Studio Ghibli: I Ranked Their Movies and Gave Thoughts That No One Actually Asked For (24-21)

When starting this website, my main goal was to write essay like reviews talking about movies, games, books or shows that I felt immense passion for. Things I have always wanted to talk about with others but had never gotten the chance to, as well as talk about things I have never seen anyone else talk about. 

That’s not the case with this one. :)

I really honestly just wanted an excuse to talk about one of my favorite animation companies of all time even if it’s been done before, as well as give my own thoughts on the studio’s output with the soon to be release of their next film, the first one in nearly three years. 

It honestly baffles me that more people haven’t been exposed to Studio Ghibli. The quality of this studio’s output is astonishing, and I don’t think any animation studio comes close to Ghibli in terms of consistent output with slip ups being incredibly rare.. It frustrated me to no end that I didn’t grow up on these films. Prior to marathoning all of these for the first time in early August of 2021, the only one that I had seen was The Secret World of Arrietty in 2010. I feel like I missed out on the experience of growing up watching films from Ghibli. 

The art-style, the whimsy, and the mature themes found in these movies are some of the few aspects that separate Ghibli from other animation studios. It also doesn’t hurt that, again, there is a consistent level of quitaly found within these films. The moment I discovered these films were available on HBO Max, I figured it was the best time to marathon some of animation's greatest masterpieces. And… yea, once again I’m furious I didn’t watch these sooner. 

The more times I watch these films, the more I can not stop thinking about them. It’s easy to see how this studio has earned such a large fanbase in America, and I’ll never understand how these films keep getting snubbed at the academy awards. (But we all know award shows are jokes anyways so efjespfjpeisjfojes). 

Of course, since I watch these films constantly, I figured now is as good as any time to give my thoughts on all of these movies. How they inspired me, how some of them changed my perspective on storytelling and film-making, and how some of the more subpar ones failed in comparison to the others. Because I quickly realized as soon as I finished making this list that some of my opinions are a bit… controversial? I don’t know if that’s EXACTLY the right word, I just noticed that there are a few films I ranked lower than some other people and some higher than other people have them. 

But it’s all about getting a different perspective, and I always think it’s a good idea to sometimes listen to someone who thinks differently than you do. So, I hope some of you will keep that in mind as you read through my thoughts on these films. And if I didn’t like a film you enjoyed, I hope you still read what I wrote and try to understand where I am coming from. I’m totally not asking for you to believe what I believe. And like I mentioned earlier, these films are masterful, so ranking them all was more than just a challenge. But I did my best :)

In order to both build suspense, and because I don't want this post to be to long, I decided to post my ranking with four films at a time. I hope everyone will be able to understand where I am coming from with this, so if you want a continuation, please be sure to comment!

Okay, enough stalling. Let’s actually talk about these films now. 

24. Pom Poko: Brought To You By The Disney Channel’s Newest Program, Friends For Change 

Pom Poko may be the worst animated movie I have ever seen in my entire life and as of right now, I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. 

I’m sure everyone who has seen everything that Studio Ghibli has to offer is asking themselves right now, “Why aren't Tales From Earthsea, Earwig and The Witch or Ocean Waves at the bottom spot?” 

OH! WE WILL GET TO THOSE FILMS DON’T WORRY! 

But compared to Pom Poko, those movies might as well be the Mona Lisa, because I have very few nice things to say about Pom Poko. 

I don’t know what went wrong with the production of this movie… scratch that, I know exactly what’s wrong with this movie, and it’s that it’s incredibly boring. 

Pom Poko is one of those man vs nature movies that you’ve seen a bunch of times already, and this one does very little to leave a strong impact, or message on you. You would think a movie about sentient racoons that magically grow their ball sacks bigger in order to crush the skulls of the human overloads that are trying to destroy their forest would result in an interesting or at least entertaining movie wouldn’t you? Unfortunately lower your expectations to zero because this movie is neither interesting or entertaining. 

Ninety percent of this movie is just racoons having war meetings, the racoons battling the humans, and then we repeat the concept for the entire rest of the movie. And like I said, that concept sounds hilarious. It’s racoons in a war meeting but you’d be surprised how very little comedy plays into the concept. 

