Rendered (In)Visible: Studio Ghibli at Anime’s CG Turning Point

Abstract

This chapter questions the received wisdom that Studio Ghibli—and particularly Hayao Miyazaki—have an aversion to computer-generated (CG) animation. Known for their 2-D style, investigating Ghibli’s experimentations with animation aesthetics reveals how the studio has long operated at the cutting edge of digital animation technologies. This chapter looks back to some of Ghibli’s earliest experiments with analogue animation special effects and compares these to the studio’s initial uses of digital animation technologies, before going on to consider how Studio Ghibli coped with the “digital turn” in animation at the end of the 1990s. Taking Princess Mononoke and My Neighbors the Yamadas as case studies, the chapter contends that Studio Ghibli was actually at the vanguard of Japanese animation studios in using CG animation, and that it attempted to reconfigure Japanese animation in doing so.