“I hadn’t been thinking of Goro at all,” Hayao says. Given the generally unfavorable reception of Goro’s directorial debut, Tales from Earthsea, and the below-Ghibli-average response to his next project, From Up on Poppy Hill, Goro, whose relationship with his father is well-known to be complex and sometimes strained, was a bold choice. Suzuki, in turn, ended up tapping Miyazaki’s son, Goro, to direct the project. “So after that, I left the matter up to Suzuki.” “I’ve been made to carry the destiny of only making feature-length theatrical works, so I thought ‘I can’t direct Earwig,’” he explains. ▼ Trailer for Earwig and the Witch’s theatrical releaseīut despite his enthusiasm for an adaptation, Miyazaki didn’t direct Earwig and the Witch. While the most direct translation is “interesting,” when talking about media the word can also convey the ideas of “fun,” “funny,” or “entertaining.”
Note: Throughout the course of his interview, Miyazaki uses the Japanese word “omoshiroi” several times. But with Earwig, it’s short, and very trenchant… I thought ‘Ah, this is something we could make into animation.’” “With Howl, once we got into actually making it, there were difficult parts.
“When I read it, it was very interesting,” Miyazaki recalls. Miyazaki is credited with “planning” for Earwig and the Witch, and it was his personal fondness for the source-material novel by British author Diana Wynne Jones (who also wrote the original Howl’s Moving Castle novel) that got the ball rolling. On August 27, an enhanced version with additional footage will play in Japanese theaters, and ahead of its release Ghibli’s legendary co-founder Hayao Miyazaki has given an interview with distributor Toho with his thoughts on the studio’s first foray into entirely non-hand-drawn animation. Last December, Earwig and the Witch, Studio Ghibli’s first-ever CG anime, aired on Japanese public broadcaster NHK. Speaking last year, a producer said they have 36 minutes in the bag with three years to go.Įarwig and the Witch is released on 28 May in cinemas.Studio Ghibli legend also says what modern children are missing that kids had back in his day. Sixty animators are currently working – by hand, naturally – at a rate of one-minute of animation a month on his new film. So this new film is genuinely disappointing.Īnd there’s a while to wait yet for the latest from Miyazaki Sr. Then I saw it first-hand – the dreamy faraway look on my four-year-old’s face watching When Marnie Was There. I used to roll my eyes when friends said how much their young kids loved Ghibli films – sceptical that the slow bits and big complicated feelings would keep little ones entertained. But the script ignores all the interesting bits of the story – who are the witches chasing Earwig’s mum and how does she shake them off? How does Earwig feel about being abandoned? Since the last Studio Ghibli release five years ago I’ve become a parent. There are some nice touches here and there, like the whirling little demons with batwings who are devoted to Mandrake. The witch needs a helper with her spells – and puts Erica to work grinding rat bones and picking prickly nettles. But one day a gruesome twosome shows up: buxomy blue-haired witch Bella Yaga (Vanessa Marshall) and her bad-tempered fella Mandrake (Richard E Grant). Unlike the other kids, Erica (voiced by Taylor Henderson) has no intention of being adopted. The baby is renamed Erica Wig and grows up to be cheerfully brattish, wrapping everyone at the orphanage around her little finger. I’ll be back for her when I’ve shook them off. It begins on the doorsteps of an English orphanage where baby Earwig is left by her rock star mum along with a note: “Got the other 12 witches all chasing me. Like Howl’s Moving Castle, the script is based on a classic children’s book by Diana Wynne Jones and just like Kiki’s Delivery Service the heroine is a plucky young witch. To be fair, Earwig was made for Japanese TV, but there are so many echoes here of Ghibli films past that it’s impossible not to compare and despair. More painfully still, the film-maker responsible is Miyazaki’s son, Gorō Miyazaki (who previously directed the pretty decent Tales from Earthsea and From Up on Poppy Hill).
Earwig and the witch Patch#
Now Studio Ghibli has made its first ever fully CG feature, and it’s, well, erm … The politest thing to say about Earwig and the Witch is that it’s not a patch on Ghibli’s hand-drawn output, with plasticky-looking characters and an aimless plot. E ighty-year-old animation legend Hayao Miyazaki once described computer-generated imagery as “thin, shallow, fake”.
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