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I have found two videos from the Isao Takahata memorial service at Ghibli Museum. The first includes the complete remarks from Hayao Miyazaki. The second video is a news report from Japanese television, featuring clips of other individuals. Unfortunately, there are no English translations available at this time. If anyone would kindly provide a translation of Miyazaki-san's remarks, we would all be very grateful. Update 5/16: The first video has been pulled from YouTube. Hayao Miyazaki's complete remarks in Japanese are available below. We still need help with an English translation. Much thanks to Infoglitz and Becqerine from Reddit for their assistance. 朴のニックネームは確かではありませんが、主にとにかく午前中に嫌な男ですが、東映アニメーションで働いていてもタイムカードを押した後、私が "Pakpaku"として買ったパンを食べて、彼は彼が蛇口から水を飲んでいたと言いました。それが朴氏になったという噂です。  それは記念碑の形ではありませんが、私が今日書いたことを読むでしょう。  朴氏は、彼が95歳になるまで生きると信じていた。私は時間がないと思った。 9年前、医者からの電話がありました。 「あなたが友達なら、タカハタのたばこを止めません」それは深刻な恐ろしい声でした。鈴木さん（鈴木俊夫さん）と鈴木さんは、医師の力を恐れてテーブルを横切ってお互いに向き合っていました。正しい姿勢...

The following photos are from the memorial service honoring the late Isao Takahata at the Ghibli Museum on May 15. The event was attended by 1,200 people including many prominent filmmakers, producers and actors, as well as family and friends. Thanks to Huffington Post Japan for posting these photographs online.

Today, friends, family and colleagues paid tribute to Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata at a public memorial service at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Japan. The event was open to the public and featured many prominent artists and filmmakers whose lives intersected with the beloved director over the past 60 years. The museum displayed a wonderful floral display in the main hall, and also included a large montage of photographs featuring Paku-san over the years, as well as a collection of his many published books. Animators and filmmakers in attendance included many alumni from Toei Doga, where Takahata began his career in 1958 after graduating from Tokyo University (he was courted by the movie studio while still a student. Yasuo Otsuka and Yoichi Kotabe were present along with the rest of the old gang. Dutch animator Michael Dudok De Wit, director of the 2016 Academy Award-nominated animated feature The Red Turtle (produced by Studio Ghibli under the personal supervision of Takahata...

I had completely forgotten that we had passed our Ghibli Blog birthday on March. I kept thinking it was May. Whoops. In any case, here's a cake. Yay! Ghibli Blog (Conversations on Ghibli) was started on March 2006 and aside from the occasional hiatus has continued ever since. I am still nowhere near my original goal of writing everything there is to know about the Studio Ghibli movies, which is a very pleasant surprise, but I am getting closer than ever. Meanwhile, the enormous pile of essays and possible directions for my never-ending Ghibli book project just grows higher and higher. I just tell myself to continue writing about all of these great films and television series until all the essentials are covered. Maybe I should write a book like Mi Vecino Miyazaki, which is really solid and looks terrific. Or maybe write a couple volumes of written essays. Or maybe just dump the blog onto print in a massive encyclopedia stack. Or maybe I should just do something simple and with lots...

This scene in Porco Rosso shows Marco's true face for a quick moment. Teenage Fio is shocked at the sight, but when he realizes he is being watched, Porco's pig face returns. It's a great moment that gets at the heart of the hero's identity and the movie's themes of being bound to the past and the romance of nostalgia. Western audiences can never understand why Porco Rosso has a pig's head, and this insistence on literal "realism" in animation is slightly depressing. Nothing about this medium is real. You are looking at pencil drawings and paintings, not actors on a soundstage. You are looking at something that is itself a product of the imagination, and that fact carries a certain surrealism and symbolism in its very bones. Miyazaki portrays Marco as a pig because it represents his disgust with humanity as a result of his experiences fighting the Great War. He feels disconnected from the outside world, not only those who never had to fight, but those ...

