Before last fall, when my friend William took me to see Spirited Away, I had never heard of the great Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. The only anime video I had ever seen was an unintentionally hilarious porn take-off on The Powerpuff Girls. (I wish I hadn’t given that silly thing away, as it had its charms, one of them being that it was puritanically anti-sex.) At any rate, at this showing, Spirited Away started off in English, then five minutes later stopped and started again (trailers and all) in Japanese. This disconcerted the youngsters in the audience, who apparently weren’t up to subtitles, and within a short time we were just about the only people left in the theater. This was fine with us, especially with William, for he is an anime buff, and thus a purist. Buffs take their Japanese straight.

This small story is just to warn you that I know very little about anime, though I have learned a fair amount about Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. I have read no manga, the graphic novels or comic books that Miyazki is also famous for (the Japanese and the French love them), and have seen none of his television series (which included at one time a series on Heidi and one on Anne of Green Gables.) I’m not a Disney fan. But I have seen every Miyazaki feature that’s available on American DVD, and two that aren’t. So this is a personal take, not an expert evaluation or a know-everything fan appreciation.

These movies are Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro (1979), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds (1984; that’s not here yet, but will be in spring 2004), Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Porco Rosso (1995; also in spring), Princess Mononoke (1997) and Spirited Away (2001). All of them are fantasies or fantastic science fiction. Six are aimed toward young people: Totoro, Kiki and Spirited Away probably more toward girls, the two Castles and Porco Rosso toward boys or men, though I don’t know why the whole family couldn’t enjoy all of them. Nausicaä and Mono-noke are darker movies and perhaps parents should view them first to decide if the kids are ready for them. Mononoke was the highest-grossing movie ever in Japan, toppling E.T., which had held that spot for fifteen years. Titanic trumped it, but not for long–Spirited Away sank that. The Japanese have virtually deified Miyazaki.

Girls first, though I’ll save Spirited Away for the end. Totoro is a wonderful movie for very little kids. Mei, the younger of the two sisters in the film, is only four. Satsuki is nine. They have just moved to the country with their dad, a professor with a home office, and are awaiting their mother’s return from a long hospital stay. (This is treated warmly and should not make a young child fearful; Miyazaki simply needed to get her offstage so the girls could run wild and also it gives them a place to visit; otherwise it’s nearly a one-set movie, though an attractive set.)

The girls tear around the house opening windows to air it and come across a swarm of odd black animated dots, just disappearing into a crack in the wall. Mei captures one and runs to show it to her father, but there is just soot in her hands when she opens them. A visiting neighbor tells her that these are harmless creatures that live in empty houses and that they will probably be gone by nightfall–indeed they are.

When Mei’s is left behind as Satsuki goes off to school, she scampers along a mysterious trail of acorns though Miyazaki’s lovely summery garden. She sees first one furry creature, then a second blue one carrying a bag. There’s a rip in the bag, and acorns have been dropping through it. They hurry into a hole in the huge tree in the garden, and Mei chases after them, running as fast as she can only to tumble–whomp!–right onto the chest of an enormous napping beast. And the next thing she knows she is awakened by Satsuki and her father, hunting for her. Where is Totoro? she asks, and when she tells her story her father speculates that she must have met the Guardian of the Forest. In a charming scene, the three of them bow in formal thanks to the tree for caring for Mei. Later, there is a hilarious dance around a magical manifestation of the tree.

Next time Totoro appears it is at a bus stop in the pouring rain. Satsuki, with sleeping Mei on her back, has two umbrellas and offers one to him. He loves it, listening to the raindrops patter on it. In return, he offers her a package of acorns. When his bus arrives it’s striped, with eight galloping legs and a Cheshire Cat grin.

This is a sweet-natured movie, but it has energy. The girls scream, run around, and squabble like real children, dance and fly with Totoro (in a sort of reverse Mary Poppins way), plant their acorns, take a ride on the Cat Bus, visit their mother, have fun with Dad. Some critics found it too slow, but Roger Ebert has defended it passionately, putting it on his all-time Great Movie short list in part because it avoids American "family movie" clichés. As for me, it is my number one Christmas or birthday present for preschoolers–even boys up to age five or so–and a great house present for families. No extra features on the DVD other than scene selection, which should please boys wanting to study that bus, and parents who weary of a little one’s endless appetite for repetition.

