originally published in the 71st issue of "24 Grid". Going
north through the 200-meter-long shopping street in front of my house is Tamagawa Shangshui. In the Edo period, the river was Tokyo's main waterway, and it is now of course abandoned. The banks of the river were so lush with weeds and shrubs that they were barely visible from the dirt trails less than a meter wide by the waterway. Compared to many other clear and quiet rivers in Tokyo, Tamagawa Shangshui is too wild and sparse. Under the fierce summer sun and the unavoidable tracks of birds and animals, the river even brings a terrifying atmosphere.
Yet the horror was right for me. Cycling to the northwest along the dirt trail for half an hour, the trees grew taller, the fallen leaves under the trees exuded a special forest smell, and the volume of the cicadas became harsh. Then, if you have the keen vision of a forest animal, you can see the black-brown back of the giant soldier's head through the shadows of the trees. That is the right place to arrive with a little anxiety, the castle of My Neighbor Totoro, the forest of Mitaka, the museum of Ghibli.
So far, I think the Ghibli Museum is Miyazaki Goro's best work. I love nature, and I was addicted to mountain climbing in high school. I chose forest engineering as a major in college. After graduation, I entered a green space design firm. Many of my works are lakeside parks. Until the age of 30, Toshio Suzuki showed him his father's conception of the museum, and he has been working on the construction of the museum for seven years after that. Of course Hayao Miyazaki is great, he is the omnipotent god in the two-dimensional world, but it is not the magic of Totoro that made the Ghibli Museum grow from the brown land of Mitaka no Mori. Son Wulang's 7 years of hard work. But why did you think of doing animation?
The Miyazaki family has another son. The second son, Miyazaki Keisuke, graduated from Musashino Midai, one of the four famous art schools in Japan, and is now a well-known printmaker. If Toshio Suzuki had to choose an heir based on his bloodline, wouldn't the second son with more artistic training be better?
"From the Poppy Slope" is a rare type of Ghibli. In the 1960s, the youth stories of boys and girls in Xiaogang by the sea are not very fantasy, not very natural, and they are not very innocent. But this is actually the type suitable for Ghibli. If fantasy, nature and innocence all appear in this story, I believe it will be much better than now.
For a moment, I seemed to see something interesting. The scene shifts to a crumbling student union hall, a forbidden area for female students, rumored to be filled with all sorts of eccentric men's clubs. But when the heroine barges in with a Nausicaa-esque expression of bravery, we don't get much. what the hell! Very common! History, philosophy, literature departments, just a bunch of ordinary stinky boys, it is a waste of our curiosity. Is it the limit of imagination, or not enough effort? It would be great if Wulang could build this clubhouse with the same heart as he built the Ghibli Museum!
What do you need most to be the heir to Ghibli? Love of nature, love of children, perseverance to do everything possible to complete a difficult job, paranoid spirit of meticulous attention to every detail. These Wulangs are not lacking. Perhaps it was because of this that Toshio Suzuki chose him over his younger brother who seemed more artistically gifted.
Wulang can turn his father's conception into a castle towering on the edge of the forest like magic. He doesn't lack talent, he just lacks study and training, and he hasn't mastered the spell that turns thoughts into colors. Poppy wasn't a success, but many came to believe that he would eventually learn the spell. His father said, "Boy, I won't let you catch up casually. This at least shows that his father has regarded him as an opponent. Let the Great God be treated as an opponent! What a thing to be proud of.
I went to the Ghibli Museum again to help the girl who went to see Poppy with me regain her respect for Ghibli. And what I have harvested myself seems to be a respect for Wu Lang. A man who can build such a wonderful building should not end up with "Poppy".
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