The characters in this movie are so dull. I genuinely could not tell you any of these raccoons names. They feel more like stereotypes rather than fleshed out interesting characters. Like you have the soft racoon, the wise racoon, the aggressive racist racoon… and that’s all I can remember. What's the deal with that? 

That’s one of Pom Poko’s main issues. This movie has too many characters and the movie really doesn’t feel like focusing on any of them. There’s a small ensemble that starts off this film, but the more it goes on, the more characters get roped into the plot, and by the end of it there’s just too many to care about and keep track of. I think that’s why it’s so hard for me to remember any of their names, because there’s just way too many of them. If any of the racoons were at least interesting, maybe I could recall more of their struggles, but none of them made a strong impression on me. All of them were just so BORING! 

But it’s not just the characters that bothered me, it was the story. Like I mentioned earlier, this movie is extremely repetitive and for a concept as exciting and bizarre as transforming racoons, nothing truly of interest is done. 

The racoons have these shapeshifting powers that can magically morph the racoons into whatever they want, but aside from the nightmare festival the racoons put on for the humans, they don’t end up using their powers all too much. Or at least, they don’t use their powers in an interesting manner. Like hello, you have a magical win button right there and you don’t even do anything with it! It would have been better if the powers weren’t even implemented into the movie, because they are hardly used. 

Even the animation is insulting. It doesn’t look awful but its dark grays, blues and greens pale in comparison to the brightness and whimsical elements found in the Studio’s other works. I know the film mostly takes place in this one forest, but films like The Secret World of Arrietty, When Marnie Was There and My Neighbor Totoro all take place in one or two locations, or at least all take place in one set environment, yet all three of them are vibrant and pleasant to look at. And it’s not like Ghibli has any trouble creating pleasing nature environments, Princess Mononoke looks beautiful and this one looked like it was pulled from the sewer, and I don’t even think it’s a case of this film coming out in the nineties', Castle In The Sky came out eight years before this one, and it looks SO much better than the drowned colors present in this stupid movie.  I GUESS the nightmare festival the racoons put on was kinda pretty idk anymore. 

There’s this narrator that talks over the film that attempts to give this movie a mockumentary style, but it falls completely flat because the narrator just tells us what these raccoons are thinking and feeling rather than showing us. If this is the direction the filmmakers wanted to go in, it would have been a lot more interesting if the racoons didn’t have any dialogue, and the whole movie was presented as a documentary. That might have been cool, but no we can’t have nice things. Instead we get a narrator with the most monotone voice you could ever imagine interjecting at such random points throughout the story. 

It’s actually kinda insulting how he comes in during the parts of the movie that don’t require narration. Such as the “mating” season where the lead racoon meets a lady racoon and then they fall in love because the movie told me they were in love. I can’t tell if this movie wants me to see these racoons as characters or props for the story. This movie does such a poor job of setting a consistent tone. 

But you want to know the more outrageous part of this whole film? It’s not the boring field of racoons or the cliche conflict. It’s the fact that this movie is TWO HOURS AND FORTY MINUTES! WHY! 

You will see later as you go down the list that I actually tended to prefer the longer Ghibli movies. Films like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Howl’s Moving Castle are not only movies I enjoyed watching, but they each go over the two hour limit. The difference with these movies is that there is a reason for them to be as long as they are. They each have a large world to expand upon, so the movie doesn’t end up feeling as long as it does because we are constantly exploring the new locations or discovering new magical concepts. There is constantly something new happening in each one of those movies, and thus, its expansion feels necessary so we can see more of what these magical worlds have to offer us. 

Pom Poko just doesn’t do that. There is no reason for this movie to be nearly three hours long. We stay in the exact same location throughout the entire film's runtime, there are no new investing characters that Pom Poko brings into the plot, and the few interesting magical concepts this movie introduces are hardly expanded upon. And with the movies repetitiveness of racoon meeting, fight da humans, racoon meeting, meet a new racoon, fight da human, season change, racoon meeting, fight da humans jkoewjfipjaweipfjopweafhpewhiehgpfiwepghipeh IT’S THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN! I AM MAD! 

