Sword of the Stranger is a 2007 film by BONES centering around a young boy and two warriors who are drawn to him due to various circumstances.  The film is set in feudal Japan, with more than a few similarities to Seirei no Moribito in attempted plot and characterization.  Both involve warriors with dark pasts who find themselves compelled to protect a young boy while being pursued by hostile factions.  With that said, the resemblance to Moribito extends only to that superficial level, and Sword felt more, to me, like a story “going through the motions” than one that is believable, compelling, and memorable.  One major difference is that Moribito kept its fight sequences sporadic, with the increasing tension providing weight and dramatic effect to their inevitable appearance.  Sword, on the other hand, is not quite as picky when it comes to tossing out moments of violence and gore – they are essentially the defining element of the film.  As I am not particularly a fan of violent anime, I avoided this film for a long time for this reason, finally caving in after reading many positive reviews.  Sadly, while there are some good qualities to the film, overall, my mind hasn’t really been changed, and I would personally recommend it only to fans of heavily action-oriented films with a very basic, Hollywood approach to narrative.

The storyline is fairly straightforward.  Villainous factions attempt to acquire a certain young boy, Koutarou, in order to proceed with fulfilling an ancient prophecy that deems his sacrifice a requirement.  At the beginning of the film, the boy meets up with the main protagonist of the story, a nameless former warrior, and they form something of a chummy relationship.  When the boy is later tricked and kidnapped, the warrior goes after him and rescues him in the inevitable grand climax of blood and sword-clanging.  In the midst of all this is a fairly uninteresting villain character, a Western assassin working for one of the pursuing factions who has no personality beyond adoring a good battle.  As you may expect, the final battle consists of the nameless hero and this assassin going head to head, after the assassin purposefully ruins an earlier chance to defeat the hero on the grounds of wanting to battle a “worthy enemy”.  Again, if you’re trying to get away from common tropes, this isn’t really the film for you.

There is a hint of something likable about the relationship between the hero and the young Koutarou, familiar as it may be, but it isn’t really given much time to grow organically (particularly as the film is happy to spend much time on stylish action scenes instead of the necessary development).  It was enough to provide the minimum emotion required to make the final rescue scenes plausible and mildly rewarding, but never really managed to approach the depth of the similar relationship in Seirei no Moribito. For a film with a relatively thin plot, there is also a rather large amount of time spent following plot-incidental characters, though often it was merely to see them die in a gory battle scene afterwards.  As you would expect in this genre, there’s a lot of random swordfighting which contributes nothing to the overall narrative or characterization.  This isn’t really a criticism, as I suppose it would be a little silly to blame an action film for having a lot of action.

I would assume that a great deal of this anime’s popularity is at least partly due to the animation quality.  There was clearly a high budget and a lot of talent which was poured into Sword, and the result is a very high quality visual coating that will impress many.  Since I don’t find watching violence particularly appealing, I never really reaped the benefits of this high quality coating, but I can see why it gets the praises it does in that regard.  The music is another matter entirely.  The early portions of the film have a very minimalistic approach to background scoring, but the latter half of the film relies so heavily on one primary pentatonic melody (the film’s main theme, I suppose) that it borders on overuse – seeming to pop up every few minutes.  However, the lush orchestral sound, like the visuals, once again gives a certain slick sense of presentation that probably boosted the impression of quality to most viewers.

There isn’t really anything terribly egregious about the film, but what I was missing from it was a sense of natural cohesion binding together all the various scenes.  Sword felt more like a collection of ideas that sounded good – and would probably be effective in a better-written film – thrown together in a simple manner and dressed with a lot of flashy violence and sweeping music.  For example, the idea of a warrior who refuses to draw his sword due to his past is a pretty compelling idea to me, since I have a liking for those sorts of pacifistic themes.  Yet Sword treats this more like a technicality than any moral decision, as the main character freely kills others using other means for the sake of gory fight scenes, which sort of diminishes the impact of such an idea.  It seems clear, though, that the focus of the film was meant to be the swordfighting rather than any emotional catharsis, so perhaps these complaints are redundant.  I will, however, close with a recommendation for Seirei no Moribito, which I’ve mentioned numerous times already.  The general story arcs have similarities, but Seirei no Moribito is more dedicated to its storytelling than it is to action for the sake of action, and ends up being far more memorable for it.

