{"id":488,"date":"2018-04-25T13:41:50","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T12:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/copyright.lboro.ac.uk\/research\/?p=488"},"modified":"2018-05-21T10:56:45","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T09:56:45","slug":"remembering-isao-takahata-japanese-animator-made-us-see-world-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/research\/communication-culture-citizenship\/remembering-isao-takahata-japanese-animator-made-us-see-world-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Isao Takahata, the Japanese animator who made us see the world as children"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent death<\/a> of Studio Ghibli\u2019s<\/a> co-founder, producer and director Isao Takahata<\/a> has prompted a proper recognition of his work, liberating it from the shadow of his more celebrated partner, the Pixar-championed<\/a> Hayao Miyazaki<\/a> who unlike Takahata, also designed and animated.<\/p>\n

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Isao Takahata, who died on April 5, was a co-founder of Studio Ghibli, Japan\u2019s famous animation studio. EPA<\/a>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/div><\/figure>\n

But for animation scholars, critics and fans, Takahata\u2019s films always had the same resonance, and foregrounded their own style and preoccupations. Takahata, unsung in many respects, defines the Ghibli style as much as Miyazaki; his grasp of the beauty of the mundane and his impressionistic apprehension of memory and feeling, is as memorable as Miyazaki\u2019s epiphanies in flight.<\/p>\n

Toei story<\/h2>\n

Both began their careers at the Toei Studio<\/a>, Takahata directing the commercially unsuccessful Horusu, Prince of the Sun or The Little Norse Prince (1968), on which Miyazaki served as an animator. The pair then achieved success on the Takahata-directed and Miyazaki-designed Panda Kopanda films (1972\/1973), as well as TV work, and the literary adaptations produced by Nippon Animation, including Heidi, A Girl of the Alps (1974).<\/p>\n

Takahata directed features Chie the Brat (1981) and G\u00f5shu the Cellist (1982), before joining Miyazaki to produce Nausica\u00e4 of the Valley of the Wind (1984), along with long-time collaborators, composer Joe Hisaishi<\/a> and producer Suzuki Toshio<\/a>, with whom they went on to form Studio Ghibli.
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