This movie could have easily been an hour and forty minutes, or at least an hour. Heck, you know what, this movie could have been a thirty minute short film. There’s just not a whole lot happening in it to warrant the over two hour run time. I don’t even think a shortened length could fix the other issues I have with this movie to be fair, as a lot of the movie's story structure falls on the backs of bland forgettable racoon characters and I can’t believe this is a sentence I am actually writing. 

The only part of this movie that I enjoyed were the last fifteen minutes, in which the racoons give up and choose to live among human society thanks to their racoon magic. Some of them aren’t able to transform so they just become docile racoons, and some of the racoons who are able to transform into humans adapt too well into their society, and start encouraging the destruction of their former home. This is such a neat concept and I wish it was the main focus of the movie, because I was already more invested in this then I was in the boring nature vs man plot that I have seen over a million times. But asking for a not boring movie is just apparently too much whatever I don’t care. The concept at the end instantly gets ruined when the man boy racoon who became human at the end transforms back into a racoon in order to reunite I guess with his old buddies, and then he narrates some cheesy horrible message to the audience, and the entire time he’s speaking I’m just thinking please just end already. And then it did end and I was happy again :) amazing. 

Normally when I check out a film, and I don’t end up liking it, sometimes it’s easy for me to see why someone is able to enjoy it. But with this film, I can’t understand how ANYONE can enjoy the bland, uninteresting, stupid piece of cardboard that is this movie. 

Just watch Over The Hedge instead. It’s much more childlike, but it’s more interesting than anything found in Pom Poko. Please skip this movie if you plan on binge watching all the Ghibli films, you will actually thank me later I promise. Or you could just watch the Barbie Thumbelina movie. Again you’ll get the same experience, you’ll just have fun. 

23. Earwig and The Witch: The Brat, The Witch, and What The H E Double Hockey Sticks Where The Writer’s Ondrobe

Oh goodness gracious me, did someone say a hot take?

Most Studio Ghibli rankings have this one ranked as their least favorite film, and for good reasons as well, this movie is actual trash, and there are so many playing factors as to why and how it turned out that way. 

For starters, the obvious, it doesn’t look good. Studio Ghibli is known for their beautiful 2D art style that makes every scene look like a painting. Even if you’ve never seen a Ghibli movie before, you’ve seen a scene from one of these movies, and they’re stellar to look at. Because no other animated movies look the way they do. Most western animation studios have made the jump to 3D, so we hardly see this art style used anymore. Ghibli had it perfected. Their colors are vibrant and inviting, sucking you into a magical world only their artstyle could convey.  

To say Earwig looks like a dumpster fire is an understatement. 

Ghibli decided now would be the best time to try their hand at 3D animation, and umm, yes it looks horrendous. The animation is blocky, rubbery, and looks like it was animated by a college freshman looking to get their start in 3D animation, but even that’s an insult to college animators, because some of the animation that I’ve seen from first timers looks ten times better than Earwig does. 

The colors are nearly lifeless, and that’s not to say they aren’t bright, because that’s another understatement, there’s just a dull quality in the lighting that makes you think you’re watching this film with the brightness turned all the way down. I think the best way I can describe how this movie looks (visuals aside) is that it doesn’t have a specific color palette or aesthetic. That sounds absurd when I say it aloud, but when you start to think about it, it makes sense. Most Ghibli movies have a set tone and aesthetic when it comes to the colors they use. The Secret World of Arrietty, for example, uses bright greens, pinks and blues for its garden aesthetic. When Marnie Was There, faded blues, purples and whites for the home that lives on the seaside. Spirited Away, pinks, yellows and blacks to convey the danger of this haunted bathhouse. And this isn’t me saying that these movies only use those colors, this is me saying that there is a distinct tone and  palate that comes to mind when you think of these films. It allows them to stand apart from another, and suck you into each new world every one of these movies creates, as each one of these films has a distinct world from one another, and color plays a role in helping separate them. And, of course, these films look absolutely stunning. 

Earwig and The Witch doesn’t have that. Its color’s don’t have a set palate. They’re all over the place and nothing is pleasing to look at. Even with Toy Story, the first computer generated movie ever made, it has a distant color palette in its yellows, greens and blues. By comparison, Earwig looks like a disaster. It’s not pleasant to look at. I guess the outdoor scenes look kinda beautiful? But comparing those to other Ghibli movies with an outdoor aesthetic is like comparing Apples to the plague. 

In terms of the actual fluidity of the animation, the character’s aren’t wooden in the way they move. The problem is actually quite the opposite. They’re way too expressive, and bounce all across the screen. It’s nauseating to watch, especially after the previous Ghibli films kept their movements more grounded. And you can tell that this was only done in order to keep the five year old’s watching this movie entertained with vibrant movement and flashing colors. I normally wouldn’t have a problem with this, it’s not like all movies are meant to be enjoyed by every audience, but Studio Ghibli movies have always been something that everyone could enjoy. Younger kids, teens and adults. 

This is the only Studio Ghibli film that feels like it was specifically made for a younger audience, which is disheartening to Ghibli fans who maybe wanted to take something away from this, but instead they feel alienated because they aren’t one of the target audiences. It feels like a movie written and made for babies, not just in its animation, but its story as well. 

The plot of this movie is almost like… a non plot. It feels like a horrendous combination of previous Ghibli films such as Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service and Howl’s Moving Castle, without the writers understanding what made all those films perfect on their own. It wants its story to have all those film elements in terms of their settings, conflict and world building elements, but because they’re all so disoriented, none of them blend together. It’s a bizarre miss match of different tones, magical concepts and ideas, almost like a puzzle that had its pieces shoved and slammed together. 

The center of this film is the little girl Earwig, who might be the most insufferable protagonist in all the Ghibli films, and that includes the female love interest in Ocean Waves (which we will get to), who I’m pretty sure Earwig studies under in order to master the art of gaslighting. My biggest problem with the character of Earwig, is that she doesn’t go through an arc in the story. She starts the film off as an intolerable brat who gaslights the people around her in order to get the things that she wants. Then she gets adopted by a mean old witch lady and you think she’s going to go through this arc where she learns not to be so spoiled all the time when she doesn't get the things she wants, you can already see where this is going. She ends the film exactly how she started, an intolerable brat who gaslights people into getting the things she wants. Earwig doesn’t learn anything, she remains insufferable and intolerable throughout the entire film's runtime. And before you give me the excuse of, oh she’s a child character, children normally behave that way-NO!

 My Neighbor Totoro, Ponyo and Spirited Away are all Ghibli movies that center around child protagonists that either go through an arc where they grow and develop as characters, you know… like a movie, or they remain likable or investing throughout the films runtime. And even Lilo and Stitch is a great example of a movie centered around an emotional, sympathetic child protagonist who changes as the story progresses. Each one of these movie leads learns something new by the end, whether it’s about themselves, or the world surrounding them. And these movies prove that films that feature child protagonists can still be related and enjoyed by adults. It’s not that hard to get an audience invested in your movie's protagonist no matter their age, it’s how you present and write them that makes the difference. I related to Chihiro in Spirited Away immensely despite being ten years older than she is. 

Earwig isn’t a relatable protagonist for anyone to get invested in the struggles of. All she does is abuse the people around her by mouthing off, and overall just being a brat. I don’t root for her to get back at the witch by the end of the film because I never enjoyed watching her. I didn’t feel any pain for her when she talked about the biological mom that she never meant, nor did I get excited for her whenever she achieved something. I disliked her from the second she was introduced, and I disliked her throughout the rest of the movie.

 And it isn’t like I don’t have fun with characters who aren’t written in a positive light. There’s plenty of flawed characters in the Ghibli universe I can have fun with such as The Wicked Witch of The Waste, Seiji or Ponyo and Kaguya’s fathers. But what separates these characters, is that they either go through development in the story where they aren’t the same person they once were or the main character starts to unravel their layers and we realize they aren’t the horrible and rude person we thought they were. Or if they make a change for the worst, there are still human signs left inside of them. So even if we end up hating the character, it’s because it was what the writer intended for us to do, and we can acknowledge that they are still fully fleshed characters. 

Once more Earwig lacks these qualities. From the moment you meet her, what you see is exactly what you get. There are no layers to her character despite being an overall stinky brat. And like I keep mentioning time and time again, Earwig doesn’t grow as the story progresses. 

