About the Book
This collection investigates how Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and other Studio Ghibli storytellers have approached the process of reimagining literary sources for animation.
Studio Ghibli is renowned for its original storytelling in films like My Neighbor Totoro, but many of its most famous films, including Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo, have their origins in pre-existing novels, manga, or fairy tales. Studio Ghibli’s adaptations seldom directly translate source material to animation, but instead transform the works to incorporate themes or imagery central to the studio’s sensibilities. Studio Ghibli Animation as Adaptations explores how these adaptations often blur genre boundaries and raise questions about what constitutes fidelity to source material. The collection also shows how the studio reinterprets and recontextualizes stories across cultures for Japanese audiences and across mediums like manga.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Studio Ghibli Animation as (Re)creative Adaptations
Dominic J. Nardi (George Washington University, USA) and Keli Fancher (Signum University, USA)
Part I: Faithfulness and Fidelity
1. Apocalyptic Beauty: Future Boy Conan and How Hayao Miyazaki Adapts Apocalypse
River Seager (University of Dundee, UK)
2. Hayao Miyazaki as a Magician of Adaptation in Kiki’s Delivery Service
Miyuki Yonemura (Senshu University, Japan)
3. The Balance of Creation and Ruin: A Constituent Reading of Tales From Earthsea
Adam McLain (University of Connecticut, USA)
Part II: Translating Stories Across Cultures
4. Japan’s Swiss Heimat: How Heidi, Girl of the Alps Satisfies Japanese Homesickness
Keli Fancher (Signum University, USA)
5. My Bosom Friend Diana: Female Friendship and School Life in Red-Haired Anne
Patrick Carland-Echavarria (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
6. From Postmodern Fairy Tale to Ani-Modern Shojo: Adapting Howl’s Moving Castle
Yosr Dridi (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France)
7. Western Stories, Japanese Structures: Narratological Reinterpretations of Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo
Zoe Crombie (Lancaster University, UK)
Part III: From Manga to Anime
8. Post-Apocalypse and Solarpunk in Hayao Miyazaki’s Two Versions of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Dalila Forni (Link University, Italy)
9. Adapting Nostalgia in Only Yesterday and My Neighbors the Yamadas
Hsin Hsieh (University of Reading, UK)
Part IV: Boundaries and Genres
10. Rediscovering Laputa: Literary Form and Technoscience in Castle in the Sky and Gulliver’s Travels
Brian Milthorpe (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
11. True Stories, Theater Tropes, and Hotaru Mythologies: Adaptation Reconsidered in Grave of the Fireflies
Kendall Belopavlovich (Michigan Technological University, USA)
12. A Kettle of Fish on a Warming Planet: Exploring Liminality in Ponyo and “The Little Mermaid”
Colin Wheeler (Independent Scholar, USA)
Bibliography
Filmography
Notes on Contributors
Index
About the Author :
Dominic J. Nardi is Adjunct Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, USA. He co-edited The Transmedia Franchise of Star Wars TV (2020) and Discovering Dune (2022) and has written about politics in Blade Runner and Lord of the Rings.
Keli Fancher is a full-time software engineer and an independent scholar focusing on anime studies, based in the USA.
Review :
I read this book with great enjoyment. With four of twelve chapters devoted to works by Isao Takahata and one to Goro Miyazaki’s Tales from Earthsea, it offers a substantial contribution to scholarship on the best-known works of Ghibli’s three major directors.
Miyazaki’s looser late ‘adaptations’ The Wind Rises and The Boy and the Heron do not feature, and his original work Porco Rosso (adapted from his own short manga) is omitted. I was sorry not to see chapters devoted to Takahata’s magnificent Pompoko, or to the work of Ghibli’s junior directors, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Tomomi Mochizuki, Hiroyuki Morita, and the late Yoshifumi Kondo; but in any publication space and time make demands that editors must accept. It’s still a fascinating collection, and by focussing on the most popular titles from the studio’s catalogue it makes itself widely accessible and attractive to readers beyond academia. Written with commendable clarity, its essays will be useful to the general reader and Ghibli fan as well as to scholars.
The scholars involved come from diverse cultural and academic backgrounds, including one independent scholar, one animation practicioner/scholar and one film-maker/scholar. Several are engaged with podcasting, film festivals and film criticism as well as more conventional academic publication. Most of the authors have received their degrees from and currently work in European or American universities. One is a former professor at the University of Tunis in Africa, and one is currently a professor at Tokyo’s Senshu University. Sources listed are primarily in English, with some Japanese and Italian material.
This mix of contributors and sources serves the overall topic of Studio Ghibli as a source of (re)-creative adaptations well. All anime is adaptation, and all anime in English is a re-adaptation. From the opening paragraph of the introduction on why we remake work, and what we choose to adapt from format to format, the editors address the lack of critical scholarly attention to Ghibli as re-maker. By directly comparing Disney’s and Ghibli’s recontextualizations, they open the door to fresh critical perspectives. A useful list of pre-Ghibli and Ghibli adaptations from other sources paves the way for a series of dynamic, reflective essays. This is an important and welcome contribution to English-language Ghibli scholarship that will be just as valuable to Ghibli studies worldwide.
Studio Ghibli Animation and Adaptations is a joy, opening up a fascinating aspect of Japan’s greatest animation studio, Studio Ghibli, and its creative approach to transcultural adaptation. We see Miyazaki’s, Takahata’s, and other directors’ films in a new light through their interplay with Japanese and English literature, manga, and fairy tales, resulting in the distinctive and original creations that have drawn audiences around the world. Each chapter gives us a new light on a beloved film, written in prose that is sophisticated yet accessible. A great resource and a thought-provoking read.”
This book delivers on its premise, focusing on Studio Ghibli’s adaptations and providing a valuable contribution to the field. Situating this output within the broader relationship between literature and cinema—areas often treated separately despite their shared narrative functions—it highlights Studio Ghibli’s longstanding engagement with adaptation as a transformative process that expands a story’s world and pushes media boundaries. The volume moves beyond a fidelity-based approach to explore a tapestry of influences, touching on themes such as shojo culture, liminality, and alternative storytelling, while offering new perspectives on lesser-discussed works, including those of Takahata and Miyazaki Goro.
