Hayao Miyazaki, in the documentary "The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness" (2013):
Interviewer: "Aren't you worried about [Studio Ghibli]'s future?"
HM: "The future is clear. It's gonna fall apart. I can already see it. What's the use worrying? It's inevitable. "Ghibli" is just a random name I got from an airplane. It's only a name."
There are adults now that grew up with Ghibli films. And not just from HBO playing an abridged Nausicaa on a loop as filler.
Certainly Miyazaki has succeeded in keeping the wheels on long enough that there’s a cadre of people out there that have a deep psychological investment in preserving the legacy.
It won’t be Miyazaki’s Ghibli, but it could be something.
But why can’t it be something else? Does the name matter apart from the creators?
If I see Miyazaki on a poster, I’m going to be interested. There’s been enough Ghibli without him that I know the studio isn’t magic, it’s him. Not saying the non-Miyazaki stuff is terrible, but certainly not the same quality.
Agreed that Takahata was a master in his own right.
Everybody knows about Grave of the Fireflies, but a few years ago I discovered the more subdued Only Yesterday and found it impressive. It stirred emotions, a true animated movie for adults.
I also enjoyed Princess Kaguya a lot. The art style alone is very different from Miyazaki's style (which I love, of course).
Japan is actually relatively short on things to do considering how many tourists they get. There's some proposals to build another large theme park in Yokohama IIRC.
> Japan is actually relatively short on things to do considering how many tourists they get.
Weird, I felt the opposite vibe. When I spent 3 weeks during spring over there, as a tourist, it seemed like there was endless stuff to do, see and enjoy. "Touristy" Japan feels like a theme park in itself. And for "proper" theme things, we only did Ghibli Museum.
Eh. Zero interest in theme parks. Maybe they would. Keep some population of tourists away from everything else though. I’ve spent a week just in zTokyo in the dog days of summer and have spent a bunch of time elsewhere in the country without going to Disney even being on my radar.
Yeah but there are lots of other tourists they want to attract with theme parks and water parks and if that means bulldozing some parts of Kyoto with more distinctive charms they’ll do it.
For instance, NYC has more museums, things open late at night, and no tourists are bored enough to try something called a "robot restaurant" or illegal Mario themed street karts.
I feel like rather than being something people do because they're desperately bored that's the kind of thing people go to Japan specifically to seek. People in New York go to axe-throwing bars and other stuff that sounds somewhere between boring and ridiculous to me but I'm not casting aspersions on the city over it.
Miyazaki is reportedly not a great father. They seem not to have connected yery well and as such the few things his son have done don’t feel inspired by him. Actually they don’t feel inspired at all.
I don’t think there will be a Ghibli analog to Farscape by Henson Productions - quite different in tone and story but still somehow just a bit similar to The Dark Crystal.
Oh yeah. They changed the tone a bit too. I don’t think I can tell you the differences since it was at least 10-15 years between Valley of the Wind going away and the rereleases.
Yes. I think this also comes less as a shock as the new generation of directors have a number of studios willing to give them a chance (including new studios beasically founded for a single director, or even single piece).
Ghibli can stay an icon of a glorious past area, in good hands.
"We'll Always Have Paris" is the phrase that came to my mind.
If we are lucky, the Ghibli will be the empty shell holding the royalties/rights/etc of the Miyazaki (and other) produced movies.
If we are unlucky, someone will use the brand name to start producing (en masse) garbage, selling it to Netflix, and Netflix will be pushing garbage low-quality, hi-speed cartoons.
> If we are unlucky, someone will use the brand name to start producing (en masse) garbage, selling it to Netflix, and Netflix will be pushing garbage low-quality, hi-speed cartoons.
I would really hate to see the Ghibli version of "rings of power"
> I would really hate to see the Ghibli version of "rings of power"
Then, don’t see it.
Fans need to stop enabling these awful reboots: by withholding their wallets. These IP vampires are only motivated by money, and if we give them money as a reward for milking past franchises, then they will continue to do it.
I agree in principle, but it can be difficult in practice to vote with your wallet.
In the case of movies, once you have a ticket or purchase it or even rent it, they've got your money and have learned the lesson that people will pay, regardless of how you felt about what you watched or whether you intend to boycott future productions.
In general, though, I do try to send the signal that I'm not personally a garbage dump for low effort content, by doing a few things:
- No "guilty pleasure" watching of things that I'd prefer didn't exist, i.e. junk reality TV
- Actively avoiding clicking on things that have clickbait titles, especially if they're part of an algo-feed
- Read reviews / get reviews from friends first
- If a streaming show is bad, stop watching ASAP. Stopping at episode 2/10 is a reliable signal for Netflix et al.
Yeah; I've come to the point where I don't really want to watch "fresh" content. There's so many great movies in the back catalog, I'll probably never run out of great stuff to watch.
And if there's something great that's come out, I'll check it out after a couple of years when the reviews have settled down and all of the parts (I'm looking at you, Dune) have come out.
Prime is subsidized by a million other things. Cancelling does not send a message, or rather, the message isn't nearly specific enough to be interpreted by Amazon as "we should make a better show and/or stop making this one."
The entire feedback loop for the media industry has been perverted by tech companies and Venture Capital vampires, and it wasn't in a great place before.
Huh? I'm sure Amazon has no trouble gathering data about exactly how many of its Prime members are watching various shows/movies on their service. They're not going to pour money into something if no one is watching it. It's not like the old days of regular TV where they needed Nielsen to try to guess how many people were watching something.
People don't vote with their wallets with clear minds though. People vote with half-asleep notions of what's good based on an onslaught of direct and viral marketing combo that threatens to ostracize them from their various social/support groups if they don't consume said product. No one has the time and energy to fight that on every front, nor has the know-how in every conceivable field to understand what is a lie and what isn't.
After Game of Thrones season 3 I've began ignoring film adaptations of books I enjoy. I think the risk of tarnishing my experience with a good book is much worse than any possible film enhancement I've experienced.
The screenshots from Blade Runner 2 and Dune do look cool though.
IMHO, Denis Villeneuve (and the rest of the crew) did a wonderful job with the visuals in Dune; there's some aspects of it I don't care for, but it definitely looks cool. But then again, I also think David Lynch (and the rest of the crew) did a wonderful job with the visuals in Dune, although somethings were a bit over the top; OTOH, I first watched this one when I was like 10 and got sucked in, so I'm not unbiased. I think both films did a great job of practical shooting that will continue to look good well into the future unlike a lot of recent films that are a lot of short takes in front of a green screen (cough Star Wars after the first two; most of Marvel cough). I'm looking forward to Dune: Part 2 this year, even if I'm pretty sure I'll dislike the same things I dislike from Dune: Part 1, because the visuals are likely to be going to be wonderful.
