Timed in the U.S. to ride on the release of his newest feature Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki's Starting Point: 1979-1996 (Viz Media) is a hefty 461-page collection of essays, lectures, and interviews that focuses on the first part of the anime master's career. As such, the book ends just before the animator broke through to Western audiences with Princess Mononoke, giving us a look at the aesthetic growth and philosophical principles that have led to such later works as Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle.
A strong-willed workaholic with a clear set of opinions, Miyazaki makes for an engaging reading companion. He can be harsh about the failings of both his peers and himself, blistering when it comes to describing what he considers wrongheaded storytelling. He calls, for example, the popular trend toward mecha focusing on giant fighting machinery representative of an "infantile infatuation with power" and is scornful of anime that's adapted from printed manga. "Although it may be good training," he states early in the volume, "I think it is worth bearing in mind that animating an original manga is unrewarding, even if the result is popular with the general public." He even is withering about the term "anime," stating he frankly despises "the truncated word 'anime' because to me it only symbolizes the current desolation of our industry."
Miyazaki's ferociously opinionated personality has undoubtedly helped to keep him from being ground down by the Japanese animation factory system. He's not afraid to buck the prevailing trends, making movies that remain accessible to a younger audience even as many studios have honed in on older audiences. "The future of animation," he states in a 1984 piece, "is threatened by the fact that for most films being planned today, the target age is gradually creeping upward." Yet Miyazaki approaches the continued creation of his lushly inventive all-ages fantasies with a missionary zeal.
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