So does that mean you end up rooting for the antagonist of this film since the protagonist is someone you don’t want to watch the story of? 

No. 

The witch in this movie is also the absolute worst, and I can’t tell if it was because she was intended to be that way, or if it’s an example of more bad writing. Her only contributions to the movie are abusing Earwig nonstop… and that’s it, have fun. She’s not a fully fleshed character either, maybe less so than Earwig. It’s this strange back and forth game between these two characters where Earwig is rude to the witch, the witch is rude to her, and you sit waiting for them to stop fighting so the movie can end. You’re not really on the side of either one of them because both of them are just so easily hateable. One is a brat, and the other enjoys child labor, so I guess it’s a matter of choosing your fighter. 

There are other “characters” in this movie, but since the witch and Earwig aren’t very developed, you don’t really need to guess how the other character’s come across. There’a cool vampire looking dude who's a writer, and there’s this whole mystery surrounding him, but the end reveal is underwhelming and unsatisfying with all the hype this movie was building around him And I still don’t know what he’s writing. There’s also a talking black cat, that I would have found pleasurable, if the studio hadn’t already written a similar character in Kiki’s delivery service years prior. And no one else in the movie really matters. These are the people you are following throughout this movie’s runtime, I do hope you are having a good time. 

This movie also drags, and it drags HARD despite it’s short runtime! The whole premise of the movie is just Earwig learning new spells in order to prank the witch lady during the day in secret while she has to be a slave for her, and then trying to discover the vampire dudes secret in the night. It’s repetitive, nothing interesting ever happens in any of these scenes, and it drags on and on and on. Slice of life stuff is normally not stuff I have a hard time getting involved in, a perfect example being Whisper of the Heart, which is just a series of its main character writing a story while falling in love with a boy. But what separates that from this is once more is how it develops its main themes. Things are constantly moving and changing in that story as we learn more about its characters and what they want, while nothing new is happening in this one. By the time Earwig finally pranks the witch, you’re wondering what the point of everything was. 

But by far, the worst part of this movie is how it ends, except, I don’t think you can even call what happens in this movie an ending. This movie just stops, it just decides to stop out of nowhere with nothing being resolved or explained, and the character’s wrap up their arcs with each other in the most forced way imaginable. The big mystery ends up being that the witch and vampire character were in a band with her mom, and even though the witch had no idea that she discovered this information, despite not having a previous nice interaction with her, she randomly decides to tell Earwig about the music she plays and they have a bonding moment… Why? Where did that even come from? It’s like the writers forgot to write in the part where the witch discovered that Earwig learned the lore of the witch and her mom and they just hoped we wouldn’t notice. Well too bad movie, I SEE EVERYTHING :/! It makes little to no sense because there wasn’t a single positive interaction between these two characters, and now they’re bonding and getting along because that’s what the movie demands. 

But that’s not even the worst part of this movie’s ending, surprisingly. Out of nowhere at the end of this movie during the forced happily ever after montage where Earwig, the witch, the vampire and the cat are a family for absolutely no descroble reason, EARWIG’S MOM SHOWS UP AT THE DOOR WITH NO EXPLANATION AS TO WHERE SHE WAS THE ENTIRE TIME LIKE HELLO WHERE DID YOU GO AFTER THAT COLD OPEN?! 

This movie opens with a scene of Earwig as a baby and her mom dropping her off at the orphanage saying it was because she would be safer this way, and people were after her and it was too dangerous BLAH BLAH BLAH WHERE DID YOU GO THEN! Like, she never explains what happened, who was after her or why she had to give Earwig up for adoption. It… the movie just ends. 

I don’t think I need to explain that that’s not how to end a movie, nor is that how you write one. I get that not all magical movies need to explain every element they introduce, but this is the ending, and you’re basically telling us that the big question we had for the entire film's runtime doesn’t even matter anymore. Like… where was she, what happens now? We don’t know and maybe it’s a good thing that we won’t because that would involve sitting through more of it which maybe isn’t a good idea so you win some you lose some I suppose. 