Kiki’s Delivery Service is just right for the nine-to-thirteen-year-old set. Kiki is a thirteen-year-old witch-in-the-making, daughter of a practicing witch. Instead of going to a Hogwarts equivalent, the custom here is that a young witch must fly off on her broomstick (actually, she borrows her mother’s) to make her own way in a strange place before returning home. Of course she will take her black cat Jiji (dubbed as an amusing skeptic by Phil Hartman; Kiki is Kirsten Dunst). Off she flies, rather clumsily, under the full moon–whee!–waving to the village of well-wishers who have come to see her off. By morning she has come to a fishing town (beautifully drawn in a nostalgic European style, rather like the Tintin drawings). And it has no witch! In short order, Kiki finds a room with a kindly baker (who is obviously and unremarkably pregnant–don’t look for that in an American film for kids, animated or live!). But what can she do to earn her keep? She has no skills, no obvious talents, obviously hasn’t been paying much attention to witch lore. In fact, Kiki is a ditz. But she does have her broom and soon she has the idea of using it to deliver parcels around town, not only from the bakery but also from anyone else who needs a messenger.

Things go wrong, of course–at one point grumpy Jiji has to impersonate a stuffed cat–but Kiki acquires a young admirer, Tombo, who is building a flying machine (she snubs him, but he keeps bouncing back), and then a really cool older artist friend, Ursula. Kiki goes through a rough time of fearing she is losing both her ability to fly and to talk to Jiji (who is flirting, meanwhile, with a sleek neighbor cat). But she rallies; when she makes a daring rescue from the flying machine she forgets her fears and simply acts, as a good witch should. All in all, a lively movie for pre-teens, about making choices, learning courtesy and confidence as well as responsibility. It’s out from Disney in a two-DVD set; the second plays the soundtrack under the original storyboards, nice for kids interested in drawing. There’s a little feature on the English dubbing, and the original Japanese trailers. A "B" for extras.

Miyazaki’s planes, trains, and automobiles are great, and they make his "boy movies" rule. He’s said to be an airplane hobbyist, and it certainly shows, but his robots are nifty too, and so are his boiler rooms, foundries, mines, and engines. The simpler of the two Castle movies, The Castle of Cagliostro, is based on a Japanese TV series invented by someone called Monkey Punch. It pits master thief Lupin III (grandson to Arsene Lupin, the French gentleman thief featured in several novels by Maurice LeBlanc) and his sidekick against the wicked Count of Cagliostro, a European Ruritania. There are cars to chase, a princess to rescue, treasure to find, a counterfeiting ring to break up. It’s fast and fun and has a neat autogyro, but because it’s based on an existing television format with style and budget constraints it doesn’t have the startling originality of his other movies. It’s simply drawn by comparison, and the most American-seeming of his movies; according to the cover notes it’s a favorite with Steven Spielberg.

But with Castle in the Sky (hereafter Castle; the other one is Cagli-ostro) we’re in a different dimension altogether. The camera moves up, up above the clouds to an extraordinarily eccentric-looking airship–on the hull we see a Jolly Roger. Pirates! Down we move below the top cloud layer, where another ship, a strangely Victorian model makes its way across the screen. Through a window we see a forlorn young girl refusing a meal, but we don’t know yet that she’s a hostage. Suddenly–action! Riding tiny air-scooters that look like dragonflies mated with ceiling fans, the pirates swarm aboard the passenger ship, led by Dola, the mother of all pirates, braids akimbo, hollering at the top of her considerable lungs, and looking like a cross between a Katzenjammer mama and Pippi Longstocking aged by R. Crumb (Cloris Leachman having the time of her life). Considerable ruckus ensues. The girl Sheeta, frightened when she hears shouts about a crystal that must be the one she is wearing around her neck, slips out the window, hoping to keep out of sight. But she slips and falls, head down, down, down.

Cut to the credits, one wonderful airship crowding the next, castles like giant layer-cakes sailing by in their stately way, all of them looking as if Leonardo or Jonathan Swift had designed them. (This movie was originally called Laputa: Castle in the Sky after Swift’s floating island in the Gulliver series, but the title was changed to avoid offending Spanish and Portuguese speakers. I won’t explain except to note that the term is ruder in Spanish than the translation is in English. In the English dub there is a heavy emphasis on the first syllable so that no one gets any funny ideas. The Japanese, of course, call it "Raputa.")

