Hayao Miyazaki Officially Out Of Retirement

Hayao Miyazaki, known to many in the states as the Walt Disney of Japan, is coming out of retirement. Miyazaki has created some of the most memorable movies of my life, including My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, Spirited Away, and my all time favorite, Howl’s Moving Castle.

His movies not only have gripping stories, often with strong female leads, but also interesting supporting characters, and are beautiful to look at. The amount of detail and care that goes into every scene is amazing, and I would argue, better than many modern American cartoons and movies.
I was very sad when Miyazaki announced his official retirement in 2013, a few years after the release of Ponyo. The announcement today of his work on a feature length film is one of the most exciting things I’ve heard from the movie world this year, and hopefully more details about this new project will come out soon – until then, we’ll just have to be content with the vague date of before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.