[Image: DOMENICO STINELLIS | AP]
This weekend, Hayao Miyazaki revealed that the title of his last film will be Kimitachi wa Dou Ikiru ka (“How do you live?”).
The title is from a book by the same name written by Genzaburo Yoshino (1899-1981), who started writing children’s books during the 1930s because he realised the Imperial government was not heavily censoring them. Yoshino wrote stories with liberal themes to teach children. Kimitachi wa Dou Ikiru ka, for example, covers class equality, socialist philosophy and even Marxist economics.
The original book tells the story of a young boy who begins to think for himself.
For Miyazaki, taking book titles for films isn’t new. As ANN points out, Miyazaki’s 2013 film Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises in English) took its title from Tatsuo Hori’s novel Kaze Tachinu.
“The film is about how this particular book featured prominently in the protagonist’s life,” Miyazaki said this weekend. “It will take three to four years to complete the anime.” According to The Asahi Shimbun, Miyazaki mentioned the project while speaking at the Natsume Soseki Memorial Museum at Waseda University in Tokyo.
Previously, Kotaku reported that Miyazaki was working on a CG anime short titled Boro the Caterpillar.
When Miyazaki first announced he wanted to return to feature films, he said he hoped to finish the project by 2020. It looks like the film might not be done until 2021.
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9 responses to “Hayao Miyazaki Announced The Title Of His Last Film ”
‘last’
Opened to post this exact comment.
Last film…like Final Fantasy…
Umm, we’ve known the name of his last film for years: The Wind Rises.
This is his new last film. He un-retired again.
I think this is the 4th time he’s retired and then come back. He retired after Princess Mononoke (got a shock when the director of Whisper of the Heart died from overwork. Then he retired again after Spirited Away, only to be forced back because someone needed to helm Howl’s Moving Castle because the director Ghibli had lined up for it (Mamoru Hosoda) got an offer from Madhouse to form his own movie studio. Then he retired again, only to come back for Ponyo, then after The Wind Rises he bowed out again. Now he’s back.
He likes to talk about retiring but the guy can’t tear himself away from the desk. Reckon he’s going to be found dead one day with storyboards still in his hands.
He strikes me as a workaholic. He’s genuine when he says he wants to retire, but the creative urge rises again a year or two in and without an outlet for it his retirement becomes frustrating, so he ends up coming back.
He was supposedly drawing some kind of epic Samurai manga but I guess he saw some new animation technique or something and wanted to give it a try (I think I remember reading that he wanted to fiddle with some new CG animation technique)
Apparently this time he’s doing it so that he can leave something for his grandson to remember him by when he’s gone. I feel like his current expansive body of work is more than most could ever hope to leave behind in ten lifetimes but, hey.. I’m not complaining that we get at least one more.
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