Why Studio Ghibli Movies Mean So Much to Me

I watched my first studio Ghibli movie when I was fourteen. It was Grave of the Fireflies. I hated it.

I’d heard the hype about studio Ghibli movies, especially Spirited Away, for a pretty long time. When I was fourteen, the whole hype of Japanese culture was seeping into Ireland, and when one of my best friends at the time told me that I just had to watch Grave of the Fireflies and even supplied me a DVD copy for my viewing pleasure, of course I just had to watch it.

What I didn’t expect was to spend an hour and a half bawling in my sitting room all by my lonesome. Not even an exaggeration. From the beginning to until long after the credits had rolled to their end, the tears just kept on coming.

I was never really a crier. Before Grave of the Fireflies, the only movie I had cried watching was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Even then, I had only shed a few tears. Mostly, it was more to do with how much I loved Sirius in the books than anything else. Sure, I had bawled my eyes out at the end of The Outsiders but nothing to that extent. Not for an entire hour and a half!

At fourteen, I’m pretty sure I thought that crying was some sort of a mortal sin. That as soon as you started crying, you were admitting some sort of defeat or weakness. It was, after all, the kind of thing that had been drilled into me ever since I was quite young – not just by my environment but by media and culture itself. Crying was not a positive. At fourteen, I really hated crying (though I probably did it more often than I would admit to anyone). So it’s probably not surprising that after the whole Grave of the Fireflies incident I was a little bit hesitant to go near anything studio Ghibli again.

When I did concede to giving Ghibli another try it was because many of my close friends swore by Ghibli movies. So when one of them happily lent me her DVD of Spirited Away, I hesitantly agreed to watch it.

So my first studio Ghibli movie that I actually liked was Spirited Away. I’ll be honest. At that time, I still didn’t understand animation to be the beautiful art form that it truly is. I had grown up on Disney movies, but animation in my eyes had always been for kids. I may have loved it, but it was difficult to distance myself from that perspective. Watching Spirited Away changed that. Sure, it was a strange film. I was left confused by it, but also strangely enthralled.

But the studio Ghibli love affair really started when I first watched Howl’s Moving Castle. For those of you who are unaware of the wonder that is Howl’s Moving Castle, (it follows the story of Sophie Hatter, who works as a hat maker when the Witch of the Waste comes into her shop and curses her. The curse turns Sophie into an old woman, so she sets off to the wastelands to find the Witch of the Waste in order to get back to her younger self. Instead of the Witch of the Waste, she comes across Howl’s moving castle, where a fire demon promises to help her break her curse, in return for her help in breaking the curse on him. Sophie accepts and begins to work as Howl’s housekeeper.

Most of my friends know that I’ve watched Howl’s Moving Castle dozens of times. There’s so much about the movie that just resonated from the first time I watched it. Forget the wonderful animation, the amazingly enthralling and fantastic story, the anti-war message. Even forget Howl (who’s amazing, and pretty unforgettable…). For me, it was Sophie Hatter who made the story.

Sophie Hatter is, for all intents and purposes, a “plain Jane.” That is her story. When she’s turned into an old woman, Sophie isn’t out to get revenge to get her youthful good looks back. Instead, she just wants to return to her old self, whilst still suffering from the insecurities of being a young, “plain” girl. At one point during the movie, Sophie even tells Howl, “I’ve never been beautiful for one day in my life” when Howl throws a temper tantrum about accidentally dyeing his hair.

Sophie’s motivations in this story aren’t greed or vanity, which is often the only kind of motivation offered to women in media. Instead, she is a kind and compassionate girl who simply wants to lead a normal life – but happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite her circumstances, Sophie makes the best of everything. She is a good friend to Calcifer and Howl. She’s a good caretaker of Howl’s moving castle (though he may disagree). She’s all of these things that are utterly identifiable and good. She’s the kind of character you rarely see on television or the movies, and it is that which makes her such a warm and interesting character.

More than that, I love the relationship that develops between Howl and Sophie. Rarely have I seen a relationship that is so natural and well-developed. The most important part of their relationship is that they are friends, first and foremost, who care about each other deeply. They are two people who have significant issues with themselves. Howl is vain and irresponsible at the best of times. He doesn’t even have a heart. And he’s kind of turning into a weird bird-man. Pretty serious issues. Sophie is suffering from a curse that seems unbreakable. She’s so insecure about herself that being turned into an old woman doesn’t seem to really exacerbate these insecurities. But put Howl and Sophie together? You get a beautiful friendship, full of love and understanding. These two are the epitome of couples who bring out the best in each other.

Howl’s Moving Castle is also a story that is so wonderfully told that every time I watch it, I feel like I find something that I never noticed before. There are so many layers to it. The movie doesn’t spoon feed you information. I’ve met many people who “didn’t get it” when they first watched it and gave up after that. For me, it’s the thought that goes into really figuring out the movie that makes it even more special.

