Blog Post #7 International Soundtrack: Studio Ghibli Animated Feature Films

The seventh post is introducing the international soundtrack, which emphasized Studio Ghibli's Animated feature films. The reason for introducing those films is,  as I was raised and grew up in Japan, my family or most of my friends know some of these films. When we talk about those films, we remember the story and also the music.  In Studio Ghibli, Animated films director Hayao Miyazaki is known as the best director in Japan. In 2003, his film Spirited Away(2001) won the Oscar of best animated feature film. Since his films and Studio Ghibli are also known in the world, here is the video introducing director Miyazaki and differences between his animated films and other animated films.

To describe Miyazaki's film, composer Joe Hisaishi who is one of Miyazaki's coworkers, is willing to make his films what Miyzaki's think his movies follow nature and recognition of people. One of Hisai's scores is from Miyazaki's film My Neighbor Totoro (1988).

The score above can be interpreted as an ethnic score or animated film's score. But, for me, I have listened to the score many times, and alway felt the score makes me calm and bring me back to when I was around at age of five.

As I said, soundtrack could be filled more than half of making film process to make memorable for the audience so that the audience might enjoy watching by choosing preferred films. Eventually films are made in the world. If you had time to watch foreign films, such as I introduced on this post, you may get the sense of what movie fans are like in the country and could gain an an idea of the culture.

Here are more links if you are interested in this.
Oscar in 2003
Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi