The Lost Art of Hand-Drawn Animation

It’s hard to say where animation is going these days.  Most the animated movies seen now are computer generated 3D and made by either Pixar or DreamWorks in hopes of getting the Best Animated Film Academy Award or breaking the box office. Personally, I miss the old school Disney cartoons. Aladdin, The Lion King, Oliver and Company, some of my favorites from when I was a kid, movies that created a world out of pure imagination from the human hand. Okay, sounds cheesy but it’s true. But as an adult, those films don’t do quite as much for me as they used too and as a cinephile, I’m looking for more refined animated films. Enter Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.

Miyazaki co-founded the studio after releasing the highly successful (and amazing) Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind in 1984. Since then, Studio Ghibli has turned out award winning animated films and created a worldwide following to rival Walt Disney. Miyazaki’s films are well known for their hand drawn aesthetic, a feat that is becoming less and less commonly seen in cinemas today. I can appreciate the time and effort that goes in to making a film like Toy Story or How to Train Your Dragon, but it just seems like the magic is lost when the literal human touch is removed from the process. Just look at the amazing landscapes of Cars and you’ll get my meaning. It looks really really good.  But when compared to the landscapes of Princess Mononoke, one of Miyazaki’s finest adult oriented films (and my second favorite movie of all time), Cars looks, well, amateur. The colors, even up close, are less warm, there’s no real beauty in the landscape. I truly think those are the types of personal touches that can only come from hand drawn animation.

Okay, the movies, right. His extensive collection of films include Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, the Academy Award winning Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Kiki’s Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky and most recently Ponyo. Subject matter ranges from the supernatural to the mundane, the childish to the horrific. To better make my point, I’ll focus more in depth on his most serious film to date, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, a “kids” movie that I don’t picture many kids sitting through happily.

Like any good film maker Miyazaki works out numerous themes through each film. On the surface Princess Mononoke seems like a basic conservationist story. A young prince, Ashitaka, is cursed by a demon boar god enraged with man encroaching on his forest and killing his brethren. On a quest to lift the curse, the prince travels to the ironworks that are cutting down the surrounding trees in mass numbers. Along the way he encounters a savage girl, Princess Mononoke, who was raised by wolf gods to kill any human that wanders into the forest.

What unfolds over the next two hours is a story about what makes humans human and what they can do to corrupt the gods they’ve abandoned. At some point in the story, every forest god that is introduced becomes corrupted by their hatred for the humans’ arrogance, changing from a benevolent beast to a formless demon. This accurately depicts how the things mankind worships become distorted abominations of their former selves. Religions, economies, governments all become monstrous when nature itself, human nature, is disregarded in favor of unnatural greed and blind ambition.

On a purely visual level, this film is amazing. The landscapes Ashitaka rides through are beautifully crafted. Miyazaki, not just the director but the head animator, goes through the trouble of actually depicting the wind blowing the grass and moving the clouds. Each animal looks like a Darwinian sketch. Even the over the top ultra violence is believable, and anatomically correct. And this is a violent movie. But the themes and tone are what really give this animated movie its well deserved PG-13 rating.

Miyazaki’s award winning Spirited Away follows along the same bend; a thoughtful, beautifully crafted animated film potentially well ahead of its target audience. While making this film it’s clear that Miyazaki wanted to impose a level of realism not seen in many cartoons today. As Chihiro, the hero of our tale, tries to navigate an enchanted bath house for the spirits in order to find her lost parents we see that her actions were lifted movement for movement from a real girl. Simple things like tying her ponytail or putting on her shoes are all created to emulate the motions of real people.

While the animation is really something to see, it’s the depiction of growing up that makes the movie. Chihiro enters the bathhouse a normal little girl. But away from her parents, new influences challenge and threaten her. She is given numerous opportunities to forget her parents or turn back from her quest to find them, but she presses through a melancholy period, much like puberty but on fast forward. Her friends can either corrupt or save her; she changes her name and forgets who she was. Tell me that isn’t how a parent sees their maturing child. Her alienation doesn’t last, and she finds her parents and herself.

But once again the tone and feel of the film truly make it what it is. The entire movie is beautifully somber and quiet. More is revealed through watching the young girl silently ride a train full of ghosts than any single line of dialog. It is precisely this quality that makes me think that Spirited Away is not really a movie for children. The film does not contain the flash or cuteness necessary to keep young attention spans but for avid movie goers and film nuts, it is definitely a must see.

My main goal for this article is to get readers to watch more animated films. The best way I could think to do that, is to introduce you to some of the best ones I know. Keep in mind though, there are great animated features coming out of France as well; keep your eyes peeled for The Illusionist this Christmas. Now go, Netflix some Miyazaki films, you will not regret it.

What Do You Think? Discuss.