The SciFi channel had zero budget and it showed; but I think they stuck to the book a lot better; but I don't think I'll ever rewatch them, because the visuals are so bad.
Anyway --- we can always treat adaptations as inspired by rather than based on. I, Robot is a fun action film that name drops the three laws, but is otherwise unconnected to the book. The song retains the name, as they say.
Blade Runner 2 is basically .. fan fiction done by one of the best directors ever.
The story is pointless. The movie aimless. The visuals and acting and directing absolutely stunning. As lovely as it was to look at, I'd just like my 3 hours back. The original movie was a somewhat campy but beautiful film-noir sci-fi detective thing that actually didn't take itself that seriously, despite being aesthetically quite serious. The new thing took itself way way way too seriously.
But Dune 1 is amazing. Highly recommended, and I'm a deep Dune nerd (... but not the Brian Herbert crap, that's not Dune) for decades.
It's not the "same" as the book -- it lacks a lot of what's there -- but it's enough of the book and amazing in its own right that it's absolutely worth the experience.
> The screenshots from Blade Runner 2 and Dune do look cool though.
Good news about Dune! It's actually a good movie. It's both close to the book and makes the right calls in changing what needs to be changed for the big screen. It looks amazing, too. Give it a chance.
Bad news about Blade Runner 2: it's not good. It looks good, but the movie is pointless and jarringly bad acted at times (Jared Leto, enough said). And I say this as someone who absolutely loves Blade Runner, so I'm not one of the naysayers who found it "boring". It's not boring -- it's bad and pointless. Someone here called it "fanfiction", and that's what it is: fanfiction by a very competent director who doesn't truly understand the source material.
No, not run scremaing! God Emperor and beyond are awesome. But they're not the same thing, no. They're far more philosophical, and kind of about something else.
I think the second and the third was okay, but the fourth was... hmm maybe "decline" is not the right word, it was as if I walked into my favorite coffee shop and they decided to drop a bunch of bricks and PVC pipes on my laps because that's what they do now. (Can't talk about later books - I kinda stopped there and never picked up again. Maybe I should.)
God Emperor is a slog, but sets the groundwork for Heretics and Chapterhouse, and they're in my opinion very good. I've re-read Chapterhouse more than any of the others.
But I think he meant for there to be a final one to follow it, and so it closes off somewhat unsatisfactorily.
Blade Runner 2 was a great film. I think made slightly worse by its connections to the original. But I would recommend it. It’s nice that it is far enough in the future that it is a different world concept and there is no inclination to care about the canon.
I'm a fan of Blade Runner and really disliked Blade Runner 2.
To be honest, it didn't stand a chance with me: BR2 is a movie that didn't need to get made. Someone else in this thread called it "fanfiction", and that's what it is: technically very well made, but pointless fanfiction nonetheless.
But if I had a slightly open mind about it, the inclusion of old Deckard, the chew-the-scenery overacting of Jared Leto (and actor that is always hard to like), and that ridiculous "I'm the best" Luv -- which is miles behind the marvelously inspired Roy Batty -- were the final nail (nails?) in the coffin of this trainwreck of a movie.
The only saving graces are set design, K and the implications about Joi and her mass-produced but convincing displays of affection. The rest of the story is pointless and most of the characters are unlikable and badly acted.
Again, no movie would have satisfied me. I think the very concept of a Blade Runner sequel is wrong and a mistake; but Hollywood must march on, I guess.
Idk. I thought the hooker scene and the android test scene were phenomenal and interesting. If the first one asked if synthetic life could be human, this one seemed to argue that it’s arguably inevitable if the beings are living real lives; and the ultimate meaningless of the distinction. I thought that was great.
I agree Ford and Leto were distractions to the detriment of the film. Would have been fine as an independent original film and not blade runner although the reflections of the original did help highlight the themes.
The hooker scene did nothing for me, but the replicant alignment test was interesting. I think K was an interesting character.
I do agree there were some good questions asked by the film (just not anything to do with Wallace's "vision" -- boy did this ruin the movie for me!).
> Would have been fine as an independent original film and not blade runner
Yes. I would have received this way better had it been an original film with echoes of Blade Runner (so I would have been spared, for example, the ridiculous execution of clone-Rachael) instead of an official sequel.
I can accept "I'm a director who admires Blade Runner and want to do a film that is a homage to it", but cannot accept "I want to do Blade Runner 2".
For the record, I think Villeneuve is a good director and also think this was a genuine attempt at doing something good. It just happens that it was a bad idea, doomed to fail.
I can't believe how many people in this thread are dunking on Blade Runner 2. I thought it was phenomenal.
The "fanservicy" stuff in this movie fits really well with the rest of its themes. It's not like Indiana Jones 5 or Star Wars 9, where the directors are just pulling back old characters in the hopes that you'll overlook shoddy writing because you like the characters. K is a well-developed character, without a sense of purpose, identity, or agency, caught in the crossfire of cartoonish and 1-dimensional characters who are just using him to advance their cause. The reprisal of old characters, and the eccentricity of other characters, all of it adds to the feeling that K doesn't belong.
There's so much more that I want to say about it but I'm worried about spoiling the movie to people who haven't seen it. I'd recommend it to anyone remotely interested in it.
I don't begrudge you for liking the movie, I just cannot bring myself to like it. Mostly because the movie was unnecessary, but also because of all its crappy details.
I do like K and I agree with you his lack of agency and his helplessness is a plus. Gosling does a good job, too. And Joi is an interesting reflection on manufactured feelings and appealing to consumers who all think they are special.
But seriously it's hard to defend the other, cartoonish characters, who constantly ham it up to 11. Contrast, you say? Maybe.. but you cannot have a movie of bad actors (or good actors acting badly) and expect me to enjoy it.
Also, Roy Batty is so much better an antagonist than Luv (or anyone else in BR2, really) that it hurts. Luv and Wallace are seriously the worst in this movie; every second of Wallace is painful to watch.
Harrison Ford didn't seem particularly inspired, either.
Aliens and Terminator 2 are beloved by fans, but most sequels seem to be either overt cash grabs, or a director trying and failing to recapture what made the first movie special.
> Again, no movie would have satisfied me. I think the very concept of a Blade Runner sequel is wrong and a mistake; but Hollywood must march on, I guess.
I hope out hope that a very special directory/writer team could pull off something wonderful, but in practice you're probably right.
Dune has the opposite problem, the movie by itself is quite confusing and even boring to newcomers, but people who had read the book can really appreciate its effort to stay true to the source material. It is a very difficult story to adapt.
I'll be calling it that from here on, so thanks for that, but I admit I was pleasantly surprised by how good it is. Studio Mir rarely disappoints in terms of quality (although I still think The Legend of Korra was their best work), but I really wasn't expecting the rest of the show to be worth watching.
Animation style—eh, it changes, cartoons have been getting more stylized/less detailed since, like, the 80’s. It turns out characters don’t need a million belts and pockets to be compelling, haha.
Theme-wise, Steven Universe is pretty well received.
Oh I agree, its just that Superman has always been painted as a wholesome softie only in contrast to his more brooding teammates (JLA, anything that DC has produced).
Yet, here he is in a cutesy setting where rarely anyone is brooding, and somehow it just works. It even feels more true to his character, as the lightness of his personality and others is even more contrasted to the seriousness of the situations they face (similar thematically to old school Teen Titans perhaps), and also makes the argument that Earth influenced him for the better as a child much more compelling.
The stakes are high, but goodness and strength of character prevails. Best animated version I've seen so far.
Who cares? The past has happened, and nobody can change it, nobody can go back and unmake those movies we saw. Nobody can take the memories away.
The point is it doesn’t matter anymore. Someone can take the name and make mass produced garbage, you don’t have to watch it. Ghibli doesn’t mean anything. Let it go. People care too much about keeping everything exactly the same.
I agree, but it seems like many people are incapable of thinking this way. See the number of people who say that new star wars ruined old star wars, "ruined their childhood" even. How? How can a new movie ruin an old movie? Causality does not work in that direction. But some people think it does and the illogicality of their position doesn't change the fact of how they genuinely feel.
People who claim a new movie ruined their childhood are just being over-dramatic, are using it as a shorthand for it destroyed a thing from their childhood, or both.
I do think, though, that sequel can make a story worse pretty easily. For example, the combined story of the Star Wars sequels, prequels, and originals is simply worse than the originals alone. When you just watched the originals, you could imagine your own Clone Wars, they could be whatever cool thing you want. Dropping neat-sounding hints and letting the audience fill in the gaps with whatever cool thing they imagine is a classic storytelling technique get a free feeling of depth. Replacing that cool thing the audience imagined with trade negotiations makes the story worse.
Similarly, character arcs are a thing. The protagonists usually win and end up in a happy place, at least in a non-grimdark universe like Star Wars. Making a sequel that says: Actually Luke Skywalker spent the rest of his life failing and ended up as a miserable old grump makes his story arc worse.
You can just watch the original movies and ignore the rest of course, it is after all fiction so getting the whole story doesn’t really matter. But these are huge releases that get lots of press, and I think it is unrealistic to expect fans to just ignore them.
Maybe I'm making too much of it, perhaps it's just the modern style to use hyperbolic rhetoric in movie reviews.
But for new movies to make old movies worse used to be an uncommon attitude I think. I remember in the 90s and 00s, lots of movies had really shitty sequels, often straight to DVD, but nobody talked about these cash grabs ruining the original movie. For instance Aliens 3, Alien Resurrection and then all the AvP crap... some people like these (I think Aliens 3 is defensible FWIW) but a lot of people really don't. Still, nobody talks about Alien or Aliens (e.g. 1 & 2) being ruined by the later movies. Aliens 3 is frequently criticized for the way it killed well-liked characters from Aliens, but that doesn't stop people from still enjoying Aliens. People just choose to ignore Aliens 3. And why shouldn't they, because Aliens 3 is canon? That's just a legal IP relationship, that doesn't matter.
And Disney has dozens of straight-to-vhs/dvd cashgrab sequels of their classic animated movies, people who don't care for them just ignore them and they aren't said to ruin the originals. There used to be a general understanding that sequels are very rarely good, people were pleasantly surprised when it was otherwise and nobody said their life was ruined by a bad sequel. Because who cares about cannon in animated disney movies?
I've seen Lucas's Clone Wars, but if I watch the original Star Wars I'm not compelled to relate it to the Clone Wars movie. By simply choosing to ignore it because I don't like it, I free myself to imagine my own clone wars.
I think new movies ruining the originals is some relatively recent cultural phenomena that was brought on by internet culture's obsession with canon. The existence of popular sites like wookiepedia both evidence it and drive it. If I'm wrong and it's not an overabundance of respect for IP laws that is the root of this, then why isn't bad fanfic also said to ruin the original?
Of course, it is fiction, so if you want to have your own version of the story and cut off the bad parts, that’s definitely not hurting anyone.
Nowadays studios really lean into the idea of establishing an expanded universe and canon, since then it becomes a recurring revenue stream and all that. So, I wonder if this is an aspect of that trend, just a different way people tell stories and, as a result, consume them.
I think people ignore 90’s disney cash grab sequels mostly because they were so garbage that they didn’t get integrated into the cultural zeitgeist (and also, people who loved Lion King when it came out were too old to care about the sequel).
Stuff like the Star Wars prequels is not quite at that level of badness, might be marketed toward everyone, so it enters the general conversation about the movies. Of course, it is possible to not engage in that stuff, but then, I guess people who are talking about Star Wars in 2023 are interested in the whole thing, right? You can only think about 3 movies for so long, haha. So, I bet lots of people saw them movies, have fond memories, and then moved on, but they aren’t talking about it anymore.
I think some of the reason for the strong reaction is Star Wars is for kids while Aliens is not. There are a lot of people who were in an age of innocence when they watched Star Wars and it gets them upset if the new movies aren't entertaining to them as adults. Even if you did watch Aliens as a kid it's a horror movie in space with a giant bug in the shadows making it a lot less relatable.
I think it must be kind of like desecrating a corpse. Maybe watching someone dig up and do something prolonged and unthinkable to the body of your dead grandmother can't undo all the lovely years you had together, but if witnessing that act enraged you, you might find that suddenly every time you see her photo or visit her grave you're reminded of what you saw and that it upsets you all over again.
Not saying I fully buy it but I think the fans’ point is that what Disney is doing to Star Wars today is diminishing the entirety of Star Wars, the average of past + present. Every new Transformers or Indiana Jones or Ice Age makes the overall work worse, regardless of whether you even see it.
