Founded on June 15, 1985, the studio is headed by the directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata and the producer Toshio Suzuki. Prior to the formation of the studio, Miyazaki and Takahata had already had long careers in Japanese film and television animation and had worked together on Holst: Prince of the SunandPanda! Go, Panda!; and Suzuki was an editor atTokuma Shoten'sAnimagemangamagazine.

1. The 2

3. • Founded on June 15, 1985, the studio is headed by the directors
Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata and the producer Toshio Suzuki.
Prior to the formation of the studio, Miyazaki and Takahata had
already had long careers in Japanese film and television animation
and had worked together on Hols: Prince of the Sun and Panda! Go,
Panda!; and Suzuki was an editor at Tokuma
Shoten's Animage manga magazine.

4. • The name Ghibli was given by Hayao Miyazaki from the Italian
noun ghibli, based on the Libyan-Arabic name for the hot desert
wind of that country, the idea being the studio would "blow a new
wind through the anime industry".

6. • Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿 Miyazaki Hayao, born January 5, 1941) is a
Japanese animator, filmmaker, screenwriter, author, and manga artist.
A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, a film and animation studio, he has
attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and as a
maker of anime feature films, and is widely regarded as one of the
greatest animation filmmakers.

7. • Born in Bunkyō Ward of Tokyo, Miyazaki expressed interest in manga
and animation from an early age, and he joined Toei Animation in
1963.

8. • During his early years at Toei Animation he worked as an in-between
artist and later collaborated with director Isao Takahata. Notable films
to which Miyazaki contributed at Toei include Doggie
March and Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon.

9. • Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon(ガリバーの宇宙旅行 Garibā no
Uchū Ryokō, Gulliver's Space Travels), also known as Space Gulliver, is
a 1965 Japanese animated feature that was released in Japan on
March 20, 1965 and in the United States on July 23, 1966.

10. • This was one of the first Toei animated features to depart from Asian
mythology, though, like Toei's previous animated features, it is
modeled after the Disney formula of animated musical feature. By
borrowing elements from Hans Christian Andersen, Jonathan
Swift and science fiction, it was hoped that this film would attract a
large international audience.

11. • However it proved to be no more popular than Toei's previous, Asian-
themed films. After the failure in the U.S. of this and Toei's previous
animated feature, this was the last Japanese animated feature to be
released in the United States for over a decade,
until Sanrio's Metamorphoses and The Mouse and His Child, both of
which were released in the U.S. in 1978.

12. • In one of his earliest animation jobs, a young Hayao Miyazaki worked
on this film as an in-between artist. His contribution to the ending of
the film brought Miyazaki to the attention of Toei.

13. • Hayao Miyazaki provided key animation to other films at Toei, such
as Puss in Boots and Animal Treasure Island, before moving to A-
Pro in 1971, where he co-directed Lupin the Third Part I alongside
Takahata. After moving to Zuiyō Eizō (later known as Nippon
Animation) in 1973, Miyazaki worked as an animator on World
Masterpiece Theater, and directed the television series Future Boy
Conan.

14. • He joined Telecom Animation Film/Tokyo Movie Shinsha in 1979 to
direct his first feature films, The Castle of Cagliostro in 1979
and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984, as well as the
television series Sherlock Hound.

15. • Miyazaki co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985. He directed multiple films
with Ghibli, including Castle in the Sky in 1986, My Neighbor Totoro in
1988, Kiki's Delivery Service in 1989, and Porco Rosso in 1992. The
films were met with commercial and critical success in Japan.

17. • Miyazaki's film Princess Mononoke was the first animated film to win
the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year, and briefly became
the highest-grossing film in Japan following its release in 1997;its
distribution to the Western world greatly increased Ghibli's popularity
and influence outside Japan.

18. • His 2001 film Spirited Away became the highest-grossing film in
Japanese history, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated
Feature at the 75th Academy Awards and considered among the
greatest films of the decade. Miyazaki's later films—Howl's Moving
Castle, Ponyo, and The Wind Rises—also enjoyed critical and
commercial success. Following the release of The Wind Rises,
Miyazaki announced his retirement from feature films, though he
returned to work on a new feature film in 2016.

20. Isao Takahata (高畑 勲 )

23. • Isao Takahata (高畑 勲 Takahata Isao, October 29, 1935 – April 5,
2018) was a Japanese film director, screenwriter and producer. In
1985, he co-founded Studio Ghibli with his long-time collaborative
partner Hayao Miyazaki and Miyazaki's collaborators Toshio Suzukiand
Yasuyoshi Tokuma. Takahata earned critical international acclaim for
his work as a director of anime films, among them Grave of the
Fireflies (1988), Only Yesterday (1991), Pom Poko (1994), and My
Neighbors the Yamadas (1999). His last film as director was The Tale
of the Princess Kaguya (2013), which was nominated for an Oscar in
the category of Best Animated Feature Film at the 87th Academy
Awards.

