Japanese animation turns 100 years old in 2017. The art form
initially flourished in 1917, as animators including Oten Shimokawa and
Seitarou Kitayama produced short comedic films that ran for only a few
minutes each. While the vast majority of those early animated shorts are
now lost – due variously to time, humidity, earthquakes and the
American fire-bombing of Tokyo – Japan’s animation (or ‘anime’, to use
the borrowed Japanese term) industry has continued to thrive ever since.
Numerous directors have been and gone over the decades, and the
industry has expanded and contracted. If we were to highlight a single
filmmaker as the best artist anime has produced over that time, it’s a
fairly safe bet that the majority of fans, critics and observers will
cite Hayao Miyazaki. Furthermore if we were to highlight the very best
film Miyazaki had directed, I suspect the majority would cite his 1988
fantasy
My Neighbor Totoro.