This movie would have been a lot better if it attempted to focus on any of the elements it lazily shoved into the ending. The relationship between Earwig’s mom and the witch and vampire, the mystery of where she was and Earwig trying to process not having a family of her own. But instead it forced on childlike slapstick, before shoving all of its interesting concepts into the last ten minutes in a rushed, lazy, and overwhelming manner. The poster of this movie is even a lie. It implies that Earwig is going to somehow be involved in this band, and even that the band element is going to play a bigger role, but it doesn’t. 

So you’re probably wondering, with all of what I just said, why isn’t this one in the bottom spot when you easily have the most problems with this one? 

Because I actually kinda had fun with it?

Oh it’s still not good. It’s poorly written, don't have any doubts about that. But I put it higher than Pom Poko because at least I was never bored watching this one compared to that one. And I was more disappointed in Pom Poko because it actually introduced an interesting concept and went about it in the most generic and boring way it possibly could with an unbearable runtime of almost three hours. Earwig at least was shorter, and I already didn’t have high expectations of it just by watching the trailer and looking at the poster. And I kinda had an ironic time watching it, but I honestly think it’s a little better than Pom Poko because I don’t think this movie was aiming to be as good as the other ones. It feels like a baby movie and good for it I guess. 

I would personally rather sit through a movie that makes me feel emotions and makes me angry, rather than a movie that leaves me bored throughout the entire thing. 

Also the cat made me laugh once so I feel like it deserves bonus points for making me some small form of delight for like five seconds. 

I never want to watch it again though, but I’d rather watch it over Pom Poko. 

But if you’ve read what I said about that one, that’s not saying all too much. 

22. Ocean Waves: Where Heteronormativity Triumphs Toxic, Abusive Relationships 

Ocean Waves shouldn’t even count for the purposes of this review list considering the fact it’s a television movie made by the b team of Studio Ghibli, but the universe wants to make me suffer so this stupid movie was included on the wikipedia page and I wanna die. 

Out of all the Ghibli movies, this one is the most basic. Its story is basic, its plot is basic, its animation is basic, everything about this movie is basic. But it’s basic in one of the most insulting ways possible. This movie isn’t insufferable to sit through because it’s god awful, but rather because it’s boring. I am forgetting everything about it as I type all of this and I guarantee that when you watch this movie, you will be as well. 

Ocean Waves biggest problem is that it lacks substance, and whatever substance that it has relies solely on the shoulders of characters that feel more like first drafts of a concept than fully fleshed out protagonists. The conflict centers around this love triangle, but you don’t get invested in it because none of the characters are fleshed out, and much like Pom Poke, I do not remember a single one of these characters names, and I never will. 

I don’t normally have a hard time getting invested in romance based plotlines, as you will see later in this retrospective, but Ocean Waves doesn’t have anything new or interesting to say on the subject of love and romance. It’s one of the most generic takes I’ve seen on the topic, and half the lines feel like they were generated by AI. The script feels like it was a first draft, with the conversations that take place between these characters feeling extraordinarily stiff. The lines and things they say feel interchangeable. They don’t feel unique to the character and it leads to every conversation feeling flat and lifeless. Normally in Studio Ghibli movies, I can recall at least one line or quote that stuck out to me. But with this movie, I don’t recall a single exchange or line. Except for one at the end that I have major problems with BUT WE WILL GET TO THAT! 

Part of the reason why I feel the script falls flat once more falls back to how the characters are written. They all feel like romance movie stereotypes and caricatures, without the writers making any effort to distinguish them from the rest. The main character, the love interest, the best friend, each one comes across the way that they’re meant to, but I don’t get invested in any of their struggles because of how lifeless each character is written. 

Steering back to the main movies conflict, the romance between the two main characters I mean, saying it’s poorly written is an understatement. Not only is it rushed, but you never get the sense of why the two main characters are falling in love. There isn’t a single scene, dialogue exchange or line that informs the audience of what these two people see in one another. Every scene these two are involved in is either a fight, or talking about something that is completely irrelevant to the narrative. It’s not like I can’t get invested in movies that use fights to force a potential romance, I am actually the president of the enemies to lovers fan club. But one of the main aspects of stories like that, is normally to reveal something internal about the characters. The main drawl of the enemies to lovers plotline comes from being able to love someone despite their flaws, seeing the worst sides of someone and still being able to see yourself in a romantic setting with them. 

This idea is not only used in a one sided format, which eliminates some of the tension because the love is unrequited, but it’s not so much enemies to lovers, as it is the lover interest just being incompatible with one another. 

The main girl in this movie is just the worst. She’s manipulative, obsessive, and she’s just all around not a good person. She tricks the main guy in this movie into flying to Japan with her so she can visit her childhood home, and then she proceeds to treat him like shit the entire time they’re there, even though he made the impulsive choice to fly with her after her best friend backed out. She also gets upset over the stupidest, most incoherent things, like showing up at the main guy’s hotel room to cry, and you think that it’s going to be a drastic turn or shift in their relationship because something serious just occurred. But no, she’s just in tears because her room has different colored wallpaper. Kill me. The only form of tension or enjoyment that came out of watching that scene, was when I forced my friend to watch the movie, and he and I made the joke that the movie should be called green walls. 

You start to wonder throughout the movie why the main guy is even falling in love with her when all she does is yell at him and gaslight him throughout the course of the films runtime, and just when you think the movie’s going to give you a solid answer, it takes after it’s love interests and gaslights you by telling you the answer is a solid because screw you that’s why. There’s a funny scene at the end of the movie where after the main guy and girl get into a fight, he reminisces on all the good times the two of them had together, and all the scenes are just her being the absolute worse to him as sappy music plays in the background, and you just can’t help but laugh at it despite the movie trying to convince you that this is a sweet moment. 

It’s actually ridiculous that he came to the conclusion after that montage that he was “in love with her the whole time” and yes that’s the line I mentioned at the beginning of this, because there was nothing in the film that caused him to reach that conclusion. She never apologies for manipulating him or being abusive to him, nor has she said a single nice thing to the main guy. He just forgives and takes her back in the end because this is a romance movie, and we must have the girl and guy get together in this extremely heteronormative romance film. 

That kinda brings me to my next issue. See, I don’t like romance movies that have a form of violence within them, and then try to downplay that violence later on with the excuse of it just being “a heat of the moment” decision. There’s not one, but two scenes in which the two love interests are physically violent to each other, and to me, gender doesn’t really matter when it comes to these kinds of things. A slap is a slap, and neither of them apologize for it or own up to their actions. These were scenes that shouldn’t have been included in the movie if the writers didn’t have any intentions of circling back to it in a way that could have developed the main characters. 

If you read into this movie too much like I did, you can spot a tiny bit of gay subtext between the two best friend characters in this movie, but it’s so under explored that you wonder what the point of its inclusion is. There was actually a moment in which I believed the main guy was going to choose his best friend in the end after the main girl just continued being the absolute worst, but the conversation between the two of them reflecting on their childhood ends just the second you start getting invested in what they are saying. 

Despite their interactions being some of the better ones in this movie, the best friend really didn’t serve a purpose in this film other than to just be another character for the main guy to interact with. He’s easily the least developed of the three main characters, barely getting any screen time to the point where you need to guess what his motivations are, and everything involving him is more implied than it is stated. Does he love the girl? Does he love the guy? Does he want them to be together or does he not? We don’t know. This character isn’t really explored. 

Nothing is really explored for that matter. It’s a collection of scenes with little transition or cohesive thought, and none of what it’s trying to say is clear. It reads and comes across like the first draft of a script because of that. Nothing meshes well together, we’re just jumping from one pointless scene to the next without having a moment to process what just happened in the previous scene. And none of these characters go through any interesting changes, and none of their relationships develop in a natural or believable way, and that’s because of the problem I mentioned earlier with the scene being too short, and ending just as they’re getting started. I never got a good feeling of why the characters were behaving the way they did or why they made the choices they did. It honestly just felt like they were saying or doing this because the script demanded it, and we needed to rush on over to the next boring scene. 

The animation was fine I suppose. I actually liked how some of these scenes looked like the scene on the dock. It looks decent for being a movie made for TV so I don’t want to be too harsh on how it looks since it was made by the studio’s B team, but when you’re watching all these movies together, you definitely start to notice the difference subconsciously. I guess it looks better than the first Ghibli movie but that’s not saying too much. 