Studio Ghibli gives itself a rare cameo in Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso, as seen here on the airplane engine. We also see the name "Ghibli" on a passing bus in Kiki's Delivery Service in a quick shot. And didn't Mimi/Whisper also have the studio's name etched onto a grandfather clock? This was definitely a recurring thing for a time, but why it was begun and later abandoned is anybody's guess. They just did it for fun, I suppose.

Ghibli Fest 2018, the annual Studio Ghibli movie festival presented by GKIDS and Fathom Events, continues its series of theatrical screenings with Porco Rosso , Hayao Miyazaki's 1992 animated adventure.  The movie will be shown on May 20 (dubbed), May 21 (subtitled) and May 23 (dubbed) . As always, both Japanese and English language soundtracks will be available for the benefit of all fans. Porco Rosso is a nostalgic romance in the style of classic Hollywood cinema. If you're a fan of Humphrey Bogart, then you'll love this picture. It tells the tale of daring airline pilots and pirates who fly the seas of the Adriatic in the days before the rise of fascism and war, and focuses on a cynical pilot named Marco who has turned his back on humanity, a hotel owner named Gina who is Marco's lifelong friend and love interest, and a young airplane engineer named Fio. Thrown into this mix is a brash American pilot named Curtis who sees himself as Marco/Porco's rival in the ski...

This week, Studio Ghibli announced the details for their upcoming Farewell Ceremony for founding director Isao Takahata, who passed away on April 5 after a battle with lung cancer. The event will be open to the public and will take place on May 15 at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Japan. The event will run from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm and celebrate the amazing life and career of the animation legend, from his starting days at Toei Doga to his acclaimed masterpieces at Studio Ghibli. Hayao Miyazaki will attend the event and issue a public tribute to his lifelong friend and brother. This will be the first public statement made by Miyazaki since Takahata's death. News outlets have reported that the Ghibli co-founder is shattered by the loss. The two began their careers together over 50 years ago, and as partners created many classic films and television series, including Horus, Prince of the Sun, Lupin the 3rd, Heidi, Girl of the Alps, 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, Anne of Green Gables, ...

YouTube essayist and documentary filmmaker Steven McCarthy returns once again with another look at Studio Ghibli, this time examining the career of Goro Miyazaki, the son of founding director Hayao Miyazaki who was responsible for Tales From Earthsea, From Up on Poppy Hill and Ronja the Robber's Daughter. This video goes into detail on these films, including production, overarching themes and public reception. Goro Miyazaki doesn't get enough love from the fans. Part of that is due to the family name and the curse of having a famous father (ask Julian Lennon), and part of that is simply experience, as we have so few works to examine and study. If he continues to create animated films and television series and develop his own unique voice as an artist, those qualities will begin to dominate the conversation. McCarthy does an excellent job moving that discussion forward, highlighting his strengths and weaknesses, his difficult relationship with his father, and the qualities that ...

Artist and illustrator Sarah O'Donald has crafted this vibrant illustration of Totoro and No-Face sharing a tea time. I really enjoy this piece, the colors and details are superb and demonstrate the artist's skills at composition. You can visit Sarah O'Donald's Instagram page , which features dozens of illustrations that are absolutely brilliant. She has also made numerous appearances at art shows where her works are available for sale, featuring fantasy themes and characters from animation, comics and videogames. Her output is quite remarkable and I'm amazed at how much she has created. She must be spending every waking moment drawing and painting, which is, of course, the true goal of any artist. I'm very impressed and more than a little jealous. My artistic skills are nowhere near as refined and inspiring as these. Great work! Here's wishing for your success!

This week, Studio Ghibli formally unveiled their plans for an upcoming theme park in Japan. The designs were shown in a press event this week, including layouts and building illustrations. Visitors will enjoy walking through the worlds of Hayao Miyazaki's beloved animated movies including My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. The theme park will be located near the city of Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture, and is expected to open in 2022. The park will include European building designs based on Miyazaki's films, as well as large sculptures of many famous characters that evoke Japan's mythic and cultural past. These illustrations are very fascinating and offer a glimpse into how the finished site will look. The park layout is largely forest, keeping as much of the natural environment in place as possible. Many of the locations also feel closer to an outdoor nature preserve than Disney World or Universal Studios. This is a very welcome ...

