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Was Hayao Miyazaki right?

gourdcaptain said:
I need to watch... okay, I maybe should... alright I really don't want to... watch The Wind Rises sometime, because that film sounds wild (in a bad way) in terms of its politics or lack thereof as a film from every description I've heard about it. And the fact that Hideaki Anno plays the main character which is a deeply... what. decision.
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I mean in fairness you can have left-wing politics and still have a pretty cringe take on Japanese history, especially since as i understand it Japan's education of its own history is very... selective. (Not that as an American I can particularly pass judgment :V)
 
gourdcaptain said:
I need to watch... okay, I maybe should... alright I really don't want to... watch The Wind Rises sometime, because that film sounds wild (in a bad way) in terms of its politics or lack thereof as a film from every description I've heard about it. And the fact that Hideaki Anno plays the main character which is a deeply... what. decision.
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The problem with depicting controversial parts of history is that you're satisfying no one. In reaction to The Wind Rises, the left lambasted Miyazaki for sympathetically depicting a man who contributed to Imperial Japan's war machine, the right criticized him for taking a "masochistic" view on Japanese history, and the Japan Society for Tobacco Control complained that everyone in the twenties and thirties were depicted as smoking all the time.
 
So the first time I saw Princess Mononoke I was like, 12. Ashitaka was like the last Prince of the Emishi, and I thought to myself "huh, I wonder if the Emishi are a real thing," so I looked it up on like, Wikipedia or something. Turns out they were a real thing! They were a Japanese ethnic minority.

"were?"

yeah, past tense there, since like, 900 AD
 
daniel_gudman said:
So the first time I saw Princess Mononoke I was like, 12. Ashitaka was like the last Prince of the Emishi, and I thought to myself "huh, I wonder if the Emishi are a real thing," so I looked it up on like, Wikipedia or something. Turns out they were a real thing! They were a Japanese ethnic minority.

"were?"

yeah, past tense there, since like, 900 AD
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So really, more of a historic people in what is nowadays Japan, rather than "ethnic minority".
 
gourdcaptain said:
I need to watch... okay, I maybe should... alright I really don't want to... watch The Wind Rises sometime, because that film sounds wild (in a bad way) in terms of its politics or lack thereof as a film from every description I've heard about it. And the fact that Hideaki Anno plays the main character which is a deeply... what. decision.
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This is a little outside the thread topic, but it's worth understanding that The Wind Rises is essentially one man's reckoning between his conflicting beliefs that war is the lowest of all human acts and that fighter planes are fucking sick (which they are). The character of Horikoshi Jiro is caught between his pure and abiding love of flight and the Mitsubishi needing to build war machines for the Japanese Empire, in much the same way that Miyazaki loves the idea of the plane but understands that the history of flight is not merely dreams being achieved. You can see this in earlier films, too, Porco Rosso particularly. I think it's quite a strong film in that regard.

Also I think Anno gives a good performance, even if casting one of his closest friends in the lead role is as much a statement about Miyazaki's views on and relationship to Jiro as anything else. It's also a really unique performance and kind of stands out as a creative decision.
 
Ford Prefect said:
This is a little outside the thread topic, but it's worth understanding that The Wind Rises is essentially one man's reckoning between his conflicting beliefs that war is the lowest of all human acts and that fighter planes are fucking sick (which they are).
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No one will ever defeat Werner "Rockets are cool" von Braun at this, for a certain sense of "defeat"
 
My big criticism of Miyazaki and this is something that pops up in the wind rises but also other places in his work like Naussica and Howls moving castle is that while it's clear he hates war and the suffering it inflicts upon the innocent he can come off rather both sidesy regarding the cause of war. Yes war is awful for all involved but when one side is a genocidal imperial power trying to increase dominion and extract the resources of its neighbors and the other is said neighbor just trying to survive then one side does indeed carry a lot more blame and reducing it all to "War is bad war is evil" is just not very useful.
 
Alex said:
My big criticism of Miyazaki and this is something that pops up in the wind rises but also other places in his work like Naussica and Howls moving castle is that while it's clear he hates war and the suffering it inflicts upon the innocent he can come off rather both sidesy regarding the cause of war. Yes war is awful for all involved but when one side is a genocidal imperial power trying to increase dominion and extract the resources of its neighbors and the other is said neighbor just trying to survive then one side does indeed carry a lot more blame and reducing it all to "War is bad war is evil" is just not very useful.
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It should be noted that this in fact is not just his personal ideology, but a stance that is widespread in Japan - and which is often used to deflect the Japanese WW2 guilt. Instead of saying Imperial Japan was awful, this gets generalized as "war is awful", which even allows the Japanese to depict themselves as co-victims, where the US nuclear attacks get more attention than what the IJA did in China.

You will find this in a lot of other anime, too, where you have a very generalized, very naive pacifism that ultimately doesn't say much, because that war as such is a bad thing, that's something most people can agree on anyway, even those who think their war os justified after all.