It’s a grand beginning to a rollicking movie with plenty of hijinks and plenty of spectacular skyjinks too, sheer fun in animation and action and chock-full of magical things to goggle at, very much including the complex architecture of Laputa itself and its giant cock-eyed robots (much better than the Lupin robots and very good at fighting in a pinch –no Three Laws for them). Sheeta (Anna Paquin) is saved by Pazu, a boy in a Welsh mining town (the town is as beautifully drawn as the more fanciful creations) who is building an ornithopter so that he can find Laputa, The two scramble to avoid their pursuers and find out the secrets of the crystal; eventually, they team up with the pirates. Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker himself, dubs the smooth blond villain. This two-DVD set has the same kinds of extras that Kiki offers, a great chance to study those magnificent flying machines.

Porco Rosso offers many more flying machines, of 1920s vintage: we are in Italy at the start of the Depression, with Fascism on the rise. The film was made as a JAL in-flight movie "for tired businessmen whose brains have turned to tofu," said Miyazaki in one interview. It’s a nod to the Red Baron, and to movies like The Flying Leathernecks and Twelve O’Clock High. Miyazaki has also said that "When a man becomes middle-aged, he becomes a pig." Which doesn’t entirely explain why his mustachioed, cigarette-smoking, bounty-hunting hero has a pig’s head. Porco was an ace Italian aviator in World War I and we first meet him lounging on the beach of his Adriatic island. He’s called for a rescue. Sky pirates whiz through this movie too: the Mamma Aiutto (Help Me Mama) Gang, led by a boss named Boss and flying a seaplane painted with skulls, has kidnapped a swarm of little girls from a cruise ship. Single handedly, Porco saves them.

The pirates show up at the nightclub where Porco’s friend, the lovely, sad-eyed, much-married chanteuse, Miss Gina, presides. An American pilot, Curtis, is much taken with Miss Gina. On Porco’s next rescue he engages in his first aerial dogfight with Curtis, and Curtis shoots him down, leaving him for dead. Of course Porco isn’t. In Milan, he meets up with sassy little Fio who says she will design the fix-up of his plane. She does (to his surprise), and all the women in her big Italian family–grannies, aunts, cousins of all ages–get together to build it (the men have been conscripted). When Porco and Fio get back to the island, whom do they find but the pirates and Curtis! Another aerial duel, for high stakes, is planned, and this time it’s a circus, with every criminal low-life across Italy on hand for the betting, and the Italian air force on its way. The movie is short and sparky, with great stunts, a broad cartoon style and an ambiguous ending. Tofu-brained businessmen should have been pleased.

Nausicaä was developed from a manga (collected in seven volumes) that Miyazaki wrote and illustrated for more than a dozen years. Purists think it’s the best work he’s ever done. The film is not his best, but it’s interesting, more somber than any of the above, more classically science fictional, and it makes a pair with Mononoke, which came out thirteen years later. Both of them explore Miyazaki’s serious interest in environmental ecology. The pirated video I have, so dark and blurry that I can’t read all the subtitles, is complete. It’s not the infamous much-cut British version, Warriors of the Winds, that came out a few years back and so horrified Miyazaki that his deal with Disney specified that not one second be cut from any Ghibli film released here. (Totoro, Cagliostro, and Mononoke aren’t here through Disney, but through Fox, Manga, and Miramax respectively.) But Nausicaä lives in a troubled world, and a certain murkiness is not amiss.

We first meet Nausicaä–where else but on her plane?–for she is an accomplished wind rider on a little glider that seems to have a jet-powered take-off. She uses it to monitor the troubling spread of the Sea of Corruption, a once-healthy forest areas that now, a thousand years after global war has mostly destroyed civilization, give off a miasma of poisonous spores so that anyone nearing it must wear a gasmask that makes him–or, in this case, her–a basset-hound look-alike. She also heads off the Ohmu, slug-like behemoths with multiple-headlight eyes, from the still-idyllic Valley of the Winds, the small city-state where she is the daughter of the ailing king. Nausicaä has a kind of rapport with the Ohmu; dangerous and frightening as they are, she can soothe them with a wind-flute and guide them back toward the forest. (The derivation of "Ohmu" is interesting; Miyazaki says it comes partly from a Japanese word meaning "king insect," partly from the Buddhist "Aum" and partly from the Dune "sando uomu"–sandworm.)

