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I received the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly the other day, and while I do have a (tricked into for “free,” eventhough they charged me for a year) subscription, I never bothered reading these things because I hate keeping up with all the hype or general idea of celebrity gossip/highlights, overall. That is, until I decided to give it a skim today only to find a short interview with Hayao Miyazaki.

Just for a note, I must admit to you all that I’m totally embarrassed in that I’ve never seen a single one of his movies; as good as I hear them to be. I was actually going to try and research which DVDs are the best versions and maybe start collecting them sometime, but I always end up forgetting Anime smallmouth + sweatdrop

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Anyway, for all you Miyazaki fans, I thought you could use some reading material for the sake of reading or just getting to know a little of Miyazaki-sensei’s thoughts on things. Enjoy!
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Spotlight on HAYAO MIYAZAKI

King of the ‘Castle’

The revered Oscar-winning anime director talks about kids, CGI, and playing with fire. By Steve Daly
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His last movie, Spirited Away, became Japan’s all-time box office champ and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. But at 64, writer-director Hayao Miyazaki remains a cult figure in America, cherished mainly by critics and anime buffs. That’s okay with him, as we learned in a translator-assisted chat timed to coincide with Disney’s release of his latest, the fanciful Howl’s Moving Castle.
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EW: Some of your more kid-friendly movies, like Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro, have been made video hits here, but others—like Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind—are so adult and so steeped in Asian culture, they’re puzzling to Americans.

HM: I can’t believe companies distribute my movies in America. They’re baffling in Japan! I’m well aware there are spots in Howl’s Moving Castle where I’m going to lose some of the audience. Why do you land in a different place when you open the door? Well, it’s magic. I don’t provide unnecessary explanations. If you want that, you’re not going to like my movie. That’s just the way it is.

EW: You’ve said you don’t like the prevalence of “virtual experience” in kids’ lives.

HM: When I think about the way the computer has taken over and eliminated a certain experience of life, that makes me sad. When we were [animating Calcifer, a fire demon], some staff said they had never seen wood burning. I said, Go watch! It has disappeared from their daily lives. Japanese baths used to be made by burning firewood. Now you press a button. I don’t think you can become an animator if you don’t have experience.

EW: 2-D animation seems to be dead in America, at least in features. What happened?

HM: We’re hitting a similar wall in Japan… I think 2-D animation disappeared from Disney because they made so many uninteresting films. They became conservative in the way they created them. It’s too bad. I thought 2-D and 3-D could coexist happily.

EW: Is CGI going to destroy 2-D in the end?

HM: I’m actually not all that worried. I wouldn’t give up on it completely. Once in a while there are strange, rich people who like to invest in odd things. You’re going to have people in corners of garages [making cartoons] to please themselves. And I’m more interested in the people who hang out in corners of garages than I am in big business.

(End, Interview)
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I typed all of this by hand in Word, so if you see any typos I might’ve missed, please feel free to let me know. Thank you for reading, and I hope you liked it.