Note to readers: a bit of confusion this morning – so you get to enjoy the rhetorical post below and the intended playlist here – Bonus Thursday!

Summer is like living in a Hayao Miyazaki film.

Billowing clouds, sky that fades from blue to purple to red to white gold, green leaves flickering in every shade, raindrops that dot and then drench the stones along a path. The world is more vivid in the summer and Miyazaki is more vivid than most animators. His stories are rich and strange but it is the contextual details that dazzle. He loves flying things that soar and flap and float. He loves machines that clank and rattle as they reveal every rivet and seam. He shows us how man and nature collide, each with a justifiable agenda. The mess of impact can be catastrophic but the images do not pass judgment. We try to sort heroes and villains but can never follow an easy thread. There is magic and science in the same frame, nothing is as it seems and even in destruction, tiny flowers grow from the carcass. Miyazaki also has a gift for creating female characters with power and complexity. Women and girls are the plot drivers in most of his films.

In celebration of summer: a playlist of Miyazaki classics. Some are well known, some less so, all will make you want to go outside and sit under a tree, waiting for a forest spirit to lead you somewhere fantastic.    

In order from the most childlike to the least:

My Neighbor Totoro: two girls with a sick mom, a preoccupied dad and a new house in the country. They encounter a series of mythical creatures with charming and healing results. Check out the scene when Mai puts her hand in a pool of water. Miyazaki is a master at two dimensional textural layering. 

Kiki’s Delivery Service: the adventures of a young witch coming of age. The story is relatively simple but touches on many reoccurring Miyazaki themes – loneliness, identity, community, and personal courage. The setting is also interesting, one of his many undetermined European cities by the sea. Look for the odd mix of western objects and Japanese cultural behavior.

Spirited Away: a huge hit in America. The story has been compared to Alice in Wonderland. Listen especially to the score. Miyazaki soundtracks are as sensual as the images. The flying dragon sequences are worth the price of the rental.

Castle in the Sky: a lesser known film which explores man’s destructive ambition and the resiliency of nature in resisting it. Inspired by Gulliver’s Travels, there is a flying island, flying pirates, a flying girl and a true blue bad guy, one of the few in the Miyazaki universe. The film also plays with historical setting in that it feels both 19^th century industrial revolution and 22^nd century space age technology at the same time.

Howl’s Moving Castle: one of the newer films and not my favorite. Based on a novel, he manages to work in flight and machinery with the story of another plucky girl and mysterious boy. Look for the typical anime jumble of stunning androgynous humans, silly caricature humans and adorable nonhuman sidekicks. Miyazaki adds his distinctive touch of mechanical flotsam and jetsam.

Nausicaa: a film based on Miyazaki’s manga series. It is set in a scary post-apocalyptic world of giant insects and warring cities. Nature has been destroyed and yet the unfolding mystery hinges on the possibility of renewal. Don’t be put off by the science-fiction vibe; this film features a heroine that puts every Disney princess to shame. Nausicaa is a brave but gentle messiah that soars about on a glider and communes with giant potato bugs.   

Princess Mononoke: my favorite, in my opinion the most thematically sophisticated film on the list. This film stands up to multiple viewings, it always offers insight. The protagonist is a young man trying to understand and ultimately act as a liaison between the inevitable saturation of human progress and the last raging gasps of the ancient gods. He meets two women who represent each extreme – Princess Mononoke, the adopted daughter of a wolf god and Lady Eboshi, an entrepreneurial diva as fiercely committed to her town as Mononoke is to her forest. The scenery, both imaginary and realistic, beautifully illustrates all the elements – fire, water, wood, metal and air – in both natural and man-made versions.