Dire and difficult as life is in this post-apocalyptic world, it hasn’t stopped human beings from their relentless drive toward war. Torumekia and Pejite are two other city-states (the original manga had more). A crippled Torumekian air transport crashes in the Valley and in the wreckage Nausicaä finds a chained Petije princess, who dies after warning that the ship’s cargo is very dangerous. Indeed it is, for it is the inactivated terrible fighting machine, the God-Soldier, instrumental in Earth’s destruction so long ago. And one-armed Prin-cess Kushana, leader of the Torumekian military force that promptly descends on and overpowers the Valley, plans to revive this thing and to destroy the Sea of Corruption and the Ohmu with it–even though she is sternly warned by an elder that doing so will lead to certain doom.

Meanwhile, Nausicaä goes home to find her father dead. Enraged, she lashes out at the Torumekian soldiers and only the appearance of a wise old uncle-figure spares her from sharing his fate. Kushana takes her hostage but on their way back to Torumekia a Pejite fighter, piloted by Prince Asbel, attacks the airship. All the survivors (including Kushana, who attempts to impose her bossy ways) land safely in a clear area of forest, but are promptly surrounded by Ohmu. Nausicaä lets the Ohmu feel her with their tentacles, and they go away, calmed.

Asbel and Nausicaä find proof that the Sea of Corruption is actually slowly cleaning the earth of manmade pollution. It becomes more important than ever to stop Kusha-na’s mad plan. Meanwhile the Pejite are torturing a baby Ohmu (this leads to some spectacular stampedes of incensed adult Ohmu) who is rescued by Nausicaä and who in turn heals the girl. There are wonderful visuals of the various huge, mutated, and perilous insects, as well as the swamps, roots, tangled funguses, and spores of the forest.

The movie ends with some astonishing violence and an apotheosis, an ancient prediction fulfilled. It’s said the director later regretted this ending, though it’s quite beautiful. But, again, it may not be for some kids.

Even darker and more intense is the story of the boy with the poisoned arm and the girl raised by wolves. (Mononoke means something like spirit; the title character, San, is not actually a spirit, but Moro, the wolf who raised her, is; Totoro is also a mononoke.) Princess Mononoke was not a theatrical hit here, despite the Miramax ad campaign, which made rather more of an effort than Disney bothered to do with Spirited Away, which really is a family movie. What must parents have thought at their first close-up of San, with knife in hand and blood all over her mouth? Or when the amputated head of a dying wolf bites off a woman’s arm? Or of a foundry staffed entirely with lepers and ex-brothel women? (When was the last time you saw that in a cartoon?)

But it’s a gripping movie nevertheless, with English script doctoring by Neil Gaiman, and it uses Japan as Miyazaki never did before. It starts with a bang as a monster covered with writhing worms advances on a remote medieval village. Brave young Ashitaka (Billy Crudup) manages to kill it, but not before it has infected his arm. An elder tells him that this fearsome creature used to be a Boar God, but was cursed and now Ashitaka is too. Perhaps if he goes to the west he can find a cure; if not he will die. Sadly, he mounts Yakkul (who appears to be a cross between an elk and a yak) and goes off on his lonely journey. Steadily his arm gets worse and more painful, but also stronger –when he shoots an arrow at some rogue samurai it cuts off the arms of one of them. A monk, Jigo (Billy Bob Thornton), tells him of a great mountain forest and an antlered god who rules it.

Near this forest is Irontown, a foundry fired by charcoal made from trees cut from the forest, and run by Lady Eboshi (Minnie Driver). Supplies, bourne by cattle and protected by Eboshi’s mercenaries, are advancing toward the gates when suddenly Moro, the huge white Wolf God, attacks the caravan. Eboshi fires a bullet that hits Moro, who falls into a canyon. Into that canyon rides Ashitaka, who finds two wounded men and helps them. Looking around, he spots the wolf and San, who is sucking poison out of Moro’s wound. Through the trees, Ashitaka glimpses a magnificent antlered head, and immediately his arm writhes with pain.

The conflict is set up between the creatures of the forest (including San), who hate the humans and their smoke-belching factory, and Eboshi’s town, which in no way is presented as a bad place. As in many Miyazaki movies, people work hard but don’t really mind it; the women joke that it certainly beats their old profession.

Meanwhile Jigo turns up again, this time leading a group of hunters who want to kill the Forest Guard-ian to get the antlers of immortality. And the rogue samurai attack Irontown. (Never a dull moment.)

There’s a lot of violence here, both against animals and humans. It’s not cartoonish violence, but frightening, as are the deceptions and betrayals of many of the characters. Some of the effects are terrific, such as the transformations of the great stag, which sometimes masks its face and also turns into a primeval dinosaur-like creature at night, but some of them are also repulsive. There’s very little comic relief–it’s a serious and ambitious allegorical epic, and a wonderfully visual one. A good deal of it is digitized, a first for Miyazaki, and there does seem to be a special richness to the backgrounds.

