Somebody explain Miyazaki to me

Question

Does anyone here actually like Hayao Miyazaki films?

His animation is amazing, obviously, but none of his stories make any sense. Mind you, I've only seen "The Castle of Cagliostro", "Princess Mononoke", "Proco Rosso", "My Neighbor Totoro", "Spirited Away", "Howls Moving Castle" and "Kiki's Delivery Service", so I'm no EXPERT, but I'm still waiting to feel the um, er, thrust of his genius.
Is it a Japanese thing? Is my western sensibility so linear that I can't loosen up and just let the beauty of his animation wash over me?

Am I doomed to watch all his films with the ever-increasing conviction that no point is ever going to be made and no stance taken that won't be reversed for no particular reason 2 scenes later?
Why don't any of his animals map to actual animals in the real world? Or if they do, how is it that they morph into some sort of "spirit" realm of the same animal, but with magical characteristics that have no particular relationship to the animal characteristics they had before, or to the theme they seemed to represent before they morphed?
Like the weird Elk-god creature with the semi-human face in "Princess Mononoke"... It seems like it's supposed to be the Spirit of the Forest or something. It's certainly supposed to be both powerful and good. And yet, it not like it's being killed by the forces of modernization (as it sort of hinted at the beginning) which would make it feel like it fit into some sort of "theme". No, it's being killed by this guy and his cohort who just want to kill it for no reason that ever gets articulated. They just want to sneak up on it and kill it.
And then, when they do manage to shoot it, it becomes a shapeless, mountain-sized monster that threatens to destroy all humanity. So, I guess, that's what was really inside this "great spirit" all along, right? Hidden inside the peace-loving creature was actually the will to kill everything in its path and perhaps everything in the world? And the people who killed the creature were looking forward to being exterminated themselves?

Or the giant boars made out of worms. The regular boars aren't really related to them, but they want revenge if anyone kills them, but they're also afraid of them, but they also know that the worm-boars should be either preserved or destroyed, depending on where we are in the "plot".
Similarly with "Spirited Away". It starts out okay, with a girl and her parents crossing a bridge into a deserted but spooky and magical circus. The parents eat some food in the deserted but well-furnished food court and soon turn into hogs. Fair enough. I totally get the imagery. The girl doesn't eat (apparently for many days?) so she remains a little girl. Then the circus morphs into a rest-spa for spirit creatures run by a witch/demon, and the only good people are the ones who stoke the fires to keep the baths hot.

Except they're not really good, they're just suppressed. Except when they're not suppressed. And there's a sort of magical bubble, which is actually a living creature that provides gold but that also eats up everything around it and can become either harmless water or an all-consuming blob unless the little girl gives it a back-rub. Or feeds it oatmeal.
Anyway, those are the only parts I could make sense of.

What brings this up now is that Miyazaki has a new film coming out, called "Ponyo", in which the name of a tiny goldfish with a little kid's face (a special one, apparently, though from the trailer it looks like there might be millions of goldfishes with little kid's faces at least sometimes, when the plot needs them). Anyway, this Ponyo is the only creature who can save the world. Save it from... um... not clear on that just yet, but at the very least from big waves that don't really look like waves.

And he rides on the back of giant mullets, sometimes in the ocean and sometimes down the street next to racing cars. Why does this seem to be as utterly confused as all the other Miyazaki films? Why so portentous and yet so unformed?
There can't be enough pot-heads watching Disney films to justify this stuff anymore, so why do they keep getting made? Is it like Manga, where if you don't read the book backward the plot doesn't make sense? Would it all come clear if I played "Dark Side"? Is it all a secret plot by Mariah Carey to bump "Glitter" out of the 10 worst films ever made?

Alan Brooks

A with an Underwood
Anime anomy
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Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Does anyone here actually like Hayao Miyazaki films? His animation is amazing, obviously, but none of his stories make any ... EXPERT, but I'm still waiting to feel the um, er, thrust of his genius. Is it a Japanese thing? [/nq]
Wow.
I can't really say anything in Miyazaki's defense, as if he needs it, but I really enjoy his films. Particularly "Howl's Moving Castle", "Spirited Away", and "Kiki's Delivery Service"
No real concrete reasoning on my part, I don't even recall enough of the plots to argue any meaning you may have missed, etc.

I just like it, is all.
Just one of those things, I guess.
-M

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Wow. I can't really say anything in Miyazaki's defense, as if he needs it, but I really enjoy his films. ... any meaning you may have missed, etc. I just like it, is all. Just one of those things, I guess.[/nq]
I willing to believe that it's just me, that I lack the Miyazaki-appreciation gene. And Miyazaki doesn't need anyone to defend him. HE JUST NEEDS TO HIRE A FREAKING SCREENWRITER, and follow a script.

Alan Brooks

A with an Underwood
It's just how
I'm drawn.
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Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Wow. I can't really say anything in Miyazaki's defense, as ... it, is all. Just one of those things, I guess.[/nq]
[nq:1]I willing to believe that it's just me, that I lack the Miyazaki-appreciation gene. And Miyazaki doesn't need anyone to defend him. HE JUST NEEDS TO HIRE A FREAKING SCREENWRITER, and follow a script.[/nq]
I'm with you. It's the triumph of (fantastic) style over content.

