Hayao Miyazaki Quotes
I`m not going to make movies that tell children, "You should despair and run away".
The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics is hopeless.
When I talk about traditions, I`m not talking about temples, which we got from China anyway. There is an indigenous Japan, and elements of that are what I`m trying to capture in my work.
(asked about his work`s role in modern pop-culture) The truth is I have watched almost none of it. The only images I watch regularly come from the weather report.
(discussing CGI animation) I`ve told the people on my CGI staff not to be accurate, not to be true. We`re making a mystery here, so make it mysterious.
If (hand-drawn animation) is a dying craft, we can`t do anything about it. Civilization moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That`s rare in any era.
When you watch the subtitled version you are probably missing just as many things. There is a layer and a nuance you`re not going to get. Film crosses so many borders these days. Of course it is going to be distorted.
Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do. But it is far too late for me to try it.
I can`t believe companies distribute my movies in America. They`re baffling in Japan! I`m well aware there are spots . . . where I`m going to lose the audience . . . Well, it`s magic. I don`t provide unnecessary explanations. If you want that, you`re not going to like my movie. That`s just the way it is.
Do everything by hand, even when using the computer.
Personally I am very pessimistic. But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can`t help but bless them for a good future. Because I can`t tell that child, "Oh, you shouldn`t have come into this life." And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making.
(on the future of hand-drawn animation) I`m actually not that worried. I wouldn`t give up on it completely. Once in a while there are strange, rich people who like to invest in odd things. You`re going to have people in the corners of garages making cartoons to please themselves. And I`m more interested in those people than I am in big business.
(pitching the proposal for Mononoke-hime (1997)) There cannot be a happy ending to the fight between the raging gods and humans. However, even in the middle of hatred and killings, there are things worth living for. A wonderful meeting, or a beautiful thing can exist. We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation. What we should depict is, how the boy understands the girl, and the process in which the girl opens her heart to the boy. At the end, the girl will say to the boy, "I love you, Ashitaka. But I cannot forgive humans." Smiling, the boy should say, "That is fine. Live with me."
Well, yes. I believe that children`s souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It`s just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy.
When I think about the way the computer has taken over and eliminated a certain experience of life, that makes me sad. When we were animating fire some staff said they had never seen wood burning. I said, "Go watch!" It has disappeared from their daily lives. Japanese baths used to be made by burning firewood. Now you press a button. I don`t think you can become an animator if you don`t have any experience.
(response to the otaku view of cute female lead characters as a form of wish fulfillment) It`s difficult. They immediately become the subjects of rorikon gokko (play toy for Lolita Complex guys). In a sense, if we want to depict someone who is affirmative to us, we have no choice but to make them as lovely as possible. But now, there are too many people who shamelessly depict such heroines as if they just want such girls as pets, and things are escalating more and more.
I think 2-D animation disappeared from Disney because they made so many uninteresting films. They became very conservative in the way they created them. It`s too bad. I thought 2-D and 3-D could coexist happily.
