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Curated playlist

Anime films with original screenplays

  • Castle in the SkyCastle in the Sky began as a way to recover money spent on a canal documentary.
  • My Neighbor TotoroEight animators finished My Neighbor Totoro in just eight months. They spent one full month on a tadpole scene alone.
  • Spirited AwayIn Spirited Away, a girl's parents turn into pigs in an abandoned resort town. Ten-year-old Chihiro is left alone.
  • Princess MononokeHayao Miyazaki spent seventeen years getting Princess Mononoke made.
  • Pom PokoStudio Ghibli's Pom Poko ends on a golf course, where a grassy clearing is all that remains of an ancient forest.
  • PonyoMiyazaki shut down Studio Ghibli's computer graphics section to make Ponyo. He wanted the film hand-drawn.
  • The Boy and the HeronThe Boy and the Heron reached Japanese theaters with one poster and no trailer.
  • The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the SunThe 1968 anime film Horus, Prince of the Sun played in Japanese theaters for only ten days.
  • Your NameYour Name began in a fishing village wrecked by a tsunami. Director Makoto Shinkai visited Yuriage in July 2011.
  • Momotaro: Sacred SailorsHow did a Japanese film screened in April 1945 spend decades presumed lost? Momotaro: Sacred Sailors turned up in 1983.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: HathawayMobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway is a 95-minute Japanese animated film whose hero is a terrorist. Hathaway Noa leads a group that assassinates government officials, and the film asks its audience to follow him anyway. It is the first part of a…

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