Last 2017, the producer Toshio Suzuki gave immense joy to fans of animated films – and the seventh art in general – by announcing that Hayao Miyazaki would leave his retirement to shape a new feature film that would leave his grandson as a inheritance. Four years later, the Japanese legend continues to shape a ‘Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka’ that it is simmering, in part, from the use of traditional animation.
Animated tradition
Master Miyazaki has always been not only a great advocate of hand-drawn animation, but a fervent detractor of CGI. A current of thought that was reflected in a viralized video from 2016 extracted from the documentary ‘NHK Special: Hayao Miyazaki – The One Who Never Ends’, in which the filmmaker defines digital technique as “an insult to life”.
“Whoever creates these things has no idea what pain is. I am totally disgusted. If you want to create something creepy, you can go ahead and do it. I would never want to incorporate this technology into my work, in any way. I feel like this is a insult to life itself. “
Now, in the middle of 2021, the winner of the honorary Oscar has reaffirmed its position during an interview with The New York Times in which he was clear and concise in his words: “I think the animator’s tool is the pencil.”. Some statements that conflict with the point of view of his son Goro, director of ‘Earwig and the witch’; the first three-dimensional CGI movie from the Ghibli factory.
In an interview with IndieWire, Goro explained the reasons that prompted him to bet on computer-generated 3D.
“It is not enough to just carry on the legacy of what they have built, because it would just be a copy and an inferior version of it. For me, it was trying to make the studio’s first CG movie. I have seen traditional animators with great talent and they’ve done a great job outside of Studio Ghibli to suffer from the pressure. So CG was a good fit for us, and we did this without that great pressure. “
Hand drawing or CGI? Sensitive material or digital sensors? Practical Effects or VFX? The analog-digital contest it seems endless, and it extends far beyond animation.