1/2

On April 4th, 1978, Japan was introduced to a series called Future Boy Conan, a 26-episode series which marked the directorial debut of a man who was then a seasoned animator – Hayao Miyazaki.  The anime is a loose adaptation of a novel by Alexander Tide, but like many of Miyazaki’s future adaptations, the original was mostly a source of names, settings, and a general plot – elements which were then stretched and molded to fit the ideas he wanted to express.  Miyazaki has covered a wide range of settings, atmospheres, and emotions in his work over the decades, and Conan sits in a place closer to Laputa or Porco Rosso.  At its heart, it is a classic adventure story in the vein of Herge’s Tintin serial, where a boy and his friends must overcome the odds to defeat evil and rescue the innocent.  Since it’s directed by Miyazaki, it avoids many immature qualities that are found in many of the more modern shows of the “shounen” demographic, though it contains a degree of slapstick that Miyazaki probably would have avoided later in his career. Ultimately, though, Future Boy Conan simply feeds that immemorial love of bravery, friendship, and adventure with an occasionally exaggerated but largely restrained approach that will appeal to kids and adults alike.

Conan takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where the wars of mankind have annihilated all but a small portion of humanity.  One of these pockets of humans survived on a small island (aptly named Remnant Island), but as the story begins, we see that the only two remaining survivors are an aging man and his young grandson, Conan.  Conan is a young boy who, of course, has no knowledge of the outside world or its dark history – that knowledge has been his grandfather’s burden to bear until this point.  However, when a young girl washes ashore, being pursued relentlessly by a seaplane (which Conan naturally assumes is a bird at first glance), Conan’s peaceful existence is shattered.  We soon learn that this seaplane comes from a small industrial outpost nearby, a city whose leader is pursuing the girl because her grandfather is one of the few remaining people alive who have the knowledge to bring back the energy that will power their warplanes.

It is perhaps somewhat unfair to consider Future Boy Conan in the context of the future works of Hayao Miyazaki, but it is unavoidable as so much of the series evokes themes, character ideas, and concepts which would be fine-tuned and delivered in Miyazaki’s later films.  The post-apocalyptic world and power-hungry villains resemble that of Nausicaa, the swashbuckler approach to sea adventure brings Porco Rosso to mind, and most of all, the endearing bond between Conan and Lana seems like a prototype for Castle in the Sky – the latter of which has the strongest similarity in tone to Conan.  However, the obvious difference with Conan is its medium, and most importantly that Miyazaki has a 13 hour running time in which to communicate his story.  Thus, the series is able to spend a great deal of time focusing on human interaction and friendship with slow-paced scenes that wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for a wealth of time to cover them.  However, perhaps also due to constraints in the television medium and its audience at the time, there is also a bit of the aforementioned slapstick and occasionally cartoonish stunts by Conan that probably would have felt out of place in Miyazaki’s later feature-length films.  Most examples involve Conan surviving some dangerous situation through physics-bending physical maneuvers.

For all its minor faults, though, Conan still manages to carry the mark of a timeless fable.  Its characters seem to resemble familiar archetypes at first, but are given the sufficient amount of development to grow into three-dimensional, well-formed figures who are easy to like and root for while retaining a sort of permanent clarity of character (my mind drifts once again to Tintin as a comparison).  The story itself is very strongly defined in terms of morality, but has sufficient depth in its settings to sustain interest throughout its running time, and its single unquestioningly villainous character is not overused to the point of becoming a caricature.  Despite the occasional slapstick, the lighter moments have a great deal of endearingly boyish fun, while the more dramatic, serious scenes, which aren’t afraid to depict death or sacrifice realistically, never feel as if they’ve been compromised for the sake of the former.  When the plot starts to move quickly in the latter half, after the sufficient attachment to the characters has been built up and the level of danger increases significantly, you’ll almost certainly find yourself on the edge of your seat in suspense.  Myself, I went through the first ten episode at a leisurely pace, but couldn’t help but marathon the final sixteen in the span of three days.

