Isao Takahata
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Spirited Away (2001)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
influenced The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013), Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
For years Miyazaki has been the international face of Ghibli, with such critical and commercial hits as Spirited Away (2001), Howl's Moving Castle (2004), and The Wind Rises (2013).
The director Isao Takahata, who co-founded with Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) the storied Studio Ghibli brand, is no slouch with a pen.
The film is directed by Isao Takahata, a longtime collaborator with Hayao Miyazaki who brought us such masterworks as Princess Mononoke , Spirited Away , and Howl's Moving Castle .
It's actually no surprise that the tradition-revering Academy would favour this delicate, handcrafted work, which showcases the exemplary draughtsmanship of its director Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies), a co-founder of Studio Ghibli alongside the more renowned Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, The Wind Rises).
Hayao Miyazaki was responsible for the studio’s international breakthrough in 2001 with Spirited Away, a fantasy so indelibly cuckoo that it makes Alice in Wonderland look like Cathy Come Home.
The oldest of Japanese folk stories (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) gets an elegant and enchanting screen adaptation in this meticulous animation by Isao Takahata, the 78-year-old co-founder with Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) of Studio Ghibli.
As is, it's something more akin to Studio Ghibli's own Grave of the Fireflies in its humanizing of a man whose dreams were corrupted into something terrible.
Seriously, as feeling more conscious of its overlooked dark side, now I wonder whether my viewing of this film could have been improved by a double feature show with other Japanese animation " Grave of the Fireflies " (1988).
Yet just as with Isao Takahata’s “Grave of the Fireflies,” about two children surviving amid the terrors of World War II, it would be hard to argue that the subject of Mr. Miyazaki’s film was cavalierly seized upon.
Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
influenced The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013)
Visuals
It comes from Japan's Studio Ghibli, makers of "Howl's Moving Castle" and so many other plaintive animated wonders.
For years Miyazaki has been the international face of Ghibli, with such critical and commercial hits as Spirited Away (2001), Howl's Moving Castle (2004), and The Wind Rises (2013).
The film is directed by Isao Takahata, a longtime collaborator with Hayao Miyazaki who brought us such masterworks as Princess Mononoke , Spirited Away , and Howl's Moving Castle .
The studio’s film catalog is a true embarrassment of riches with (though not limited to) “Grave of the Fireflies,” “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” “Princess Mononoke,” “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “The Wind Rises.”
This adaptation of the 10th-century Japanese folk tale Taketori Monogatari (which has previously inspired such cinematic adventures as Kon Ichikawa’s live-action Princess from the Moon) boasts a sketchier, more impressionistic palette than the bold strokes of Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle, which made Ghibli a global brand .
With the help of Ghibli’s artists and technicians—supervised by Grave Of The Fireflies / The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya director Isao Takahata— The Red Turtle is both minimalist and vividly rendered, from the computer-animated waves to the well-articulated hand-drawn human figures.
The Red Turtle is a collaboration between the Dutch animator Michael Dudok de Wit, who won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 2001 with Father and Daughter, and the revered Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli, whose 80-year-old co-founder Isao Takahata (1988's Grave of the Fireflies) is credited as the movie's "artistic producer".
As he related in an interview at Cannes, the animator got an out-of-the-blue message from Studio Ghibli co-founder and legendary Japanese director Isao Takahata (“The Tale of Princess Kaguya,” “Grave of the Fireflies”) offering him the chance to be the first non-Japanese animator to make a film for the revered studio.
With the help of Studio Ghibli (who counts this film as their first care of a non-Japanese filmmaker) and Grave of the Fireflies director Isao Takahata, writer-director Michaël Dudok de Wit has spent the past ten years crafting something of a pure animated film—“essential” cinema in that it’s boiled down to its essentials.
Ghibli co-founder and director Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies) helped Dudok de Wit expand his vision into a feature-length work, and his appreciation for eloquent details can be seen in the final product — though Dudok de Wit makes sure to clarify that neither he nor Takahata were emulating the look and feel of other Ghibli productions with The Red Turtle.
Thematically, apart from Pete Docter’s introspective Inside Out , this feels much more in line with Isao Takahata’s wheelhouse, particularly Only Yesterday .
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
influenced The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013), Only Yesterday (1991)
The studio’s film catalog is a true embarrassment of riches with (though not limited to) “Grave of the Fireflies,” “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” “Princess Mononoke,” “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “The Wind Rises.”
That means Ghibli loyalists won't have to suffer any flashbacks to the compromised versions of My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service that circulated in America in the ’80s and ’90s before stricter quality controls were put in place.
Directly preceded by two of the studio’s most memorable animated films – My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service – Only Yesterday was helmed by The Tale of the Princess Kaguya’s Isao Takahata, who co-founded Studio Ghibli with partner Hayao Miyazaki.