"I tried being reasonable. I didn't like it."
- Clint Eastwood

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Does anyone here actually like Hayao Miyazaki films?[/nq]
Immensely. Let me see if I can share my appreciation with you, or at least refer you to John Lasseter and Roger Ebert.
For starters, you haven't seen Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind or Laputa: Castle in the Sky (I call it Laputa, Disney calls it Castle in the Sky so that the HIspanic community doesn't get on their case bout a cartoon that translates to The ).
If you've seen Nausicaa, you'd have a better understanding of his Ecology themes, because Princess Mononoke is basically redux.
[nq:1]Why don't any of his animals map to actual animals in the real world?[/nq]
They do, to the same extant that Oliphants and Hobbits exist in Tolkien's Middle Earth.
[nq:1]Or if they do, how is it that they morph into some sort of "spirit" realm of the same animal, ... semi-human face in "Princess Mononoke"... It seems like it's supposed to be the Spirit of the Forest or something. [/nq]
That's not the theme at all. The hunters are trophy hunters who have no realization of the damage that they create to the ecosystem.
[nq:1]Or the giant boars made out of worms.[/nq]
They're not made out of worms. The worms are an incurable infection similar to what has attacked the arm of the hero.
[nq:1]The regular boars aren't really related to them, but they want revenge if anyone kills them, but they're also afraid ... worm-boars should be either preserved or destroyed, depending on where we are in the "plot". Similarly with "Spirited Away". [/nq]
This isn't pothead stuff. You'd need Brian Christau to explain it to you. Manga and graphic novel are almost synonymous. Miyazaki is child- like without being child-ish. The child characters are mature, capable of undertaking the hero's journey. The villains are complex, like in Hong Kong John Woo flicks. And they are all encoded in a richly drawn universe, in what may be the last bastion of cel animation. He is the reason why animated movies no longer have musical numbers. That's good, that's bad, but his images are never ugly.

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Concur. Miyazaki isn't the intellectual that Satoshi Kon is, but he's carved out his niche. I hope Miyazaki and artists like him never die.

W : )

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Wow. I can't really say anything in Miyazaki's defense, as ... it, is all. Just one of those things, I guess.[/nq]
[nq:1]I willing to believe that it's just me, that I lack the Miyazaki-appreciation gene. And Miyazaki doesn't need anyone to ... Alan Brooks A with an Underwood It's just how I'm drawn. MWSM FAQ: http://www.panix.com/~mwsm/faq.html Filtering Trolls: http://www.panix.com/~mwsm/trolls.html[/nq]
Yes, it is you. Usually I agree with you Alan, but my ***. Instead of trying to force the storytelling patterns and traditions from another culture into yours, try just RELAXING and letting it wash over you. Spirited Away is one of my favorite movies, and I find it very well-structured. That particular film plays with elements of old Japanese myths and the terribly frightful 0% interest rate stagnating economy that they'd all survived. I know, seems trivial now, but it's reflected in the values of the characters very well. There are papers written about it, I think, too lazy to find them for you.

Miyazaki is famous for the quality of the animation, and the charm of the stories more than their linear, logical coherence. But then, what fairy tale is really linear or logical or coherent? Really.

I've done the same thing myself usually when I don't like something AND it gets sand in my craw, it's because there's something there to get that I'm not getting. Sometimes I get it at a later day, and sometimes I just never do. For me, it's the Three Stooges

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]This isn't pothead stuff. You'd need Brian Christau to explain it to you. Manga and graphic novel are almost synonymous. ... the reason why animated movies no longer have musical numbers. That's good, that's bad, but his images are never ugly.[/nq]
Be careful of future productions from Studio Ghilbi. I seem to remember a convoluted story that his son runs it now, original Miyazaki is out.

I may have that garbled.
Mysti

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Yes, it is you. Usually I agree with you Alan, but my ***. Instead of trying to force the storytelling ... of the characters very well. There are papers written about it, I think, too lazy to find them for you.[/nq]
Yes, well, I too could write a paper I have reams of the stuff here except that mine would be about how Miyazaki creates beautifully-drawn but sloppy, unstructured, baggy-monster films, and then I could say there are papers written about how awful his stuff is (well, I could only say "papers" if I wrote 2 of them).
Seriously, here's the thing about "relaxing and letting it wash over you": I can't do that, and that's not really a good metaphor for what happens in the story-telling and story-listening realm. We're not talking about swimming under a cooling, Hawaiian waterfall here, we're talking about STORY, and I don't want a story to wash over me, I want it to take me by the hand and lead me somewhere. You know, the way the stories of Kurosawa or Yasujiro Ozu or Juzo Itami do so well.
See, those guys use the storytelling patterns of their culture and they make perfect sense to me. Miyazaki uses such an idiosyncratic story "language" that he seems muddled. He's not able to distinguish the universal from the personal and to pull together a cohesive narrative independent of what's happening inside his own head.
[nq:1]Miyazaki is famous for the quality of the animation, and the charm of the stories more than their linear, logical coherence. But then, what fairy tale is really linear or logical or coherent? Really.[/nq]
The nice thing about fairy tales is that they're concise and stick to making a single point. Miyazaki's stories are long and rambling, pull together heaps of disparate elements and I'm always left wondering why it took so much to-and-fro to make the point that we should live in balance with nature (and what the young samurai fighting a demon witch and freeing a purple butterfly-horse had to do with it).
[nq:1]I've done the same thing myself usually when I don't like something AND it gets sand in my craw, ... I get it at a later day, and sometimes I just never do. For me, it's the Three Stooges

[/nq]
I wasn't a Stooges fan as a kid, but as I've progressively destroyed more and more of my brain cells with beer, their beauty and elegance has become clear to me. Some things you just have to grow into.

Alan Brooks

A with an Underwood
Manga-led
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Somebody explain Miyazaki to me

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