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This post is by guest writer Erin Burke.
Working as an editor under several successive departments at publisher Tokuma Shoten allowed Toshio Suzuki to meet the manga world’s greatest creators. These working relationships would crossover to include professionals in the animation industry such as Osamu Tezuka. In 1978, Suzuki was chosen to be an editor for Animage magazine, a new publication helmed by Editor-in-Chief Hideo Ogata.
Toshio Suzuki
It was in Animage that Miyazaki was able to publish his manga Naussica of the Valley of Wind, which led to the creation of the Naussica feature film, and eventually the funding needed to set up Studio Ghibli. Suzuki would continue to be a strong asset to Miyazaki and Takahata in producing most of Ghibli’s projects.
In 1984, Miyazaki was working at Topcraft animation studio and had just finished work on Naussica of the Valley of Wind. Topcraft was known mostly for its work on many of the Rankin/Bass animated productions including critically lauded television movie The Hobbit in 1977, the first ever attempt at converting the popular J.R.R. Tolkien novel to film. Topcraft would go on to animate another popular fantasy novel, The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, this time in a release to U.S. theaters which also garnered praise from critics.
The Hobbit (1977)
The Last Unicorn (1982)
However, by 1986 Topcraft had declared bankruptcy and Miyazaki, Suzuki, and Takahata were ready to step in and salvage what was left. Topcraft essentially split into two studios, with one reformed as Pacific Animation Corporation, which would further the tradition of working on popular Rankin/Bass productions such as Thundercats, Silverhawks, TigerSharks, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, and The Comic Strip. The other would eventually become Studio Ghibli.
With Topcraft gone, it was time for the three industry veterans to “blow a new wind through the anime industry” as described by Miyazaki when he named the new studio “Ghibli”, after both a type of classic Italian plane and a Mediterranean wind.
Laputa: Castle in the Sky would be the studio’s first major release to theaters, debuting in 1986. It won several awards including Animage’s Anime Grand Prix, First Place at the Osaka Film Festival, First Place Japanese Movies in Japanese Film Magazine Eiga Geijutsu, and Pia Ten First Place in Best Films of the Year. Based around the concept of an advanced flying city featured in Gulliver’s Travels, the film was even popular enough to warrant an English translation produced by Magnum Video.
Castle in the Sky would be only the first of many successful animated features, as Miyazaki and Takahata pushed on towards their goal of raising the bar of Japanese animation. Eventually their studio would produce many of Japan’s top grossing, critically acclaimed films that would impact not only the Japanese market, but also heavily influence creators and audiences across the world. The wind was rising, and Studio Ghibli was at the forefront of innovation.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(1977_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Unicorn_(film)
http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/the-japanese-studios-of-rankinbass/
The Anime Encyclopedia, 3rd Revised Edition: A Century of Japanese Animation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshio_Suzuki_(producer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_in_the_Sky)
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