> I think the fans’ point is that what Disney is doing to Star Wars today is diminishing the entirety of Star Wars, the average of past + present
Lucas was at the helm for Return of the Jedi, Star Tours, and the three prequels. I think we can't lay the blame for the Holiday Special on him, but that certainly happened too. There's the Ewok tv movies too, which thankfully I've never seen.
Even if all the Disney Star Wars films are crap, they're just continuing the trend. I prefer to simply believe there are two Star Wars films, and let others believe what they want to believe.
I think it is not just diluting the quality to get a worse average. Fiction often involves the audience filling in the gaps: Someone drops a hint that characters have known each other a long time; you can imagine that as you’d like. In the end, you get “and they lived happily ever after,” you decide what “happily ever after” looks like.
Sequels and prequels need to add more drama and action, so happily ever after never ends up being all that happy.
Narrative causality does work that way; a later-made prequel can ruin a story element that was fine in an earlier-made sequel. This is infohazards 101.
The Star Wars brand means one experience to said person.
You mix other experiences into the soup and he'll say it's ruined.
It's true that his experience has been changed and it's also true that we are allowed to change his experience of the Star Wars brand.
The positivity/negativity of people's reactions is a red herring. They are both valid.
The real danger is when people try to gaslight people who have had a bad experience and then try to fuse/melt people, into yet another new Star Wars themed experience.
It makes you stop wanting to feel anything positive about the brand entirely.
It shouldn't be so difficult to get older generations and younger generations to watch the same product and come off with a positive experience.
Star Wars doesn't do it though, they fragment off the older generations into niche media, trying to recapture the past.
Maybe it's because they re-released modified versions of the original Star Wars trilogy[1]. Although timing wise, some of the re-releases happened before the Star Wars prequels, including the "Han shot first" controversy[2]. Some people's childhood might be ruined by the altercations, but it seems unfair that the new Star Wars are fully to blame.
He was a self-described absentee father, stated that being around his son made him anxious, dissuaded Goro from getting into animation, and was critical and generally unsupportive of the three films that Goro directed.
Goro even stated that he only got to know his father through his films since Hayao was never around.
Goro was raised by his mother, who quit pursuing her dream of working as an animator in order to raise him.
I liked it, as a huge Le Guin fan. It wasn't quite Ghibli level, but it wasn't that far off. It got the heart right, and it was a lot better than the average movie imo.
Adapting books to film is really, really hard, as is animating, and directing, etc.
Le Guin was critical of the movie, for valid reasons, but I don't think she hated it. Which, being fair, is an accomplishment.
Kokuriko-zaka Kara was really good though. Better than Miyazaki's earlier work (Sherlock Hound, Conan, Lupin). I find them very simple and mediocre compared to anything of that time or even 60's anime like 009.
in what way what a father does or doesn't leave to his son can be used to determine how much he loves or doesn't love him?
Goro is a 56 years old man, he's beyond middle age, he lived more than half of his life already, why are you treating him like a small defenseless child?
You seem a little too close to this haha. I know nothing of their history I’m just asking a simple innocent question. Yes I think it would be odd for someone to not like their own son.
a lot of people do not understand how the Japanese culture works and they assume that helicopter parents are the best of the best, but it's just US distorted parenting percolating, it has nothing to do with what's right or wrong.
If I created something and I wanted that thing to die with me, the love for my children wouldn't in any way stop me.
Legacy and honor are much more important than nepotism for some.
Also, he's saving Goro from being "the son of Miyazaki that was never good as the father" forever.
He's Goro. He's a different person. He made his own choices regardless of who the father is and owes him nothing.
And then there's the story of Jiro, the Japanese sushi maker that was so highly praised, but it turned out that it was his oldest son that was actually making the sushi.
Anecdotes of 1 are meaningless other than fun stories to share.
I've never been a Jiro fan though, there are many sushi makers in japan that can be considered artists in their craft, but their cultural impact is mehh at best.
Studio Ghibli, both Miyazaki and Takahata, on the other hand...
I guess? There was a time where Jiro's restaurant was booked months in advance (as many uber famous locations can be), and had people traveling internationally just to eat there. That's a pretty big cultural impact whether it's your cup of tea or not. There's other people that shrug their shoulders at the Studio Ghibli content. I recognize their work as being very good, but I'm not a "fan". It's not my cup of tea, but I'm not going to claim it as being meh at best. I can recognize talent even if I don't like it.
What I meant is that sushi is still something that we consider a Japanese thing, we know that masters of sushi are Japanese, Jiro being famous only reinforced that notion.
On the other hand Studio Ghibli forced the western industry of animation to recognize their greateness, we awarded them prizes, and now in the west we make products that look and feel like anime and manga. We do not think of Japanese animation of "something for kids", we treat them like Disney.
Comic conventions are full of cosplayers dressed as manga/anime heroes.
Youngsters make meme based on manga, American studios make live actions and animation shows of anime and manga.
It's been a complete game changer, either we like it or not.
I don't really (honestly) understand this critique.
What's wrong in being honest?
Goro works are clearly inferior to his father's works on many levels.
He's no amateur, that's for sure, but he's no master either.
Among the best Japanese animation artists, he's probably average.
He's no Takahata, Oshii, Otomo, Anno, Watanabe, Hosoda by a long shot.
Hayao worst rated works on Rotten Tomatoes are "The cat returns" and "The wind rises" and I completely agree on that, with a rating of 88%.
Goro worst is "Earwig and the Witch" that I have not watched with a 28%, "Tales From Earthsea" that I've seen and did not like much with 38% and the best is "From Up on Poppy Hill" with 87%, which was good, but not "Spirited Away", "Princess Mononoke" or "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" good.
And Nausicaa itself is not as good as a movie as the manga, that is an order of magnitude better!
Have you ever read or heard about the 3 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart children that survived?
"Don't put yourself in the position of being judged in the very competitive field of Japanese animation, because your works are not as great as you think they are"
It's like being the son of Michelangelo.
Of course everyone of us tells kids that their terrible drawings are sooooo goooood, but they are terrible.
Now, Goro was already 40 years old when his first movie came out.
Isn't that a false dichotomy? I think there's more possibilities than either walking out of the theater in the middle of your son's first movie and tell to the press how he's still far from being ready to make films, or treating your son like a 5 year old.
> I think there's more possibilities than either walking out of the theater in the middle of your son's first movie and tell to the press how he's still far from being ready to make films, or treating your son like a 5 year old.
That's a gross misrepresentation of what happened.
He was asked and he answered honestly.
End of story.
Who cares? Goro works are generally not good if compared with the works of his father, like a 5 years old drawings compared to their parents' drawings.