Continuing our series of "Ghibli Riffs," let's take a short look at the 2002 animated feature The Cat Returns (Neko no Ongaeshi), which was directed by Hiroyuki Morita and based on an idea by Hayao Miyazaki to feature a movie about the Baron character from Mimi wo Sumaseba. There are not many riffs in this movie, only a few, but they're very easy to spot. Let's take a look at the riffs in The Cat Returns: 1. The Baron's house, hidden away in a secret village in urban Tokyo, is actually the same house as used by Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Hound. 2. Haru chases the fat cat through an array of maze-like alleys, porches and rooftops in the city en route to The Baron. This sequence is an impressive urban spin on Mei's journey through the forest in My Neighbor Totoro (1988). 3. The image of the tunnel into another realm is a common Jungian archetype in fairy tales that symbolizes a journey into the unconscious. Hayao Miyazaki employed this image in Spirited Awa...

Tomorrow is your last chance to see Studio Ghibli's 2002 feature film The Cat Returns in theaters as part of Studio Ghibli Fest 2018. Be sure to grab your tickets if you haven't already done so. The Japanese title for this movie, Neko no Ongaeshi, translates as "The Cat Returns the Favor." I always enjoyed that title, it has a nice literary flair and it flows nicely. Most US movie titles are pre-packaged and sanitized for your protection by teams of lawyers and marketing weasels, resulting in something bland and boring and far too short. But Americans have notoriously short attention spans, which probably explains...something. What were we talking about? Here are some photos from this movie. It's not one of my favorites, it feels very much like a made-for-TV or OVA production. I much preferred Ghiblies Episode 2, which played alongside The Cat Returns on a double bill during its Japanese theatrical release. That short film had all the experienced artists, while th...

The ultimate test for any diehard Studio Ghibli fan is spotting all the "Ghibli Riffs," the shots and moments that directly quote earlier works. It is a staple of the Takahata-Miyazaki canon and is found in all of their films and television series. Today, we're taking a look at Takahata's 1999 masterwork My Neighbors the Yamadas. Watching our new Blu-Ray copy this weekend, I was struck by how few riffs appear in this movie. Most Ghibli movies contain well over a dozen riffs without breaking a sweat, while Yamada-kun only contains half that amount. Instead, there are a number of nods to classic cinema, which is a Takahata trademark that goes back years (Heidi and Anne of Green Gables both quote Citizen Kane, Horus cites Alexander Nevski). Let's take a look at all the riffs in Yamadas: 1. The opening scene portrays a number of images that directly quote Japan's hanafuda cards as the main characters are introduced. This very same thing appeared in Takahata's ...

I'm very sad to discover that Tom Sutpen's essential pop culture photo blog "If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger..." has closed down. I don't know exactly when this occurred, but the author's Twitter page was last updated on March 29. Every week, I am reminded that the golden age of movie and pop culture weblogs has now passed, as people have devolved from engaging with culture to merely consuming it. People once shared their love of movies and music and the arts, often sharing a spotlight to more obscure, left-of-the-dial subjects. It was always such a joy to discover these cultured, educated fans as they blossomed on the new online frontier of the 21st Century. Now it's nearly all gone extinct, and the few remaining holdouts are fighting over table scraps. It appears that most people today are perfectly fine with just clicking on images on social media sites. They're not really engaging or bonding or coming together in any meaningful way. They're...

Today marks the 30th anniversary of two of Studio Ghibli's most acclaimed movies, My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies. The two were offered as a double bill in Japanese theaters, which has always bemused and befuddled fans around the world. My understanding of the whole saga is that Hayao Miyazaki wanted to create his movie but couldn't convince Tokuma Shoten (the owners of Studio Ghibli in those days) to finance the project. So he convinced Isao Takahata to create a film adaptation of the famous novel Grave of the Fireflies and then piggyback Totoro onto that. It must have been an enormous strain on both the filmmakers and the studio's finances to create two feature animated films at the same time, but they successfully managed to release them on time (more or less). Unfortunately, the Japanese moviegoing public wasn't very interested that summer, or perhaps they just couldn't handle the emotional whiplash. I'd also like to think that Akira-mania also...