Miyazaki and Takahata left Toei in 1971 to work in a number of companies producing television animation, although fortuitously within the next 10 years both would get another crack at the big screen. Along the way he encounters avalanches, giant pikes, plagues of rats and his nemesis’ fearsome army of snow wolves, before rallying enough troops from among the villagers to take up arms against their destructive oppressor.Īlthough Takahata clearly achieved his aim in creating something more spectacular, more dramatic and more cinematic than the typical kids-oriented fare his employers at Toei were then focusing on, the over-budget production and disputes within the company due to the pair’s involvement with the labour union resulted in only a minor release for the film.
It’s unsurprising, then, that the hallmarks of the Ghibli style are so clearly visible in this tale of a young Norse prince’s quest, along with his talking pet bear sidekick, to free his ancestral village from the demonic clutches of the evil sorcerer Grunwald.
Little Norse Prince was also the first time Miyazaki worked alongside Takahata, here in the role of key animator. With both serving their time initially on cheaper-to-produce television animation, it’s interesting to note that it was Takahata who was first given the opportunity to direct a full-length theatrical animation, some 10 years before his more widely-hailed confrere. Studio Ghibli’s two founding directors, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, first met while working at Toei Animation during the 1960s, the studio whose establishment in 1956 effectively marks the beginning of animated feature filmmaking in Japan. Little Norse Prince (Taiyô no ôji: Horusu no daibôken, 1968) We cast our eyes over 10 emblematic examples of big-screen anime easily available in the UK. The breadth in anime style and subject matter makes the field such a fascinating one to explore – but where to even start?! Hollywood too has played its role in anime’s mainstreaming with, for example, the animated homage contained within Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume 1 (2003) and The Animatrix (2003) anthology released straight-to-video to tie in with the Wachowskis’ The Matrix Reloaded (2003).Įach of the recommendations included here is available to view in the UK.īut what exactly is ‘anime’? It’s clear that the term broadly refers to something quite distinct from a catchall term for ‘Japanese animation’, yet still intrinsically Japanese. In the meantime, the works of such feted directors as Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Oshii and Satoshi Kon have been discussed with a critical seriousness unimaginable even a decade ago.
Animation and its cross-market tie-ins of video games, manga comics, trading cards and other collectibles currently rank among Japan’s top cultural exports.Ī whole new generation has now grown up with franchises like Pokémon, Digimon and Doraemon.
Nowadays anime’s international audience has expanded considerably from the niche ‘otaku’ fanbase of the 1990s, first hooked on such titles as Akira (1988) and the Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-96) series. Still, it’s easy to forget it was not so long ago that any discussion of Japanese animation was almost invariably introduced with the ‘east is east’ caveat that while commercial animation in the west has traditionally been viewed as an entertaining diversion, and mainly the domain of children, in Japan they do things differently. There can surely be few people nowadays unfamiliar with the term ‘anime’.