Now, I don't think that's deliberate on Miyazaki's part. I don't think he sets out to relativize Hapanese war crimes ir anything of the sort. It probably isn't even conscious. But on the societal level, yeah, immature "all war is bad" pacifism is a way Japanese society coped with the WW2 guilt.
 
I do fundamentally agree with Miyazaki's opinion that a lot of anime is produced by humans who can't stand looking at humans. I'd say this even applies to a lot of fiction, period: it's not like incestuous fiction inspired by fiction inspired by fiction is a mysterious thing, it's omnipresent nowadays. It is elitist to say, but a story with a connection to and inspired by reality, imo, is more meaningful than one birthed solely from imitation of fantasy.
 
I mean "human who can't stand looking at humans" also describes, like, Emily Dickinson.

The Reclusive Novelist is a stereotype of a kind of artist, so to me it's almost more interesting that there's tension between the way that animation is fundamentally collaborative work done by a team, and this very old, very established stereotype of the excessively introspective, excessively introverted artist.
 
Susano said:
It should be noted that this in fact is not just his personal ideology, but a stance that is widespread in Japan - and which is often used to deflect the Japanese WW2 guilt. Instead of saying Imperial Japan was awful, this gets generalized as "war is awful", which even allows the Japanese to depict themselves as co-victims, where the US nuclear attacks get more attention than what the IJA did in China.

You will find this in a lot of other anime, too, where you have a very generalized, very naive pacifism that ultimately doesn't say much, because that war as such is a bad thing, that's something most people can agree on anyway, even those who think their war os justified after all.

Now, I don't think that's deliberate on Miyazaki's part. I don't think he sets out to relativize Hapanese war crimes ir anything of the sort. It probably isn't even conscious. But on the societal level, yeah, immature "all war is bad" pacifism is a way Japanese society coped with the WW2 guilt.
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To be fair its also not a stance at all unique to Japan. There is a whole genre of Vietnam War movie by American liberals that condems the war not on the basis of historical or political reasons or or because of all the brutality and suffering it inflicted on the Vietnamese but because it made American soldiers sad and created social divisions at home.
 
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I believe that he is half right. I mean, I do believe there are animators who do care about making art and telling stories, to show their brilliance and how good they are at what they do.

But I also believe they are animators out there who do not care about art and telling stories, they just do animation just to make money, and sometimes, they do not even care about the stories from which they animate on, no matter how disgraceful it may be.

(yes I know, there are poor animators over there who don't make a lot of money and they care about art and telling stories, but I'm not specifically talking about them).

Basically, he was right about some of them, not all of them.
 
Ser_Serendipity said:
a story with a connection to and inspired by reality, imo, is more meaningful than one birthed solely from imitation of fantasy.
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Well, but what does that even mean? How do you even define "meaningful", and what value or utility does it have? At the end of the day, fiction is fiction. None of it is real. You will not have changed the world by reading "meaningful" fiction, either. Indeed, fiction requires no contact to the world at all - it is just between you and the work. In that way, all fiction is somewhat self-indulgent - which means, at the end of the day, it's all just a matter of personal taste. You haven't actually effected anything by consuming "meaningful" fiction, not more so than by consuming "escapist" fiction.

Kingcrusader said:
But I also believe they are animators out there who do not care about art and telling stories, they just do animation just to make money, and sometimes, they do not even care about the stories from which they animate on, no matter how disgraceful it may be.
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And yet those find an audience! And if the audience is happy, and the animator is happy because they made money, where is the problem?

(and if you say that is because people aren't really offered a choice on the matter because it's all formulaic and repetitive, well, then it would indicate it is indeed the system and not the animators)
 
Kadmus said:
It's also hilarious that Miyazaki, the man whose entire catalogue is basically 'nature is good' repeated a million times or adaptations of books, thought he had any leg to stand on RE originality of thought.
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I think comparing a broad thematic leaning to genre anime completely automating story-telling beats to the point where knowing the genre also tells you the first 5 or so chapters/episodes is absurd. It's an utterly silly point.
 
Susano said:
And yet those find an audience! And if the audience is happy, and the animator is happy because they made money, where is the problem?

(and if you say that is because people aren't really offered a choice on the matter because it's all formulaic and repetitive, well, then it would indicate it is indeed the system and not the animators)
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I... I think you misunderstood what I wrote.
 
Susano said:
How do you even define "meaningful", and what value or utility does it have? At the end of the day, fiction is fiction. None of it is real. You will not have changed the world by reading "meaningful" fiction, either. Indeed, fiction requires no contact to the world at all - it is just between you and the work.
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"Meaningful" is just as subjective as everything else in this thread, yes, congratulations. That's why I prefaced it by stating it was my opinion, because in my opinion meaningful fiction is a work that inspires thought and ideally introspection. You will not change the world by reading "meaningful" fiction, only yourself.

Any meaning in the trash Miyazaki dreaded is accidental: the glut of nausea inducing isekai anime certainly say a lot about the complete atomization of Japan's society, considering almost all of them are about people who die and leave behind no important connections whatsoever, but that commentary is accidental, writers and animators following breadcrumbs without any sense of self awareness.
 