But this is not the school's play that every parent hates but attends because their children (they assume) care so much about it (I, for example, hated it and never wanted my parents to come and see me fail at something I was never good at and never liked), if you don't like the movie of some director, you can walk away and say "I did not like the movie", nobody dies, nobody should cry.
I sincerely wish more fathers did that, so we would be spared so many bad movies!
There's nothing wrong in being not equally skilled as your parents at something, but for the love of God, why are people so upset about what Miyazaki had to say about the works of his son and (BTW) be completely right about them?
Is it some form of projection with their own father?
What's also hilarious is his reaction to some creepy looking computer generated art/animation which for some reason they chose to make look like it had a disability.
“I am utterly disgusted,” he says. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it, but I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
Thank you for the quote. I think I’ve commented before something to the point of “what’s left for Ghibli?” Their most promising young directors left to start their own studio, Goro Miyazaki has his good and bad movies, but doesn’t look like the strength to carry on the legacy on his own. And then what?
Well, nothing. The buck ends with Miyazaki and maybe that is okay.
Ghibli has managed to produce movies with an unrivaled charm, but that is not to say other directors don’t make absolutely amazing animated movies in Japan.
It is even more evident that it is just a name if you consider that Nausicaa is not a Studio Ghibli film. It is the film that lead to the creation of the studio and my personal favorite, but technically, it wasn't part of it.
I've felt the same way about Gainax, from whom all the good original people departed, forming splinter studios while Gainax's "loose management" ran it into the ground. These days the company is known for tax fraud and embezzlement in its history, as well as sexual misconduct against a minor committed by its president. But Evangelion is a Studio Khara (Hideaki Anno's studio) property now, so it's safe.
The value is not in the ability to make stories, it’s now the aesthetic of “Ghibli” they covet. It’s unique style of art that told the greatest stories in a way that was relatable to children and adults alike.
Knowing it will end, knowing one’s own impermanence, is the mark of a true master. さようなら
I loved this clip when I first saw it, and it's even more pertinent now to me, as it reinforces my own sentiments to what I'm seeing with AI generative imagery. Those guys at the end that are the ones clearly involved in making whatever that was, and are now just like WTF do we say now? You could just see them trying to pivot right then and there after that feedback. "It's something we'd never show in public" Then why are you showing it in this presentation? "what is your end goal" "We'd like a machine to paint like a human" And that animation was an example of that goal?
That's disturbingly brutal for a professional interaction. I wouldn't want to work in an office where that's a thing that happens–whether it happens to me or watching it happen to someone else.
("Then you would never get to work for a genius like the great Miyazaki, haha!" Sure, I understand that. That isn't a novel observation: he's far from the only celebrity genius in the world who gets away with abusing their underlings, who's so great and amazing that people are willing to turn a blind eye to their personality issues. They say "never meet your heroes").
You need first to understand a perspective before you judge it. That's what cultural difference is and a lot of it is at play here. Good or bad, this is a different style of life. Not to mention that it is not unusual for executives or board members to have their personal priorities, especially in the art industry.
But, even in that context, they did a horrible presentation. At least from this clip they appear like full-blown nerds with low EQ who didn't consider what kind of person their senior they will present this to is like. Any fan could have told them HM wouldn't like the animation and it would not reveal what DL can do.
That's where all the value is, though. Miyazaki told you who he is, where he's going in life and how he plans to run his business in three minutes.
I'd prefer a moment of brutal harshness, packed with rich information like that. Over mealy-mouthed, information-less, repetitive nonsense, any day of the week.
They show him a 3D rendered animation of a deformed humanoid struggling to move on the floor. Looks like something out of a zombie horror PC game.
They say it has no sense of pain, and that it's a horror beyond human imagination.
Miyazaki says whoever made it gives no thought to pain, and it's very unpleasant.
That just seems like he was repeating back pretty much what they said to him?
Also, I'm not familiar with Miyazaki's entire oeuvre, but he doesn't seem to be into zombie horror, or 3D? So kinda understandable that he wouldn't be interested in adopting a product where their number 1 demo was zombie horror.
I just realized that very few at global context had gone through the "insult to life" and crying Kawango meme moment before GenAI came out. That was a giant spoiler in hindsight, and tells how long forward Miyazaki just is in animation(and how horrible he is as an individual)
The "insult to life itself" indeed refers to the particular demo that they showed this day, but they also mention multiple times they want to make "computers that paint like humans" and HM doesn't show much more enthusiasm
Except it's also telling that this is the subject matter they thought worth relating to him. "Look, isn't it amazing what we made the computer do?" To which Miyazaki's reply is to (correctly) probe the content for meaning, not materiality. He's not objecting to horror or disgusting things per se, but pointing out there's no point without the humanist part as well. Their project is ultimately artless, regardless of topic, and they pick this to show him because they're too dumb to see that in the first place. It's a blatant transposition of solutionism into the realm of aesthetics - they are enamored with their magic box but have nothing to actually say.
I find it amusing given that in Princess Mononoke one of the villians loses an arm - does he sees that a punishment? Does he think that a bad person deserves that? Wasn't it also "disrescpectful" to his disabled friend? IMO that is just people making-up emotional arguments to trash the younger generation to keep them in control.
I always thought this was a disingenuous moment to bring up when discussing the topic in recent times. Your linked video clearly shows what he was looking at -- how is that remotely similar to anything like Dall-E or Midjourney? Miyazaki would love Stable Diffusion. His statement does not at all summarize his stance on AI generated animation because he saw an ugly, miserable representation of what it can do. Timelines regardless.
It gets me worked up.
I think you misunderstand the joy and pride that is an animator, which is in the nuances of the actual creation process which Stable Diffusion removes. We can also compare this to western shows like Arcane, where despite 3d modeling the shading and lighting was done by hand, to immense pride of the animators.
The problem with AI has been always that it removes from the artist the act the artist finds joy in, the work to create a beautiful final product, and leaves only the most boring and meh parts: contract negotiation, right fights, pay and attribution concerns, etc.
Not sure how you could confidently say this. Given that most artists and animators already have a disdain for generative AI, it's difficult to believe that the guy most unenthused about technology would love Stable Diffusion. The guy didn't even like CGI.
> how is that remotely similar to anything like Dall-E or Midjourney?
Miyazaki did not say "I love this tech but it doesn't look good enough yet."
He actually doesn't comment on the quality of the animation at all. His comments are entirely focused on how he feels the technique lacks a human-ness that he thinks is important to art. An early effort you would like to see improved does not "disgust" you or make you feel the creators are "insult[ing] life itself."