I suppose the only real part of this anime that may disappoint long-time fans of Miyazaki is the lack of budget.  The broad strokes of vivid color and beauty that are so frequent and mesmerizing in Miyazaki’s later feature films are for the most part absent in this television anime from the late seventies.  While the animation of the characters, the depiction of the post-apocalyptic world, and the contrast between nature and industry are strong enough to put it on a tier above the typical television anime, the association of this project to Miyazaki and thus to the art of his later works are, of course, inevitable.  Nonetheless, it isn’t something that will stick in your mind after a few episodes.  The same could be said about the musical accompaniment.  As typical for Miyazaki, traditional anime ballads are eschewed in favour of simple melodic OP and ED themes (the ED starts on an almost tragic, minor-key note before transitioning back to the cheeriness of the OP) and background music is often left off in favour of atmospheric silence.  When music does appear, it varies between highly effective melodic, quasi-orchestral sequences and some less memorable synth music (in this case, it resembles the BGM of Nausicaa).

For those of you who are already Miyazaki fans, Future Boy Conan is a must see if you wish to explore a personal work of his that, though lacking the refined quality of his later work, is free to ignore the time constraints of his films while incorporating much of the same themes.  For those of you have not become Miyazaki fans yet, I would suggest going to those first to get a better appreciation of Miyazaki at his best, as Conan is occasionally restrained by both budget and, perhaps, inexperience.  However, it is generally superior to most television anime in this genre and well deserving of appreciation as an anime classic, so if you’re seeking a good-natured fable about the sort of ideas of friendship and heroism that defined a lot of adventure stories that you may have grown up with, Conan is certainly a fine place to start.
1/2

Yojou-han is an 11-episode series by Madhouse, directed by Masaaki Yuasa and adapted from a novel written by Tomihiko Morimi.  The story follows a nameless college student (fans usually refer to him simply as Watashi) as he pursues a “rose-coloured campus life” – a quest which inevitably fails on his first attempt.  After wishing that he could turn back time and reverse his decisions, Watashi finds himself in a Groundhog-day-esque scenario, repeating his college life from the first day each episode, and each time hopelessly pursuing that vision of an ideal college life that has eluded him.  This story is wrapped in an eccentric style of execution, with excellent, witty writing and a very atypical visual style.

Anime like Yojou-han are certainly a breath of fresh air.  There comes a certain point where you feel as if you’ve seen all the highly-regarded anime and what’s being pushed out regularly is not very impressive.  Seeing newer series like Yojou-han, then, is a very refreshing tidbit of proof that there are directors and companies who aren’t afraid of pursuing something unique, despite the risks.  Now, sometimes those attempts fail or come off as hopelessly pretentious, but sometimes they hit exactly all the right notes, and Yojou-han falls into the second category.  It has a story to tell, a message to deliver, and it packs those into a nearly flawless, captivating, and enjoyable 11-episode run.  It didn’t stretch itself long enough for the premise to become repetitive, nor restrict itself to so short a running time that it couldn’t adequately build up to the eventual cathartic resolution.

Its success is mostly thanks to the intelligent, snappy, and evocative writing style.  I say writing style because the narration which dominates each episode clearly originates in novel form, and Yojou-han has the flavour of a visualization of a novel rather than an adaptation.  An oft-mentioned complaint about the show was the rapid speaking pace of the narrator, and whether this will pose a problem depends, of course, on the reading speed of the viewer.  Many people on various forums mentioned that they had to pause the anime at various points merely to read all of the on-screen subtitle text.  While I never found myself missing any line of text, I certainly found my eyes darting to the subtitle portion of the screen more often than a typical series.  Yet pausing a series like this to read text sort of misses the point – the stream of consciousness narration and brisk pacing is part of the appeal of Yojou-han‘s execution.  To pause and read as if reading on paper doesn’t really make much sense.

While the story focuses on repeating the main character’s college days, it is not an episodic series, as there are a lot of interconnecting, developing plot elements as well as an arc of episodes towards the end that are even more directly related to one another.  The show’s overarching message is a simple one, but I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, as it merely means that the show will probably have something to say to you regardless of what your current position in life is.  The brilliant thing, though, is that it tells this message with a brisk, clever style that doesn’t feel like sappy preaching – despite the fact that the premise and theme could easily have devolved to just that.  Thankfully, Yojou-han never abandons its original tone.  Though people usually think of comedies as being a “lesser genre” (mostly due to the kind of comedy that is present in most anime), I would describe Yojou-han as an intelligent comedy – a valuable and rare subgroup.  The ability to make someone laugh and think at the same time is no easy feat.