This ended up being the shortest movie in this ranking, only clocking in at seventy five minutes, but it felt like an eternity sitting through it. A part of me feels terrible for not liking it because this movie was made for television, so of course it wasn’t going to be on the same level as the theatrical ones, but I’m not excusing it because of that because even if it was longer or had better animation it would still be boring. If the movie was a bit longer maybe some of the problems i had with it’s undeveloped characters and themes could have been fixed, but even then it would have boring, and I don’t see a way to rework all the structural problems without rewriting the entire movie, which is probably what needs to be done. 

I almost want to say skip this one if you’re planning on watching all the movies since this one “technically” isn’t a Ghibli movie, but I already told you to skip Pom Poko, and this ones better to sit through because at least the ending is fun to laugh at if you’re watching it with friends, and it has it’s absolute bonkers and nonsensical moments that can sort of be entertaining if you can handle the absurdity of some of these characters decisions. 

Other than that, this isn’t one that you need to see. But it's better than Pom Poko because at least I actually felt something while watching it. Even if what I was feeling was anger towards every single decision made in this movie :) 

21. My Neighbors The Yamada’s: A Beautiful Newspaper Comic That Should Have Remained In It’s Spot At The Lunch Table

I shockingly have very little to say about My Neighbors The Yamada’s, and I’m pretty sure that’s how a large majority of the Studio Ghibli fandom feels about it, as I hardly hear anyone talking about this movie. 

For what it is, it’s perfectly fine. It’s an adaptation of this newspaper comic that became a manga later on due to how popular it was in Japan, so I can see fans of the original comic enjoying and having fun with this movie, but as someone who's never read the original comic or the manga… yea I didn’t get much out of this. 

I think one of the biggest problems with my lack of enjoyment with this movie was the runtime. It’s nearly two hours, and I don’t think that was necessary. It could have at the very least been an hour or maybe even shorter than that, as this movie doesn't exactly follow a plot. It follows an episodic format, where it’s just a collection of small vinyets shoved into one big movie. 

It’s a perfectly fine premise, especially for an adaptation of a newspaper comic that features one story in its strip. I actually found some of the stories enjoyable and silly, but I don’t think they were spaced out evenly in a way that made them all memorable. Some of the stories are twenty minutes, some are only five, and nothing really ends up meshing well together. 

Something that’s also not spaced out evenly is the amount of attention each character received. The dad, grandma, and son feel like the vocal point of most of the stories, while the littlest daughter really only gets to be the center of one story, that one being the twenty minute one at the start of the movie, which ended up being my favorite one. I kinda just wish everyone in the family got an equal amount of screen time, that way each one of them could have a clear impression in my mind, but I struggled to remember the names, traits, quirks and elements of some of the family members by the time the film ended. 

I think that’s why I think this movie should have been a little shorter, as not every story necessarily needed to be in the film. As I already mentioned, I struggle to remember some of the ones that happened in the movie because there were a bizarre number of them which were a variety of different lengths. Some of them were too short to leave an impression on you, and I think this film would have been a lot better if it only focused on three or four that held the same amount of time. Maybe then I would have walked away from it feeling a little less confused. 

I’ll end on some positive notes, as this wasn’t the worst one I watched. First, the animation is really pretty to look at. It’s all done in this sketchy looking animation, like a drawing that had come to life. And for an adaptation of a newspaper comic, I thought that was a very clever idea. The filmmakers started to do less creative things with the animation as the film went along, like the cool transition sequences of the family traveling under water or flying above the clouds, but I never got bored of the artstyle. It remained pleasant and pretty throughout, always a bonus. 

And as I mentioned previously, the family members are fun. It was fun to watch them play off one another and interact. There was a silly little story at the end involving people trying to break into the family home, and the dad was trying to scare the robbers away but he was failing, so the mom and grandma started chanting while banging pots and pans at them and it somehow worked. It was so ridiculous, and me and my sibling just started laughing so hard. 

That’s one of the better elements of this movie. I may not remember some of it now, but at the moment it was a delight to watch. It’s not one I’m eager to get back to anytime soon, but if I had to marathon all of these again, I don’t think I would mind sitting through it. Sometimes it can drag, especially because of its long runtime, but when it’s fun, it’s kinda cute.

Stay tuned for 20-16!