These days, whenever I have a bad day, it’s Howl’s Moving Castle that I always go back to. Simply because it tells me that there are so many great things in the world, and so many great people and relationships. You can be as messed up as Howl and still find someone as wonderful as Sophie… who is as relatable as anyone! For years, a 1080p HD version of Howl’s Moving Castle was the only movie I stored on my piece of junk laptop which barely had any storage. Screw treasured photographs and whatnot, I needed to watch Howl and Sophie in high def!

Kiki’s Delivery Service is probably my second favourite Ghibli movie. I watched it soon after Howl, having heard many raving reviews of it. For those unaware, Kiki’s Delivery Service is the coming of age story of a young witch who must go off and find her own path as a witch. So she leaves behind her family, dons a black dress and sets off on her broomstick to find a new town. Her new-found independence, however, isn’t all that she had hoped it would be, and soon begins to struggle.

Kiki’s Delivery Service came into my life at exactly the right time. It was after I had spent a year in the depths of a depression that I didn’t really understand. The depression had left me incapable of writing anything for a long time. I’ve been a writer for as long as memory serves me. Writing is as important to me as my limbs – if not more. For my whole life, it’s been the whole thing that I’ve felt competent at. When I write, it’s the only time I feel heard or like I actually have a purpose in this world. Imagine having the comfort of that just suddenly disappear, and not understanding it in the slightest.

The thing about depression is that afterwards you feel kind of cheated. Out of so many things. It was like that for me anyway. And I felt angry, really, at myself and my depression. When I got back to writing – slow, stagnated writing – I found it difficult to write about my experience. I still do – though it was years in the past. But back then – when I really needed to deal with it, I couldn’t.

That where Kiki’s Delivery Service comes in. No, Kiki is not a story about a depressed witch. But it is a story about a young girl who, in trying to find her way, loses the only thing that makes her feel like herself. At a prime time in her life, Kiki loses her abilities as a witch. She can’t fly anymore. She can’t even speak to her familiar, Jiji. Worst of all, she doesn’t understand it at all. How did this happen? Is it possible to simply stop being a witch? She is morose. She loses her confidence and spunk. All things that I could relate to. All things that were far too familiar with what I had dealt with. Kiki understood what I had gone through. I understood what Kiki was going through. And we both made it out of the struggle with happy endings.

The third movie that still resonates with me, years after I watched it for the first time, is Whisper of the Heart. It isn’t one of the “popular” Ghibli movies. In fact, it isn’t made by Miyazaki. Instead, it was directed by Yoshifumi Kondo. There isn’t some grand story in Whisper of the Heart. It’s a story about a young writer, who finds a tentative attraction growing between her and a boy who makes violins.

I’ve never been one for romance stories. Or “feelgood” movies. Most of the time, they don’t make me feel good. In the slightest. Yet, there’s something strange about Whisper of the Heart that tugged at my heartstrings the first time I watched it. Maybe it was that in many ways I saw myself in Shizuku, the protagonist. She was an avid reader – just like me! She was a struggling writer – exactly like me! Watching Shizuku write her first novel right there on the screen in front of me was a kind of magic. And what happened during her attempts at writing is something I always carry with me, always think of everytime I sit down to write. At a crucial point of the movie Shizuku goes to Mr. Nishu, who plays a mentor role in the movie. Mr. Shiro takes out a geode and tells Shizuku to look inside until she can see the gems. Then he says:

“When you first become an artist, you are like that rock. You’re in a raw and natural state, with hidden gems inside. You have to dig deep down and find the emeralds tucked away inside you. And that’s just the beginning. Once you have found your gems, you have to polish them. It takes a lot of hard work.”

It’s been years since I watched that movie for the first time, but that has always stayed with me. I’m still here, trying to find the emeralds inside myself as a writer, thanks to Shizuku and her willpower.

The thing about studio Ghibli is that sometimes it tells grand and fantastical stories. Sometimes it tells simple stories, like in Whisper of the Heart. Yet the stories surround the lives of these girls and women who are so wonderfully ordinary. I have found myself relate to these characters over and over again. In the way Shizuku writes, in Sophie’s insecurities, in Kiki’s struggle for independence, in so much more. The thing is that most of media doesn’t tell the stories of girls like that. These are girls who are often kind and compassionate, motivated by various needs. These are girls who have healthy friendships and healthy relationships. These are girls who struggle in the real way that we struggle. These are the stories of real girls told in the most wonderful way possible.

Last year, I went back and watched Grave of the Fireflies for the first time since that time in my sitting room with all that bawling. Mainly, it was because a friend of mine insisted on it. Trust me, I tried to ward him off despite my love of Ghibli. I recounted to him the tale over and over again of crying in my sitting room for hours at an end.

We ended up watching the movie anyhow. This time, I didn’t cry – though I did want to at times. I’m glad I went back to it, though. What I couldn’t understand at that time when I was at the ripe age of fourteen, I understand now. It’s an important film about the devastation of Japan in WWII. Again, Ghibli does the wonderful job of telling stories that are simple in their storytelling, that are relatable in their characters but have messages that resonate with you for a long time.

I know that it is stories like this – of Kiki, Sophie, Shizuku, Seita, and Setsuko – that I will still carry with me for years to come. Their stories have given me inspiration and strength in the past, and I can only hope that in the future that’s what they will do too.