I suppose the one piece of advice I’ll leave you with is that I don’t suggest marathoning this series (as viewers tend to do with anime that are already finished).  This is really a very dense anime packed with not only a lot of verbiage from the narrator, but a lot of clever ideas in each episode, and I wonder whether its effectiveness may be diluted without a buffer time in which to mull over each episode.

The original Oofuri was a big hit with me, despite the fact that I generally have an aversion to sports stories.  While Touch, an Adachi series, involved baseball, Oofuri was the first series I watched that was unashamedly centered entirely on baseball, and by the end, I found myself wishing that I had bothered to join some sort of sports club in my high school days.  That’s how effective Oofuri’s portrayal of the different aspects of baseball – teamwork, friendship, victories, disappointments – were.  The other important part of Oofuri’s success was its slow-paced, realistic approach to depicting the actual games.  Rarely was a single pitch skipped over, never were there any convenient home runs or ace-pitchers.  Oofuri was one of the first shows I’ve seen that actually gives us a firm idea of what it’s like to actually be a player, rather than simply watch them.

It’s worth rehashing all of this because the effectiveness of this sequel corresponds mostly to how well it follows the formula of the first season.  However, as this sequel only lasted around a dozen episodes, while the first had 26 to work with, keeping that slow and detailed pace was unrealistic.  Indeed, the very first game of this season is mostly rushed through in a decidedly un-Oofuri-like fashion, and was perhaps the low point of the series thus far.  The second one slows down the pace and subsequently is far more enjoyable, though there is still something of a claustrophobic feeling to the presentation.  Generally, though, this second match is as suspenseful and captivating as the Tousei match from the first, which is a big compliment.

In terms of content, the sequel quite competently advances several character threads (a great deal regarding the battery between Mihashi and Abe as pitcher and catcher), and though the manga material is ongoing, they did manage to end at a natural break-off point.  It would be a shame if there were no more sequels, but I also realize it isn’t very common for third seasons of any show to appear – After all, I’m still waiting for Natsume Yuujinchou’s second sequel.  While I was willing to hold out after the first season, I will probably be diving into the Oofuri manga soon enough.

That’s about the extent of what I have say about Natsu no Taikai Hen.  It’s a textbook case of “more of the same“, except a tad diluted this time around.  I can’t imagine a fan of Oofuri not enjoying the sequel, and I strongly suggest anyone with even a slight inkling of interest in the sorts of themes that I described earlier give this series a try.  I mention this very often, but I am far from a sports fan, yet Oofuri, which is almost completely about sports, managed to break my list of favourite anime.  That should tell you enough about its strengths.

As usual, when I grow fond of a certain anime, I inevitably end up writing some piece of sheet music for it.  Here is my arrangement of the background music track “Melancholic Sana”, which contains a theme used quite often in the anime.

Sheet Music

Mp3 Recording (Doesn’t match the sheet music note for note)

The anime is of course, “Kodomo no Omocha”, Kodocha for short.

Episode 7 also brought the series further in terms of character development, most importantly that of Abe.  Much of the first season was focused on Abe and Mihashi learning to work and be comfortable with each other, but here Abe’s father asks the question of whether they are actually *friends*.  They aren’t, really.  Although they spend more time together as pitcher and catcher, Tajima is more of a friend to Mihashi than Abe, as they speak on the same level, whereas Abe is always talking down to Mihashi.  There’s still quite a way to go before I’d call them friends.

I realized that what makes this show really great is that nearly every single character is someone you would find interesting and likable in real life.  There aren’t any random and uninteresting side characters or cartoonlishly evil ones.  In episode 7 we get a closer look at both Mihashi and Abe’s father.  Miashi’s dad comes off as very awkward shy but with a likable quality to him.  I chuckled quite a bit at the way he resembled Mihashi’s shyness, yet had no problem believing him as an “older version” who at some point could scrounge up the confidence to have found a wife and started a family.  This is something that is lacking in Touch, as much as I love that series.  There are just so many caricatures of characters in that series (such as Tatsuya’s parents, for example), while everyone in Oofuri feels perfectly believable.  The only real outlier is Mihashi’s occasional descents into a somewhat exaggerated awkwardness, but that’s usually played for laughs.