Of course he could change his mind, but if you don't think his comments reflect a belief at that moment in time about machines creating art, I do not believe you've understood what he is saying.
He probably doesn't like it and that probably doesn't matter. In the documentary "10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki", it is said that Isao Takahata is the only director that Miyazaki has respect for and considers his equal or perhaps better.
Hayao Miyazaki is so caught up in his own vision that it seems like he doesn't have much room for appreciation of things outside of it. As such we shouldn't give too much weight on his opinion on things outside the kind of movies he wants to make.
As long as they don’t mess with it I’m fine. I recently accidentally watched Castle In the Sky with the English dub and I was so angry at the terrible changes they made to the sound design.
The opening scene in the Japanese version is completely quiet except for the sound of engines running, and in the English dub they just added crappy music over the whole thing. In the Japanese version they break the silence with this really startling piano/electronic track. In the English dub they fade it in.
I don’t know who was responsible for that but there’s nothing I hate more than someone ruining something good for literally no reason.
English dubs are usually terrible in general. I'd mind them a bit less if they were just faithful translations using different voice actors, but so often they dumb the scripts down and add a bunch of other changes as if no one in the English speaking world could appreciate it otherwise.
It can make a huge difference. One example of this is the animated Canadian/French film "Ballerina" which got good reviews. The Weinstein Company got the rights to distribute it in the US and they butchered the script adding a bunch of bad jokes everywhere and making unnecessary changes and the resulting film "Leap!" got terrible reviews.
> English dubs are usually terrible in general. I'd mind them a bit less if they were just faithful translations using different voice actors, but so often they dumb the scripts down and add a bunch of other changes as if no one in the English speaking world could appreciate it otherwise.
The later Ghibli films (which received proper localization in English) are mostly quite good. They aren't perfect, but increased awareness of Miyazaki in the west (and from Disney no less) meant that it was worth spending the money to do them well. In general they have good writers and voice actors, and demonstrate a respect for the source material.
The earlier Miyazaki stuff, before he was as well known here (like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind or Laputa: Castle in the Sky) ... well... not so much (I do think Nausicaä was eventually redubbed, though I'm not sure how good it was).
It's hard to complain too much when you've got someone like Neil Gaiman rewriting the script. He fought hard to keep what he could unchanged for Princess Mononoke. That's probably the best case scenario when it comes to dubs. Rewrites with highly skilled writers who care about the material and who work with the creators to protect the integrity of the work.
Are you fluent in Japanese? I always find it odd when people prefer a sub to a dub. Only in edge cases where the dub is absolutely terrible would I ever consider this for an animated work. In movies, sometimes the mouth moving is distracting but for animation this is not a problem. For the 2 nits you picked above, I don't think I would watch 90 minutes in a foreign language. Is this a preference or something? To be clear, I am genuinely curious about why people prefer subs
The voice acting is almost always vastly better in the original language. The creator of the work spent significant time and money finding the right person for each role and then spent even more time working with them to get the performance they want in every scene. This is especially true in Japan since voice actors are more of a big deal there than in the US. For the dub, that kind of care isn't usually put into it, and even when the company producing the dub does put some effort into it that only reflects their desires, not those of the original creator.
That's why you so often get a very recognizable (and annoying imho) "anime dub voice". It sounds extremely unnatural. I can often tell if something has been dubbed from its original language just by hearing a few spoken lines of dialog! That shouldn't be possible, but it's obvious.
The other main problem I have with dubs is that they are not faithful to the content of the original work. Sometimes they rewrite parts of the script to avoid mouths not matching up with English voices, or to limit the amount of work needed to edit the mouths to match. Sometimes they rewrite the script entirely!
They also tend to make all kinds of totally needless changes. They'll often censor content and dumb down the script (typically by over-explaining everything). They almost always make changes to localize it by removing/replacing cultural references. One of the things I enjoy about consuming media made in other countries is that I get to learn things about those cultures. I like to see artistic works that come from a non-US perspective. I don't want that stripped away.
If you're looking at art made in another language, the ideal situation would be to have mastery of the language it was written/performed in, and that you'd have all the cultural knowledge to fully appreciate the many careful and deliberate choices the creator made. Most of the time, that's just not possible. Translation itself is a lossy process. It means that for you to enjoy it at all, you have to accept that some things are lost. The goal then, should be to retain as much of the original work as possible. That means subtitles and original voice acting. If you watch a dub you are not getting the work the creators envisioned and labored to bring into the world. You're getting something very different and much farther removed.
> They also tend to make all kinds of totally needless changes. They'll often censor content and dumb down the script (typically by over-explaining everything).
Excellent example of this is the Ghost in the Shell 4K remaster, which has all new subtitles that are a much more faithful translation of the original work - but you wouldn’t know that if you watched the dub, which wasn’t changed at all.
I'm the same way. I love subtitles _but_ they degrade some of the experience. I had to turn them off because they will spoil the moment. Good example is King of The Hill. The I'll see the punchline before the delivery and I feel like it spoils the scene/joke.
I'll run them on other things (and they're amazing otherwise!) but when I sit down to watch something good, I have to turn them off or I'll get distracted/spoiled.
More power to the people that enjoy the subbed version though.
I forget what I was watching. It might not have even been anime, but the subtitles had blanks in them, until it was time to reveal the word, when that key word would appear.
In this way, they didn't spoil the punchline, or who was being talked to. It was a little bit jarring the first time, but by the second time it happened, I had already adapted and was thankful for it.
> I'll see the punchline before the delivery and I feel like it spoils the scene/joke.
This I'll agree is a major problem with subtitles. It's not even just the jokes. I've seen the names of characters shown in subtitles (because they were speaking off screen) long before that character's name was revealed to the audience by the script.
Another major distraction is the trend companies have these days to refuse to provide subtitles and give only closed captioning with all of its extraneous information about sound effects or the highly subjective descriptions of whatever music is playing. It's so obnoxious.
> Are you fluent in Japanese? I always find it odd when people prefer a sub to a dub.
You don’t need to be fluent in Japanese to notice a lot of context that (by necessity) gets left out in a dub. How characters address one another, for example. Also, if you’re trying to learn Japanese then the more Japanese you hear, the better - even if you don’t understand it all.
Not to mention the usual arguments about the original voice acting being a better reflection of the authors’ intent, etc.
I’ll still watch dubs if I don’t want to give something my undivided attention, though.
I think it's having a general preference over the "original" material. Subs do force you to read and watch so you need to initially train yourself to deal with it, but now I always prefer subs even with my native language because voice volume can vary between media.
