Studio Ghibli Animation as Adaptations

I read this book with great enjoyment. With four of twelve chapters devoted to works by Isao Takahata and one to Goro Miyazaki’s Tales from Earthsea, it offers a substantial contribution to scholarship on the best-known works of Ghibli’s three major directors. Miyazaki’s looser late ‘adaptations’ The Wind Rises and The Boy and the Heron do not feature, and his original work Porco Rosso (adapted from his own short manga) is omitted. I was sorry not to see chapters devoted to Takahata’s magnificent Pompoko, or to the work of Ghibli’s junior directors, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Tomomi Mochizuki, Hiroyuki Morita, and the late Yoshifumi Kondo; but in any publication space and time make demands that editors must accept. It’s still a fascinating collection, and by focussing on the most popular titles from the studio’s catalogue it makes itself widely accessible and attractive to readers beyond academia. Written with commendable clarity, its essays will be useful to the general reader and Ghibli fan as well as to scholars. The scholars involved come from diverse cultural and academic backgrounds, including one independent scholar, one animation practicioner/scholar and one film-maker/scholar. Several are engaged with podcasting, film festivals and film criticism as well as more conventional academic publication. Most of the authors have received their degrees from and currently work in European or American universities. One is a former professor at the University of Tunis in Africa, and one is currently a professor at Tokyo’s Senshu University. Sources listed are primarily in English, with some Japanese and Italian material. This mix of contributors and sources serves the overall topic of Studio Ghibli as a source of (re)-creative adaptations well. All anime is adaptation, and all anime in English is a re-adaptation. From the opening paragraph of the introduction on why we remake work, and what we choose to adapt from format to format, the editors address the lack of critical scholarly attention to Ghibli as re-maker. By directly comparing Disney’s and Ghibli’s recontextualizations, they open the door to fresh critical perspectives. A useful list of pre-Ghibli and Ghibli adaptations from other sources paves the way for a series of dynamic, reflective essays. This is an important and welcome contribution to English-language Ghibli scholarship that will be just as valuable to Ghibli studies worldwide. * Helen McCarthy, Independent Scholar and Lecturer, UK *