Abe’s father is more outgoing than Mihashi’s, and resembles Abe quite a bit just as Mihashi’s father resembled Mihashi.  For all that Abe seems more mature during conversations with Mihashi, the brief conversation between him and his father at the dinner table brought out Abe’s immaturity just as easily, especially in the way he considers his relationship with Mihashi.  I loved that moment when Abe told his father that Mihashi trusted him, to which Abe’s father thought “He’s using such a heavy word” – deciding not to call him on it for now.  The Abe family is so different from the Mihashi’s, yet I could envision either one of them as my next door neighbors.  It’s the same for their fathers – very different, but I can see how they both would be very good parents.

I’m not sure yet whether the episode count for the series is 13 or 26.  After a string of relatively short games, it looks like the next game is going to be a long one, and that should be very satisfying – the long, drawn out nature of the games sounds boring on paper but was ultimately addictive and compelling last season, and I hope this season tops it.  This is the first game where the opposing side has done substantial research, and it’s going to be a long and hard-fought match.  Just the way the fans like it.

Yojou-han Shinwa Taekei

(Based on the first episode) Colour me impressed.  While there still needs to be some more work in terms of getting me to empathize with the cast on a more human level, my reaction to the series is otherwise overwhelmingly positive.  It’s slightly eccentric, smartly written, and very, very enjoyable.  The last “eccentric” anime I tried was Kūchū Buranko, which I dropped after the first episode.  Yojou-han feels different, though, primarily because I truly wanted to know what happened to the main character, and this kept me watching.  It did an excellent job of “selling” his personality and character to the viewers, and the style doesn’t feel as if it’s trying to be eccentric for the sake of being different.  Of course, this is all subjective and I’m sure there are people who will say the exact opposite about those two series.  The other thing I should mention is what everyone has been mentioning – there’s a lot of fast-talking.  It didn’t bother me for the most part, but I suppose I just have a liking for that quirky style of delivery.  This one is high on my importance list, and I’m eagerly waiting for the next episode.

Giant Killing

(Based on the first episode) I’m not a fan of soccer and have never seen a soccer-oriented anime at all.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because I said the same thing about baseball anime – before being sucked into Touch and Ookiku Furikabutte and being able to see the value in stories about sports, and their possible undercurrents of teamwork, friendship, and similar such themes.  So I approached Giant Killing with an open mind and was rewarded – the show sucked me in from the beginning.  It involves two things that I am a sucker for – 1) stories of underdogs rising to success, and 2) mysterious-but-immensely-talented “teacher” characters.  The main character, Tatsumi, isn’t wholly likeable yet – and I’m told that this is due to a change from the manga-anime transition, but I can’t say that I didn’t find myself engrossed in his story.  The players here are older than those of OoFuri or Touch, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though I will admit that I like OoFuri’s concept of a young, newbie team overcoming expectations.  But that’s neither here nor there – I don’t know where Giant Killing is heading but I certainly like what I’ve seen so far.  The art and music are quite good as well.  High hopes for this on.

Ookiku Furikabutte Season 2

(Based on the first few episodes) Considering I spent a fair bit of the previous paragraph praising OoFuri, I suppose this one is a tad redundant.  As expected, Ookiku Furikabutte‘s second season doesn’t differ too greatly from the first – and that’s fine by me.  You still have the same charming interactions and same great characters.  I did notice, though, that the pace of the baseball games seem to have sped up just a tad.  I suppose it wasn’t realistic to expect every single game to be portrayed in as much detail as the two from the original season, and that the level of detail is proportional to the game’s importance.  The first game from S1 was, well, the first game, and the second was a big match against a big name school.  The first match of S2, then, is a relatively quieter affair.  Still, I look forward to the next “important” match, even though I know it will be painful to have to wait for the conclusion of a game, week by week, for nearly ten episodes.  In short – I still love Ookiku Furikabutte.

One of my recent Amazon purchases was this 500 page collection of writings by Hayao Miyazaki - Starting Point. As tantalizing as the idea of an autobiography sounds, Starting Point is nothing like that.  Rather, it is a collection of essays, speeches, and interviews written or done by Hayao Miyazaki between 1979 to 1996.  After reading it, you will know a heck of a lot more about the man and his views on some very diverse subjects.  On the other hand, if you’re looking for a cohesively structured book to read, you might be put off by the rather loose-fitting organization.

