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Founded in June 1985, Studio Ghibli is headed by the directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata and the producer Toshio Suzuki. Prior to the formation of the studio, Miyazaki and Takahata had already had long careers in Japanese film and television animation and had worked together on Hols: Prince of the Sun and Panda! Go, Panda!; and Suzuki was an editor at Tokuma Shoten's Animage magazine.

The studio was founded after the success of the 1984 film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, written and directed by Miyazaki for Topcraft and distributed by Toei Company. The origins of the film lie in the first two volumes of a serialized manga written by Miyazaki for publication in Animage as a way of generating interest in an anime version. Suzuki was part of the production team on the film and founded Studio Ghibli with Miyazaki, who also invited Takahata to join the new studio.

The studio has mainly produced films by Miyazaki, with the second most prolific director being Takahata (most notably with Grave of the Fireflies). Other directors who have worked with Studio Ghibli include Yoshifumi Kondo, Hiroyuki Morita, Gorō Miyazaki, and Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Composer Joe Hisaishi has provided the soundtracks for most of Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli films. In their book Anime Classics Zettai!, Brian Camp and Julie Davis made note of Michiyo Yasuda as "a mainstay of Studio Ghibli’s extraordinary design and production team".

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Katsuya Kondō (近藤 勝也, Kondō Katsuya, born June 2, 1963 in Ehime Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese manga artist, character designer, animator and animation director. He is best known for his character design work on the Studio Ghibli films Kiki's Delivery Service and Ocean Waves, as well as the PlayStation game Jade Cocoon. His character designs are considered the epitome of the Studio Ghibli style.

After graduating from high school, he began working for Osamu Dezaki and Akio Sugino at their Studio Annapuru. Under the direction of Shinji Ōtsuka, Kondō worked as a key animator of the TV anime series Cat's Eye. He then worked as a free agent on such shows as The Mighty Orbots, Rainbow Brite and Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears. His first work with Studio Ghibli was as a key animator on Castle in the Sky. After working on the Gainax film The Wings of Honneamise and the OVAs Devilman and Meikyū Bukken File 538, Kondō began to be known for the high quality of his work.

Kondō collaborated with Ken'ichi Sakemi on a manga retelling of the Joan of Arc story, as well as doing the character designs for the Jade Cocoon video game series. He also collaborated with Sakemi by creating the character designs for the 1990 NTV TV movie Like the Clouds, Like the Wind (based on Sakemi's novel Kōkyū Monogatari), which tells the story of a young country girl who is chosen to become one of the Emperor's concubines. He also worked with Tomomi Mochizuki on the NHK Minna no Uta music video titled Kaze no Tōri Michi, produced by Ajia-do Animation Works for Sayuri Horishita. In 2007, he was announced as the supervising animator of the Studio Ghibli film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. He also wrote the lyrics for the film's theme song.

Selected work

Title of film in Japanese
Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫, Mononoke-hime, "Spirit/Monster Princess") is a 1997 anime epic action historical fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It was animated by Studio Ghibli and produced by Toshio Suzuki. The film stars the voices of Yōji Matsuda, Yuriko Ishida, Yūko Tanaka, Kaoru Kobayashi, Masahiko Nishimura, Tsunehiko Kamijo, Akihiro Miwa, Mitsuko Mori and Hisaya Morishige.

The film is set in the late Muromachi period (approximately 1337 to 1573) of Japan, with fantasy elements. The story follows the young Emishi warrior Ashitaka's involvement in a struggle between forest gods and the humans who consume its resources. The term "Mononoke" (物の怪 or もののけ) is not a name, but a Japanese word for a spirit or monster.

Princess Mononoke was released in Japan on July 12, 1997, and in the United States on October 29, 1999. It was a critical and commercial success, becoming the highest-grossing film in Japan of 1997, and the highest-grossing there of all time until Titanic was released later that year. It was translated and distributed in North America by Miramax Films, and despite a poor box office performance there, it sold well on DVD and video, bringing Ghibli attention in the West for the first time.

Selected related article

Title of the manga in Japanese
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, Kaze no Tani no Naushika) is a manga written and illustrated by anime director Hayao Miyazaki. It tells the story of Nausicaä, a princess of a small kingdom on a post-apocalyptic Earth with a new, bioengineered ecological system, who becomes involved in a war between kingdoms while an environmental disaster threatens the survival of humankind. On her journey, she struggles to bring about a peaceful coexistence among the people of her world, as well as between humanity and nature.

The manga was serialized intermittently, from 1982 to 1994, in Tokuma Shoten's monthly magazine Animage in Japan. The individual chapters were collected and published in seven tankōbon volumes. English translations are published by Viz Media. The first sixteen chapters (approximately the first two collected volumes) of the manga were adapted by Miyazaki into his film of the same title.

In 1994, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, received the Japan Cartoonists Association Award Grand Prize (大賞, taishō), an annual prize awarded by a panel of association members, consisting of fellow cartoonists.

Selected media

Kiki cosplayer at the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival in 2010.
Kiki cosplayer at the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival in 2010.
Credit: BrokenSphere

Kiki cosplayer at the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival in 2010 in San Francisco.

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