Adding dubs lays another layer onto the original artists vision, such as Ghibli with Disney-produced dubs on top. Some will hit right, others won't. Subs are definitely another layer as now you need translators but it's a lighter one than dubs.
I personally don't knock people who do dubs vs. subs. I grew up watching Bruce Lee movies with terrible English dubs and loved them, still.
Why? It's the original intent and the original voice. The sub tends to be closer to the original script because they aren't constrained by mouths moving nor can they add lines, music etc. I don't think voice acting is as well respected in North America too and so lack of talent/desire to keep costs low gets a worse result. I don't think it helps that English VAs will sometimes try to mimic the Japanese VAs but it just doesn't work and easily sounds really grating. I have turned off voices in several JRPGs because of this.
What I disagreed with is the notion that voice acting being considered a low social status is an abnormality. No, voice acting being considered so highly in Japan is the abnormality.
> I don't think I would watch 90 minutes in a foreign language.
In the past I watched quite a lot of non-English film (mostly in European languages) and always prefer subtitles. For me, there is a mental synthesis so that it's almost as if I understand the voices directly. This might be a learned skill.
I like Disney’s dubs generally. Having watched Princess Mononoke 5 times with the Disney sub and 5 times with the Disney dub, I like them both for different reasons. Castle In The Sky has had a bunch of dubs: https://dubbing.fandom.com/wiki/Castle_in_the_Sky Maybe the commenter would prefer a different dub.
EDIT: To answer your question specifically, I like the original voice actors sometimes and find it makes a difference to how I feel about a work sometimes. I also think subs can convey some contexts that are difficult in speech, especially culture-specific words like honorifics and food that in my experience are often left more untranslated in subs.
And to add to all the answers (that I agree with), when watching with subs I almost always find it fades away. It almost feels like I somehow know Japanese. Sure I'm reading words, but once lost in the story it becomes much less noticeable.
I’d be fine with a dub if they kept the same sound design, but sound design is way more important than dialogue imo. Yea I’ll definitely watch with subs. I got absolutely no fear about that for a foreign movie. For an English movie though I gotta take subs off unless my gf demands them (I dunno why she likes them so much)
I used to speak Japanese but I can’t rely on it at all for movies. I’ve forgotten most of it.
>For an English movie though I gotta take subs off unless my gf demands them (I dunno why she likes them so much)
Maybe for the same reason me and countless other native English speakers do: because everyone mumbles so much in movies these days. It's impossible to understand actors now. This isn't a problem when watching older movies.
>Only in edge cases where the dub is absolutely terrible
Most of them. As someone else said, the actual script can change. Attack on Titan had much more juvenile dialogue than the English translation of the Japanese.
But it sounds like a personal preference for you to watch in the language you can understand. I am fine watching foreign films upon occasion.
> Nippon Television has just acquired Studio Ghibli, which will become a subsidiary of their company.
Producer Toshio Suzuki (75y old) was looking for a successor, and proposed Goro Miyazaki, but Hayao Miyazaki (82y old) refused (and so did Goro).
Nippon Television was already a long-standing partner of Ghibli ("Friday Road Show").
Nippon Television holds exclusive rights to shows Ghibli content in Japan (which could go for a much higher value and viewership elsewhere), but the important thing is the relationship between Nippon's manager (Okuda) for their Ghibli relationship. For years, he would visit the studio day after day, just to hang out with the team and Miyazaki.
Okuda's family and Miyazaki's family went to a retreat together (as they did every summer) and that experience became the basis for Spirited Away. That is why Ghibli stuck with Nippon through the years and likely resulted in this buyout.
From the Kingdom of Dreams and Madness Documentary:
"When producer Suzuki meets a group of new Nippon TV employees, he tells them that they shared a long professional and private relationship with Seiji Okuda from NTV. It was after a trip to the mountains with Okuda and his daughter, that gave inspiration to the movie Spirited Away."
This is basically Steve Jobs selling Pixar to Disney... this relationship is about more than money, it's about trust and stewardship.
thanks for sharing the human aspect to this story! I had to fact check it. For others wondering, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirited_Away some mentioning in second paragraph.
The extent to which Studio Ghibli is Hayao Miyazaki was not clear to me. Despite the hundreds of people involved the degree to which he is the origin of art, ideas, quality, and drive is astounding.
I think we should give Isao Takahata some credit too though. Grave Of The Fireflies is quite famous and that’s all Takahata. And Miyazaki has said that Takahata was very influential on him.
Undoubtably the hundreds of artists and producers working on Ghibli are extraordinarily talent. But talent isn’t genius. But I’ve come to realize talent isn’t brilliance.
I don't think there is any director in Japan right now capable of directing Ghibli level movies, by that I mean movies that are pure of heart, but interesting enough that you like them, all or at least the vast vast majority.
It's no secret that 2d animation is very expensive and taxing, and if you make failed movies you risk a studio like Ghibli.
Both Yasuhiro Yoshiura and Mamoru hosoda come to mind as directors that could direct films like that if required, but I don't know how consistent they would be if directing constant movies like it.
Regarding Makoto Shinkai I think his movies are a bit too sadistic, or at least his mentality to be do Ghibli films, directing tragic/NTR movies when he was happily married to an audience of mostly shutins always came to me a bit sadistic, even though his movies are visually beautiful I don't think he matches the style.
Shinkai makes the same movie every time[1], but for his last one he actually wanted to make a yuri movie and the producers made him instead do the same movie over again, which is why the boyfriend gets turned into a chair and it becomes a women's road trip for some of it.
[1] incel guy meets a girl once, he can never see her again because she's on another planet/in a coma/in the past/in Tochigi, he spends the rest of his life being sad about it even though they weren't in an actual relationship
All of the directors you mentioned rely heavily on CG effects and tons of digital layering for their films... there really is no other Studio Ghibli at the moment for feature animation.
There are some French films that over the years have had that touch, but they often lack the narrative component which make Ghibli films magical.
What is the bad thing about this acquisition?
Also what are the numbers? For how much was it acquired and is Miyazaki giving this money to family or taking it with him - he is no longer in his 20s
Yea. Maybe not "destroy" but "bring down to the lowest common denominator." To be sure, there's a market for media everyone can enjoy... I just hate how they seemingly have to find existing franchises to do it with.
But now that I'm thinking about it... seems to be every single company these days. Soooo disappointed with the Witcher. Huge fan of the books and games. The first episode I knew it was gonna be bad. The color grading and general vibe was that of _any_ generic fantasy show on netflix. It wasn't gritty and I didn't get a "eastern european culture/lore" feel more like a "how can we make this appeal to the most people possible by turning all the dials to average." Aggressively middle of the road fantasy from such great source material, ugh.
