On March 25, OpenAI added image generation abilities to ChatGPT. Six days later, the Studio Ghibli AI trend took over the internet, with even BU Questrom’s Instagram account participating. What takes an AI program seconds to create takes a team of artists years to sketch, render, color, and animate, and this dedication is exactly what makes Studio Ghibli, an award-winning animation studio in Tokyo, as successful and magical as it is.
The studio’s director, Hayao Miyazaki, has spent the last 40 years churning out stunning imagery, profound stories, and meticulous detail to every frame—his dedication to the craft painstaking and unwavering. With the continuous rise of artificial intelligence, we should remember that art has meaning, and artists are invaluable to our lives and perception of the world. In that spirit, here are three Studio Ghibli movies that have left a lingering mark on me from the moment I watched them.
- Princess Mononoke (1997)
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Princess Mononoke tells the tale of young prince Ashitaka’s journey to free himself from a demon’s curse and save the natural world from warring sides with no clear villain. It features Miyazaki’s trademark whimsical worldbuilding, but like all of his films, it tells a deeper story of love, violence, and enduring determination. Above all else, Princess Mononoke serves to remind us that humanity’s progress must work in tandem with our planet’s natural environment.
- Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
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Howl’s Moving Castle was the first Ghibli film I ever watched. I was captivated by hectic images of the bustling city, contrasted by mythical landscapes filled with wildflowers and dancing star spirits. It follows the reserved hatmaker Sophie, who has been cursed by a witch and consequently finds a job with the fearsome wizard Howl in his magical moving castle to undo the curse.
Set in some semi-Victorian nation where steam engines bumble by noblewomen in pastel gowns with parasols, the film offers stunning screencaps filled to the borders with movement. To animate a detailed scene of a bustling bakery—detailing all those gowns, the ladies’ hats and parasols, the pastries and drinks on every table, the tassels on all the men’s uniforms, the way the light from the stained-glass windows hits their service medals—takes months of drawing and an understanding of composition. Howl’s Moving Castle truly is a masterpiece of artistic detail.
- Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
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Possibly the saddest produced by Studio Ghibli, Grave of the Fireflies follows Japanese war orphans Seita and Setsuko in a wretched struggle to survive the final months of World War II.
Despite featuring the studio’s trademark whimsical animation style, the film is gloomy, miserable, and desolate, with Setsuko’s blue coat cutting through otherwise pale and bleak imagery—a striking symbol of childhood innocence and endurance. This film deviates from Ghibli’s usual tone, probably because it’s not directed by Miyazaki, but by Isao Takahata, the studio’s other head director.
Grave of the Fireflies excels at creating a story of war, violence, death, and desperation, but incorporates moments of triumph that, for a moment, make audiences feel that everything will be alright. Takahata famously said that Grave of the Fireflies is not an anti-war film, but rather a focus on surviving amidst a war-torn landscape. Thus, it shows the audience that war has collateral damage—often to civilians, children, and bystanders in the wrong place when a bomb hits. Grave of the Fireflies heartbreakingly brings that ugliness to the screen in, contrastingly, the most visually beautiful way.
While the era of Miyazaki and Takahata’s directorial leadership at Studio Ghibli is over, their legacies live on in the movies they created. Each of these movies required years of dutiful dedication to detail and worldbuilding. They encapsulate heartbreak, grief, struggles between right and wrong, where nothing is entirely right or wrong.
The artistry is unmatched, and we know this—perhaps that’s why we try to replicate it with AI. But the truth is, no computer can capture the essence of humanity and childhood like Studio Ghibli can.
That’s up to the artists.
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