Hayao Miyazaki: Exploring the Early Work of Japan's Greatest Animator

Description

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Hayao Miyazaki's career in animation has made him famous as not only the greatest director of animated features in Japan, the man behind classics as My Neighbour Totoro (1988) and Spirited Away (2001), but also as one of the most influential animators in the world, providing inspiration for animators in Disney, Pixar, Aardman, and many other leading studios. However, the animated features directed by Miyazaki represent only a portion of his 50-year career. Hayao Miyazaki examines his earliest projects in detail, alongside the works of both Japanese and non-Japanese animators and comics artists that Miyazaki encountered throughout his early career, demonstrating how they all contributed to the familiar elements that made Miyazaki's own films respected and admired among both the Japanese and the global audience.

Raz Greenberg is a teaching fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He has published both academic and popular articles on animation, including Literature Film Quarterly, The Journal of Film and Video, Animated Views and ASIFA, among others.

Fans of Miyazaki will find much to interest them in this book ... there is a surprisingly robust amount of detail packed into this slim volume that is likely to change the way readers watch and reflect on one of the greatest animators of all time. * Strange Horizons * [A] fluid, concise treatment of animator Hayao Miyazaki's early works ... a useful primer about the artist and his early oeuvre. * CHOICE * Offers valuable insight into the work of animation as a force for cultural impact ... this book allows both the seasoned scholar and the mesmerized fan to find their form in the text. Reader-friendly, the gravitas of the study is not compromised at any time. A timely addition to the oeuvre of Animation Studies and useful text for both undergraduate and graduate students, it should be recommended reading for all scholars and aficionados of Japanese animation. * Animation Studies * The passionate strength of this book is that it presents a concise survey of the formative development of Japan's most renowned animation director, Hayao Miyazaki. What were the sources of his inspirations, how may we connect the associations and allusions of his creative output? Raz Greenberg gives us a one-stop coverage of the director's career denoting the multi-faceted influences of his collective works. * Tze-yue G. Hu, Independent Educator and Author of Frames of Anime: Culture and Image-Building and Co-Author of Japanese Animation: East Asian Perspectives, Northern California, USA * Raz Greenberg has produced a charming, thorough and accessible book, useful for anime aficionados, film students and the general reader. His overview of early works and exploration of influences is detailed, and the footnotes and bibliography open the door to further exploration. Most importantly, Greenberg anchors this erudite, curious and passionate creative powerhouse in the framework of world culture that informs and inspires his works as fully as his environmental activism, political views and profound love for the community in which he has lived and worked for eight decades. * Helen McCarthy, independent scholar and author of A Brief History of Manga: The Essential Pocket Guide to the Japanese Pop Culture Phenomenon (2015), UK *