Right. Because rest of the comments in this subthread are clearly much better, very thoughtful, substantive and non-generic.
Sigh, fine, I get the point; I'll delete the comment. Sorry. You're right, I shouldn't have done that. Even if it was a joke it's always a bad idea to post anything even remotely controversial on the Internet, especially if it can be in any way construed that you might disagree with the hive mind of the site you're posting to. Thank you for the reminder before it turned into a potential flamewar.
> Because rest of the comments in this subthread are clearly much better, very thoughtful, substantive and non-generic.
Does someone elses crime expunge our own? You mentioned you were scared of being "murdered" which meant you understood the problem of what you were sharing. Just pointing out the comment guidelines is a simple way of keeping hackernews as a good place to have conversations rather than becoming another internet forum.
> Even if it was a joke it's always a bad idea to post anything even remotely controversial on the Internet
I do not think this is true. Humour is a fantastic way to treat controversial topics, but there is a place and a time. Hackernews is many things, but its not the best place to have a one-liner observational humour stand up routine over politics.
No. I never said it does. But I don't see you or anyone else commenting under those other comments in the same way. Perhaps if we're going to chastise one potential rule breaker maybe we should chastise all of them? I agree with you, let's keep HN clean.
> You mentioned you were scared of being "murdered" which meant you understood the problem of what you were sharing.
I just wanted to highlight the fact that it was a lighthearted joke, because many people nowadays tend to take everything dead serious, assume bad intent and get immediately triggered/offended.
> The older Miyazaki, 82, and Suzuki, 75, have been discussing the succession process for a long time, according to the two companies. Miyazaki's son had rejected the role, saying it was difficult to operate Ghibli alone and that the company's future would be better left to others. Nippon TV, with which Ghibli had deep ties, became the natural candidate.
My impression is both Miyazakis are conservative people even from the perspective of the already conservative Japanese culture of their generations. If it was known that Hayao did not want Goro to take over Ghibli, there's no way Goro would make public statements to the opposite regardless of his own opinion, even as someone in his 50s.
Perhaps, but Goro still has power and it clearly states he wanted this. If you have backstory to provide that'd help, otherwise it's just gossip.
Additionally, conservative is loaded term it's not really helpful in getting across what they feel without additional description. They're possible old school conservatives but even that probably comes across wrong as how they themselves would want to be described.
I mean, based on Goro's movies, it's clear he just isn't as talented as a filmmaker as his father. Besides, Suzuki Toshio is the Tim Cook of Ghibli.
I have no doubt that Goro wanted to be his father's successor (why would he have made multiple films under the Ghibli umbrella), but his father clearly recognizes that Ghibli has a potentially larger future than becoming a lesser studio under his son.
Poppy Hill is very good and comparable with Wind Rises. Just because Earthsea was bad, people view him as someone who is not up to the task. It’s for sure fair to say he’s not a good writer like his father, but he has the ability to make great films.
>No, Japanese are just not as greedy and arrogant as westerners (especially Americans)
My family is japanese and having lived in a Japan as a child I'd say Japanese culture is a lot more greedy and arrogant than western culture, look at Japan's approach to sexuality (censor it), work (kill your individuality, nepotism).
I think people unfairly criticize Americans because of their visibility.
Miyazaki is an old fool full of reactionary opinions much like Roald Dahl. He's not a god, he's a movie director.
it's literally sold everywhere and published in countless magazines, I wouldn't call that "censorship".
it's frankly just a style at this point and it's not different from what west does everyday with women bodies, they cover it just enough to profit from it.
When Hokusai painted "the dream of the fisherman's wife" [1], in Europe we still had the Spanish inquisition that covered renaissance nude paintings and statues...
In 1815 they summoned Goya for his "Naked Maja".
These things always fluctuated throughout history
We also know what happened to japan after the occupation by the allies
Not only did Occupation censorship forbid criticism of the United States or other Allied nations, but the mention of censorship itself was forbidden. This means, as Donald Keene observes, that for some producers of texts "the Occupation censorship was even more exasperating than Japanese military censorship had been because it insisted that all traces of censorship be concealed. This meant that articles had to be rewritten in full, rather than merely submitting XXs for the offending phrases".
There's truth in there, but I also respect the way they always push themselves to improve their craftsmanship and be better than they were yesterday. Of course it's not perfect, it has dark sides and it's mostly incomprehensible to outsiders, just wanting to have a better life, without sacrificing too much. It resonates to me, it probably doesn't for most of the western culture that has become too hedonistic for my taste.
But Miyazaki did not abuse of nepotist and he did not force his son to work as hard as he he did.
Also, too much individualism is bad for society, USA has vastly more deaths at birth than Estonia, but at the same time they want to abolish abortion, on religious grounds, in 2023! They still swear on the bible for fuck sake, I don't think Miyazaki is the reactionary one here.
> I think people unfairly criticize Americans because of their visibility.
They are not more visible, they simply make themselves too visible.
No Japanese ever done something like this in my Country.
Because they are respectful or at least they fake it very well.
Stretching is probably good, no? That's part of curiosity.
It's impossible to gratify all curiosities equally because people differ a lot. That means there will always be something on the front page that you don't find interesting, but also hopefully several things you do.
It's true that the better "stretches" have to do with topics that are little-known and little-discussed, and Ghibli and
Miyazaki aren't that.
I don’t believe so, HN should be a place where people talk about tech and academia.
Once you expand the scope, it says “this is what this group of people by majority have decided is Interesting, regardless of the field”. To me that reads as a cult mindset.
I think shrinking the scope allows people to challenge their opinions. When you broaden it, discussions become nothing more than “wow bird house building is really cool, thanks HN!” “I’m glad I found out how to build a tandem bike”
Ah I see it now. Well, I'm afraid you're running against the grain of HN tradition there. HN, since the day pg renamed it from Startup News to Hacker News, has always been for anything that gratifies intellectual curiosity—specifically "anything that good hackers would find interesting". As he wrote way back then (
https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html), "That includes a lot more than hacking and startups", and I'd say it also includes a lot more than "tech and academia". This is important.
Interviewer: "Aren't you worried about [Studio Ghibli]'s future?"
HM: "The future is clear. It's gonna fall apart. I can already see it. What's the use worrying? It's inevitable. "Ghibli" is just a random name I got from an airplane. It's only a name."