Portal:Studio Ghibli

Isao Takahata (高畑 勲, Takahata Isao, born October 29, 1935) is a Japanese film director, animator, screenwriter and producer who has earned critical international acclaim for his work as a director of anime films. Takahata is the co-founder of Studio Ghibli along with long-time collaborative partner Hayao Miyazaki. He has directed films such as the grim, war-themed Grave of the Fireflies, the romantic drama Only Yesterday, the ecological adventure Pom Poko, and the comedy My Neighbors the Yamadas. Unlike most anime directors, Takahata does not draw and never worked as an animator before becoming a full-fledged director.

According to Hayao Miyazaki, "Music and study are his hobbies". He was born in the same town as fellow director Kon Ichikawa, while Japanese film giant Yasujirō Ozu was raised by his father in nearby Matsusaka. Takahata graduated from the University of Tokyo French literature course in 1959.

Takahata was originally intrigued by animation after having seen the French animated cartoon feature Le Roi et l'Oiseau based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. He was impressed by the film, asking "Can these kind of things be done by animation?"

While he was job hunting at his university, Takahata was tempted to join Toei Animation by a friend who knew the company wanted an assistant director. For fun he took the company's entrance examination as he had been originally interested in animation, which he passed, and he joined the company. Takahata finally directed his first film,Hols: Prince of the Sun, after he was recommended for the position by Yasuo Ōtsuka, who was both his and Hayao Miyazaki's instructor. Hols was a commercial failure, and as a member of the production team deemed responsible for the failure, he was accordingly demoted.

After working on a variety of animated television series and films throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Takahata was invited by Miyazaki to join in founding the animation production company Studio Ghibli after the success of Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The first movie directed by Takahata for Ghibli was Grave of the Fireflies. The film was widely acclaimed by film critics, like prominent and influential film critic Roger Ebert who considered it "one of the greatest war films ever made".

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The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ, Kaze Tachinu) is a 2013 Japanese animated historical drama film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli. It was released by Toho on July 20, 2013 in Japan, and by Touchstone Pictures in North America on February 21, 2014 and in the UK on May 9, 2014.

The Wind Rises is a fictionalized biopic of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the Mitsubishi A5M and its successor, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, used by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The film is adapted from Miyazaki's manga of the same name, which was in turn loosely based on the 1937 short story The Wind Has Risen by Tatsuo Hori. It was the final film directed by Miyazaki before his retirement in September 2013.

The Wind Rises was the highest-grossing Japanese film in Japan in 2013 and received critical acclaim. It won and was nominated for several awards, including nominations for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year.

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Nausicaä (/ˈnɔːsɪkə/; Naushika (ナウシカ, [na.uɕika])) is a fictional character from Hayao Miyazaki's science fiction manga series Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and his anime film of the same name.

The story is set in the future on a post-apocalyptic Earth, where Nausicaä is the princess of the Valley of the Wind, a minor kingdom. She assumes the responsibilities of her ill father and succeeds him to the throne in the course of the story. Fuelled by her love for others and for life itself, Nausicaä studies the ecology of her world to understand the Sea of Corruption (or Toxic Jungle in the anime), a system of flora and fauna which came into being after the Seven Days of Fire, a technological war which killed most of humanity a thousand years prior to the main events in the story.

Miyazaki's Nausicaä has an impressive set of abilities which include her determination and commitment. Her magnetic personality attracts admiration and adoration from nearly all those who meet her. Her empathy allows her to communicate with many animals, including the Ohmu, an intelligent race of giant insects who are guardians of the Sea of Corruption or Toxic Jungle, feared by most other humans. Because the Valley of the Wind has obligations towards its allies, Nausicaä has to join a war between adjacent territories of the remaining inhabitable land. Assuming command of the Valley's small force sets her off on a journey that will alter the course of human existence.

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