25. • Takahata was born in Ujiyamada, Mie Prefecture, Japan, on October
29, 1935, as the youngest of seven siblings and third son in the
family. His father, Asajiro Takahata (1888–1984),was a junior high
school principal, who became the education chief of Okayama
prefecture after the war. On June 29, 1945, when Takahata was nine
years old, he and his family survived a major United States air raid
on Okayama City.

26. • Takahata graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1959 with a
degree in French literature. During this time at the school, he had
seen the French film The King and the Mockingbird, which led him to
become interested in animation. Takahata was more interested in
animation as a medium, and wanted to write and direct for animated
works rather than create animations himself.

27. • A friend suggested he apply for a directing job at Toei Animation;
Takahata passed their entrance exam, and was hired as an assistant
director for several of Toei's animated television shows and films—
including Wolf Boy Ken, on which he was mentored by Yasuo Ōtsuka.

28. • Ōtsuka eventually asked Takahata to direct an animated feature film
of his own; his directorial debut was The Great Adventure of Horus,
Prince of the Sun (1968). Ōtsuka served as Animation Director on the
film, while another Toei employee, Hayao Miyazaki, served as key
animator.Though it would later be recognized as one of the first
defining works of modern Japanese animation, the film was a
commercial failure, and Takahata was demoted.

29. • Takahata announced that he would direct one last film for Studio
Ghibli, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Kaguya-hime no Monogatari,
2013), around the same time that Miyazaki also announced his plans
to retire from the studio. "Someday we should make a Japanese
Heidi", Takahata and Miyazaki had both agreed after making Heidi
noting its similarities to the Princess Kaguya story.

30. • Heidi's carefree depiction, Takahata had told one journalist, "stems
from my ideal image of what a child should be like". When the film
arrived in Western markets the following year, it was nominated for
the Best Animated Feature at the 87th Academy Awards. Takahata
continued to work at Ghibli, serving as an artistic producer for The
Red Turtle (2016), the first feature film of Dutch animator and
director Michaël Dudok de Wit in collaboration with Ghibli. The film
premiered in September 2016.

32. • Takahata had been diagnosed with lung cancer, and died on April 5,
2018, at a hospital in Tokyo, at the age of 82. On May 15, 2018, a
farewell ceremony for Takahata was held at the Ghibli Museum in
Tokyo. Hayao Miyazaki publicly spoke for the first time about
Takahata's death, saying "I was convinced that Paku-san [Takahata's
nickname] would live to be 95 years old, but he unfortunately passed
away. It makes me think my time is also limited...Thank you, Paku-
san."

34. "A Production“: The say…
• They developed the idea along with "A Production", an animated
studio formed by another former Toei animator, Daikichiro Kusube
(the company became Shin-Ei Animation). Takahata and Miyazaki had
developed a number of storyboards and had flown out to Sweden for
location shots, to meet with the books' author, Astrid Lindgren, and
secure the rights for the character. However they could not reach an
agreement with the rights holders, and were forced to drop the
project.

35. • Takahata and Miyazaki remained collaborators in several other
animation projects through the 1970s, including taking over
production of the anime series Lupin the Third Part I at Ōtsuka's
request, due to its poor ratings. They also made Panda! Go,
Panda! for TMS around this time, which utilized some of the designs
and concepts developed for the Longstocking project.

36. April 16, 1988 (Japan) December 17, 1972 (Japan)

37. • Takahata, Kotabe, and Miyazaki were approached by the studio Zuiyo
Enterprise to create an animated series based on the novel Heidi,
which resulted in Heidi, Girl of the Alps (this also incorporated some
of their work from the Pippi Longstocking concept).The animation
production section of Zuiyo was established as a subsidiary company
named Zuiyo Eizo, later becoming Nippon Animation, which Takahata
and Miyazaki joined.

38. • Concurrent to these events, Miyazaki had made his own directorial
debut in the Lupin III feature film The Castle of Cagliostro in 1979,
which was a critical success.

39. • Inspired by this, Miyazaki then began developing his own
manga, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and directing its 1984 film
adaption, which also was commercially and critically
successful. Miyazaki approached Takahata with the idea of co-
founding their own animation studio based on the success
of Nausicaä; Studio Ghibli was subsequently formed in 1985 by
Miyazaki, Takahata, and Miyazaki's collaborators Toshio Suzuki and
Yasuyoshi Tokuma.