This video makes the argument that the rise of "waifu culture" has led to a shift in how anime is produced/marketed whereby story and character personality come second to charter *design* because the production is relying on fan works and fan discussion to do the work of providing these things.

It's a good video, you should give it a watch

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rRBupcAy8ds
 
BossFight said:
This video makes the argument that the rise of "waifu culture" has led to a shift in how anime is produced/marketed whereby story and character personality come second to charter *design* because the production is relying on fan works and fan discussion to do the work of providing these things.

It's a good video, you should give it a watch

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rRBupcAy8ds
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Waifu culture is actually a thing? I thought it was a joke. Wow, how pathetic.
 
Alex said:
My big criticism of Miyazaki and this is something that pops up in the wind rises but also other places in his work like Naussica and Howls moving castle is that while it's clear he hates war and the suffering it inflicts upon the innocent he can come off rather both sidesy regarding the cause of war.
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I don't know that I agree with this. Miyazaki is a pacifist by nature and so prefers that violence be approached with some nuance, and a couple of years back he made some comments about how easily American films tend to label certain groups as enemies, without any care regarding civilians. I think that more or less reflects in his works: Ashitaka is never depicted as a bad person because he kills the bandits near the beginning of Princess Mononoke, and Yupa stops Nausicaa from killing further Torumekians because she's part of a metaphor for looking at the big picture and taking responsibility for the whole world. But it's hard to view the Torumekians as anything other than pure imperialists, and it's hard to say that Miyazaki hasn't made his stance clear, whether that's in Porco Rosso or in real life. I mean, as Kei mentioned, the hard right in his own country called him an anti-Japanese traitor for The Wind Rises lol

Susano said:
It should be noted that this in fact is not just his personal ideology, but a stance that is widespread in Japan - and which is often used to deflect the Japanese WW2 guilt. Instead of saying Imperial Japan was awful, this gets generalized as "war is awful", which even allows the Japanese to depict themselves as co-victims, where the US nuclear attacks get more attention than what the IJA did in China.

You will find this in a lot of other anime, too, where you have a very generalized, very naive pacifism that ultimately doesn't say much, because that war as such is a bad thing, that's something most people can agree on anyway, even those who think their war os justified after all.

Now, I don't think that's deliberate on Miyazaki's part. I don't think he sets out to relativize Hapanese war crimes ir anything of the sort. It probably isn't even conscious. But on the societal level, yeah, immature "all war is bad" pacifism is a way Japanese society coped with the WW2 guilt.
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This is ludicrous. Both Miyazaki personally and Ghibli's magazine Neppu have clear statements on these issues and they have nothing to do with 'deflecting guilt.' Miyazaki has said that reparations should be paid regarding comfort women, that Japan should cede disputed territory to China, and so on, and has generally held his anti-war stance consistently for longer than any of us have been alive. He refused to accept the Oscar that Spirited Away won because of his opposition to the Iraq War. Miyazaki isn't just some naive guy hiding from the truth, he has been relentless in his views and has never shied away from the ugly parts of Japan's past.
 
Kingcrusader said:
Waifu culture is actually a thing? I thought it was a joke. Wow, how pathetic.
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It is, but the term"Waifu Culture" is much better than "person who wants to bang a fictional character" at least as this video is it.

The relevant part for this discussion is how people engage with works like RWBY and Fate, where the primary enjoyment people derive from the work is discussing the characters rather than the story itself. Using RWBY as an example (as a fan) but the character designs and personalities are so strong that you want to watch them even though the actual story is mid. It's no different really than the cute girls doing cute things genre
 
BossFight said:
It is, but the term"Waifu Culture" is much better than "person who wants to bang a fictional character" at least as this video is it.

The relevant part for this discussion is how people engage with works like RWBY and Fate, where the primary enjoyment people derive from the work is discussing the characters rather than the story itself. Using RWBY as an example (as a fan) but the character designs and personalities are so strong that you want to watch them even though the actual story is mid. It's no different really than the cute girls doing cute things genre
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So they are not really watching anything, they are just looking at the characters?
 
Hologram Killer said:
So worm fans pretty much.
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I mean, sorta but that's driven by a different phenomenon?

Like, all works are going to have some level of engagement driven by fanworks and discussing the work. That's just a core part of engaging with works in general.

Worm specifically has a lot of people who engage with it without reading it because it's super fucking long and also really popular in fan works which creates an oroborous of fanwork popularity.

A series like FATE on the other hand (or any gaccha) banks on the popularity of it's *designs* and the drip feed of it's lore to create fanworks and discussion and relies on those things to cover the gaps in it's actual writing (which again, lots of things do).

Basically the existence of waifu culture has altered the incentizes of anime design. Designing a show "character first" and then relying on fan discussion/works to do the work of writing your story for you is a proven and marketable strategy at this point and that's going to change how anime are made/produced
 
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