What I mean is that this is very literally a collection of writings – and this results in a lot of jumping around between subjects, a great deal of repetition (people often give similar anecdotes when being interviewed by different people), occasionally informal writing (during interviews), and only a faint chronological order keeping things organized.  On the other hand, if you’re as big of a Studio Ghibli fan as I am, these issues will pale in comparison to the enormous amount of insight you will gain into Miyazaki’s thought process.   If you’re looking to learn more about how his films are made, I don’t know if you will get a more in-depth answer elsewhere.  He discusses animation techniques, storyboarding, and other technical processes for pages and pages.  Also included are film proposals and interviews regarding his works, examined sequentially, though as the book stops in the late 90s, you won’t find any information about anything post-Mononoke.  These final sections are probably going to be of greatest value to Ghibli geeks, as there is nothing more satisfying than hearing from Miyazaki’s mouth his intent and purpose behind various films.  We see, for example, the depth of thought he puts into every film in his proposal for Mimi o Sumaseba (which Miyazaki wrote, then gave directorial duties to the late Yoshifumi Kondō):

It is easy to cynically declare that wholesomeness is a fragile concept, only possible if protected by others, or that true love can never occur in this era without serious challenges. Even if so, it seems to me that it also ought to be possible to express – in an even stronger, overwhelmingly powerful way-how wonderful the quality of wholesomeness is.   In our story there is a boy who loves working with wood. He also plays the violin himself. In the original story his grandfather dealt in antique art, but in the film we transform his attic room into a basement studio and make the grandfather someone whose hobby happens to be repairing old furniture and artwork, and who also occasionally likes to play music. And in the basement studio, the boys dream of making violins starts to take shape.

At a time when most children his age are avoiding the future, our young boy is living purposefully, focusing far into the future. So when our young heroine encounters such a boy, what happens? By posing such a question, what might have started out as a very ordinary shojo manga story can, if properly cut and polished, be transformed into something with a very contemporary quality.   By carefully preserving the purity of the world of the manga, we will be able to pose the question of what it means to live a full life today. By imparting a sense of ordinary reality to a single, idealized encounter, our film will boldly attempt to sing the praises of life’s beauty.

-Proposal for Whisper of the Heart

Beyond his discussions of his own works, we also get some interesting insight into his own life – both growing up as a young child as well as being a parent himself.  His description of his father, essentially a war profiteer, makes it clear that he lived his life without having much respect for his old man.  And yet, as a father now, and even after bringing joy to millions of children around Japan and the world, Miyazaki acknowledges his own failure as a parent, having invested most of his life into his work.  This was all revealed separately by one of his sons, Goro, as well, in blog posts during the making of Tales of Earthsea.

Among the other topics Miyazaki discusses (numerous times) is the state of the anime industry which surrounds him.  It is clear that Miyazaki has never felt any spiritual connection to the broader, television-based anime industry.  Here are two quotes:

In Japan today, animated TV shows filled with all kinds of fancy, robotlike ,mechanical creations are all the rage. I have certainly drawn lots of mecha, or mechanical things, myself. but the general theme in currently popular shows seems to be that the protagonist jumps on a giant machine he couldn’t possible have created on his own, battles the enemy in it, and then boasts about winning. I frankly hate these kind of shows. I don’t care what types of robots are featured. For me, in a truly successful mecha show the protagonist should struggle to build his own machine, he should fix it when it breaks down, and he should have to operate it himself. – Hayao Miyazaki, 1979

…the hallmark of Japanese animation became works with a great deal of pretension, where vaporous and extremely deformed characters inhabited distorted and flashily colorized worlds, and where time was infinitely expanded.  Characters had to be depicted with serious expressions or, when they laughed, with cold, nihilistic smiles, because if shown truly laughing their facial designs would fall apart.  Female heroines usually had either, without any particular consistency, gigantic pupils or, when they screwed up, tiny dotlike ones...

He also speaks against the trend of presenting young female heroines as “pets” for audiences to fawn over (which is in clear view today with the large variety of childish, ditzy female characters on display).  Of course, these comments were all made by Miyazaki over ten years ago – one can only imagine the level of disappointment he must feel at the industry these days.

Overall, purchasing this book is really a no-brainer if you’re a Miyazaki fan.  If you’re only a mild Ghibli fan, however, you’ll still find a huge amount of value in Miyazaki’s discussions on animation, the industry, and Japan in general – though that repetitive nature will be a little off-putting.  It isn’t exactly an expensive purchase, however, so there’s really no excuse not to pick it up.