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Arrietty
借りぐらしのアリエッティ
2010 · Film · 95 min
Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi
14-year-old Arrietty and the rest of the Clock family live in peaceful anonymity as they make their own home from items "borrowed" from the house's human inhabitants. However, life changes for the Clocks when a human boy discovers Arrietty.
8 positive1 negativefrom 9 commenters
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10 comments on Hacker News
I love art, and I have a particular weakness for the style of art you're using for the project. Not sure if you'd give a fig, but I have bookmarked it just to watch. I guess there will always be something new, and live humans are there, organizing the image in real time. As an outlier and unintended fan, I appreciate your work.
Edit: I should say that I left films such as Arrietty and other Japanimations (Kaguya, Fireflies Grave, Spirited Away) I can't recall, wanting to return and stay there. I guess on occasion, this might help.
I adore "The Secret World of Arrietty" and "When Marnie Was There". I hope Hiromasa Yonebayashi gets to direct more of Ghibli's movies.
No better way to do it than release-order. Start with The Castle of Cagliostro and make your way to The Wind Rises. I'd recommend watching the films he wrote but didn't direct as well, which are Whisper of the Heart, The Secret World of Arrietty, and From Up on Poppy Hill.
Ghibli movies I've found are more like entering a state of mind or emotion than following a plot. I'm not sure if that's a Ghibli thing or a Japanese thing (I haven't watched much other Japanese content). We introduced Totoro when my kid was 3.5 and it was too soon (she'd cry at the end because the cat bus was going away), but that movie along with Kiki's Delivery Service, The Secret World of Arrietty, and Ponyo have since become staples in our home.
As a parent to a daughter, I do really like the strong female leads that most of their movies have.
My favorites were probably "Grave of the Fireflies" (warning: it's heavy and devastating), "Pom Poko" (very funny), "From Up on Poppy Hill", "Arrietty" to name a few. The fantasy-centered films are good, but my personal taste tends to lean towards the slice-of-life/coming-of-age films so that's why those were some of my favorites.
The only truly "bad" movie of the bunch is their latest from 2020: "Earwig and the Witch". It's computer generated instead of hand-drawn but it looks like a computer generated film from the early '90s. Just ugly and uninspired. And the story was not good. It had promise but did absolutely nothing with it. Very disappointing film. Thankfully, it looks like their next release (summer 2023) will be back to the hand-drawn style.
spirited away is amazing because of the chihiro's journey through the fantastical world of the kami, where she has to contend with not only her own present but generations past and all their virtue and vice. it's about the ever-present struggle to place oneself in a world built upon tradition and deference. this is a common theme in east asian tv and film, but miyazaki explores it in such an enveloping and actually rather gentle way, filled with symbolism and mysticism. the film's representation of coming of age seems to be external (overcoming spirits), but it's all about the girl's coming to terms with herself in relation to her parents and everyone who came before them. it's a blip in her life externally but internally, everything has changed. chihiro transforms in that little blip.
i haven't seen nausicaä yet, but all the ghibli films are great (except perhaps arrietty, as noted in a nearby comment). porco rosso was fun and more action oriented than most ghibli films. it's been a while since i've seen castle in the sky but it sits storywise between mononoke and howl's moving castle in my head.
to be clear, even though i ranked them, my bar for a good film is whether i'd watch it again or not, and all the ghibli films i've seen, except perhaps arrietty (i haven't seen earwig or earthsea, but the consensus seems to be against those as well), are well worth watching again and again.
grave of the fireflies is heartwrenching for sure, and absolutely worth watching again (when you have tissues and a loved one to hug nearby).
If only we could get the people who made “Ni no Kuni” to make a game out of “The Secret World of Arrietty“ (I highly recommend the UK English dubs if anyone hasn’t seen this yet).
latest from that game developer: https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/23141182/ni-no-kuni-cross-worlds-release-date-android-ios-pc-studio-ghibli
movie trailer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VlMe7PavaRQ
There's also an animated movie with the same premise, The Secret World of Arrietty
https://imdb.com/title/tt1568921/
One of the brilliant things about The Secret World of Arrietty is how water works in that movie. At Borrower scales, water is more viscous than we perceive it, and their soup and tea become thick gels. At one point, Arrietty brushes droplets of herself and they remain coherent because of the high surface tension. And this is all shown brilliantly through animation.