Isao Takahata’s 1991 Only Yesterday was not Ghibli’s first feature, however; it was preceded by Hayao Miyazaki’s 1986 Castle in the Sky, Takahata’s brutal war drama Grave of the Fireflies and Miyazaki’s fluffy merchandising bonanza My Neighbor Totoro (a pairing that Ghibli had the perverse backbone to originally release as a double feature in 1988), and Miyazaki’s 1989 Kiki’s Delivery Service.
As is, it's something more akin to Studio Ghibli's own Grave of the Fireflies in its humanizing of a man whose dreams were corrupted into something terrible.
I'd argue that stuff like Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies or even Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima does a fair to excellent job at it, but Truffaut has a point.
My Life as a Zucchini (2016)
Directed by Claude Barras
influenced by Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Themes
Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies is a timeless example; it’s hard to imagine the story of two young children slowly starving in the war-torn Japanese countryside told through the human bodies of young actors.
Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)
Directed by Travis Knight
influenced by Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Themes
The film does feel startlingly personal, and much like the great Grave of the Fireflies (1988) and Pixar’s Up (2009) before it, Kubo and the Two Strings treats its audience with utmost respect, taking them on an exhilarating adventure while shining a light into the darkest corners of the human experience.
Though utterly simplistic, “Persepolis” recounts the epic war time heartbreak and black hole of violence and horror in the vein of films like “Grave of the Fireflies” and “Osama,” and it’s a film I hope gets its due someday.
The Life of Chuck (2025)
Directed by Mike Flanagan
influenced by Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Visuals
One moment, where people walk away from a significant, unseen disaster, reminded this critic of Grave of the Fireflies in how the small touches of mise-en-scène convey an extraordinary hopelessness born from an impossible tragedy.
Nobody Knows (2004)
Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda
influenced by Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Themes
Lyrical, lovely, the picture is as stunning a document of youth as Isao Takahata's anime war idyll Grave of the Fireflies and successful in many of the same ways.
Yet none of this is played for sentiment, unlike similar scenes in Isao Takahata�s Grave of the Fireflies (1988) and Hiroshi Shimizu�s Children of the Beehive (1948).
"Only Yesterday" was scripted and directed by Miyazaki's longtime colleague and Studoio Ghibli co-founder, Isao Takahata (now 80), best-known for the 1988 anti-war "Grave of the Fireflies" and the folk-fable "Tale of the Princess Kaguya," which played at Studio on the Square for one week in 2014.
If you thought My Neighbor Totoro was a lovingly meandering exercise on small moments, Only Yesterday is the animation company’s most outright cribbing of the styles and themes of Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, offering a very Japan-centric story (the film still hasn’t been released in North America after over two decades) that’s simply a slice-of-life portrayal of a woman’s childhood in Tokyo and her time spent in the countryside as an adult.
That means Ghibli loyalists won't have to suffer any flashbacks to the compromised versions of My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service that circulated in America in the ’80s and ’90s before stricter quality controls were put in place.
Directly preceded by two of the studio’s most memorable animated films – My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service – Only Yesterday was helmed by The Tale of the Princess Kaguya’s Isao Takahata, who co-founded Studio Ghibli with partner Hayao Miyazaki.
"Only Yesterday" is the rare project of Studio Ghibli — the storied Japanese production company responsible for such masterpieces as "Spirited Away" and "My Neighbor Totoro" — to have never received a theatrical or even DVD release in the U.S., until now.
Isao Takahata’s 1991 Only Yesterday was not Ghibli’s first feature, however; it was preceded by Hayao Miyazaki’s 1986 Castle in the Sky, Takahata’s brutal war drama Grave of the Fireflies and Miyazaki’s fluffy merchandising bonanza My Neighbor Totoro (a pairing that Ghibli had the perverse backbone to originally release as a double feature in 1988), and Miyazaki’s 1989 Kiki’s Delivery Service.
In 1985, Takahata joined with Japan’s fantasy animation master Hayao Miyazaki (“My Neighbor Totoro,” “Spirited Away”) to co-found the legendary Studio Ghibli.
When Marnie Was There (2014)
Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi
influenced by Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Ever since its creation 30 years ago, Studio Ghibli has been making magic out of the moving image, so much so that it’s not a stretch to claim that today—due to the foundation laid by directors Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) and Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies)—it’s become one of the most beloved animation studios in the world.
But with Studio Ghibli – the home of Grave of the Fireflies – the bar is that little bit higher.
It doesn't have the sensational fantasy elements that other Studio Ghibli films like " Spirited Away " or " My Neighbor Totoro " have to capture your imagination and isn't nearly as captivating or heartbreaking as " Grave of the Fireflies ."
Where Is Anne Frank (2021)
Directed by Ari Folman
influenced by Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Themes
But “Where Is Anne Frank” doesn’t need to be “Grave of the Fireflies” in order to satisfy its purpose, especially when the story it tells proves to be every bit as damning as it is didactic.
It's the medium that makes something like Grave of the Fireflies what it is--ditto The Iron Giant and this year's The Red Turtle.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Themes
And this is no one tear-jerking scene like Bambi or E.T.; the poignancy hits early on, and the tears flow from the second half all the way through the end like no other war movie I can recall.