Last and best, there’s Spirited Away. I saved this one for last because I am simply in awe of this movie. The New Yorker has said that "it is destined to join E.T. and The Wizard of Oz in the top ranks of movie fairy tales and fables," and I couldn’t agree more. The form is exactly that of the The Wizard and the Alice books: A young girl, this time a sulky ten-year-old, Chihiro, wanders into a magical land that certainly isn’t Kansas. With the help of some of the creatures she encounters, she overcomes many obstacles till she can finally get back home.

Chihiro (Daveigh Chase) and her parents are moving to a new house, and her father takes a wrong turn. They leave the car to explore a mysterious tunnel in the woods. On the other side is what appears to be an abandoned theme park, but the food stalls are still functioning. Her parents settle down to pig out, but Chihiro wanders away and crosses a bridge toward a huge gaudy structure that will turn out to be the Bathhouse of the Gods or Spirits. A boy named Haku (Jason Marsden) appears to caution her to run back before dark–but when she does she finds that her parents have metamorphosed into pigs!

Panic-stricken, she runs back to the building. Haku warns her that humans are not welcome here (by this time there is a long line of decidedly inhuman creatures waiting to get into the bathhouse) and that she must at all costs find work. The boiler room is operated by gruff Kumaji (David Ogden Stiers), who is dressed in a formal coat and has eight limbs, which he employs in an astonishing variety of ways, ordering around little scurrying soot-balls like the ones in Totoro. But Kumaji has no job for her, and when the housemaid Lin (Susan Egan) appears with dinner, it appears that Chihiro must apply to the boss-witch.

Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette) is an old hag built like Alice’s Duchess, and like the Duchess, she has a baby, this one a humongous giant named Boh. Three bouncing green heads attend her. She renames Chihiro Sen when she hires her–she has stolen her identity. And Sen goes off to be a housemaid and bathgirl. As bathgirl her first, and most unwelcome, task is to assist the Stink God–this is an excellent, long, complex, and funny scene, with an ecological message at the end.

But it is Sen’s encounter with No-Face, a silent black-robed thing with a Noh mask where its head should be, that will prove most telling. Seeing it standing in the rain, she invites it into the bathhouse where, in short order, it creates havoc. It is not exactly what it seems. Neither is Haku, who gets in trouble of a different kind, from which Sen must save him. This will involve a strange train-ride to visit another witch.

The invention and complexity of this movie boggle the mind. The richness of the drawing and painting is staggering: I’ve never seen anything like the anteroom to Yubaba’s chambers. (Miyazaki used even more digital imaging in this than in Mononoke but a great deal is still hand done.) But it’s not just the dazzling technical wizardry–the painterly landscapes, the depth, dimension, and detail–it’s the characters and story. The bathhouse is full of wonderful creatures doing eccentric things (meet the Radish God!). The train ride is spooky, but at the same time two tiny creatures bob up and down in eager play, and then fall touchingly asleep in Sen’s folded hands. Even the dubbing is terrific, with a special nod to Susan Egan for making an unshowy supporting part so appealing.

And you get your money’s worth on the two-DVD set. Aside from extras similar to those Kiki and Castle offer, a television crew documented the making of the movie. The result is fascinating. The scenes where Miyazaki (a very attractive personality) is trying to explain to a group of young animators how to feed medicine to a wounded dragon are priceless. He goes around the table with mounting disbelief to discover that not one of them has ever owned a dog, then orders the phalanx to a local vet to practice on two exuberant pups. The storyboards got a little shortchanged to fit in, but they have a great new feature: click on one and it takes you back to that point in the movie.

Lucky us, there is more to come. Miyazaki, in his sixties, keeps retiring, then bouncing back, and now he is hard at work on the anime of Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. The book seems perfect for him, though he’s going to have to pull off at least one stunt that even he (nor anyone else) has never done before in animation. Of course, he may change the plot. He’s already changed the castle. You can see a picture of it at: http://www 4.at-lawson.com/ghibli/ghibli _mot. shtml; click on the small picture on the right for a 3-D model. But he gets another chance at Wales (and other places) and Howl could be his best-ever male character. It might be out, at least in Japan, by next fall, and if we’re really lucky, the DVD in 2005 or 2006 will include another terrific documentary.