie ever made, the story is deeply fulfilling, and you catch new details every time you watch it. A masterpiece.

          Castle in the Sky might actually be one of the better Ghibli starter movies. It touches on a lot of the ideas and visuals seen in other Ghibli movies, but it’s a self-contained adventure that’s pretty easy to get into. Nausicaa has similar appeal, but it’s a bit more melancholy.

          Incidentally, these are worth catching these in theaters if you can. They screen most of them once per year under the banner “GhibliFest”. The 2025 schedule isn’t out yet, but it should be soon.

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        3. RE: Recent Ghibli. The Wind Rises is a serious period piece/biography about aviation in 1930s Japan. Solid craftsmanship, but bittersweet at best, and not much fantasy outside a few dream sequences.

          The Boy and the Heron is impressive but challenging. It’s like a darker, male version of Spirited Away with a lot of abstract themes, a stranger world, and some reflections on Miyazaki’s career. Worth a watch at some point, but I’m still not sure I “get” it.

          Earwig and the Witch is a skip unless you’re really curious. Cute moments and a kid-friendly story, but half-baked. There’s a lot of setup that doesn’t go anywhere.

          Not Ghibli, but Mary and the Witch’s Flower might be worth a watch. It’s very much Imitation Ghibli in terms of style and quality, and it never quite reaches timelessness, but it’s very pretty and scratches the “lush fantasy world” itch.

          Also, if you haven’t seen The Castle of Cagliostro, check it out. Early Miyazaki with a fun adventure plot and a surprising number of visual connections to his later work.

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          1. The Boy and the Heron uses kimono pattern symbolism as an important visual clue to what’s going on. Among other things. You don’t have to know it, but it helps.

            Basically, Miyazaki challenges you to watch, absorb, and decide what is going on, after you have seen the whole movie. I expect he wants people to watch it again at some point.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Yeah, I’m going to have to do a deep dive on it at some point. I only saw it the one time in theaters and liked it, but walked away confused. There’s definitely more to it I’m not getting.

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