Hayao Miyazaki: Corruption of The Anime Industry

Hayao Miyazaki is a man known to most around the world as the father of Anime.

Most of us can say we’ve watched at least one, if not all, of his movies while growing up.

His characters are beloved, and his worlds enchanting, but most importantly he tells tales that, while impossibly fantastic, are still relatable to our lives.

We’ve all had to go through the scary experience of moving to an unknown place in our lives like the terrified Chihiro no Kamikakushi of Spirited Away (2001).

Most of us can relate to the young witch Kiki as she strikes out on her own to make her way in the world in Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

In Miyazaki’s stories there is a protagonist for us all, very non-human characters whose emotions we can relate to in a very human way.

That’s the magic of Miyazaki. His worlds may be filled with talking pigs, flying fish, and impossible magic, but they also encompass the very real emotion of our own world.

The problem, Miyazaki says, is that this day and age’s anime industry has taken a wrong turn somewhere down the line.

The term “otaku” generally refers to someone who really loves anime, but what happens when the love becomes obsession?

A recent article published on Japanese website Golden Times revealed how Miyazaki feels about this new generation of otaku anime artists.

“You see, whether you can draw like this or not, being able to think up this kind of design, it depends on whether or not you can say to yourself, ‘Oh, yeah, girls like this exist in real life.’”

“If you don’t spend time watching real people, you can’t do this, because you’ve never seen it.”

“Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know.”

“It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans.” Source

While it makes sense for an industry to be populated by people who really enjoy it, Miyazaki does have a point.

If the anime we grew up with was inspired by the real world around us, true human emotion and actually vivid landscapes, what is anime that has been only inspired by other anime?

It’s a sort of evolutionary decline, a genetic anime inbreeding where it circles the drain with little hope of breaking from this cycle.

But strangely enough this seems to be what most otaku want, cute girls doing cute things.

Somewhere down the line they forgot what it was for anime to be human, to tell stories of real emotion.

My glitch art represents this distortion of a proud and beloved art.

If you recognize the characters you might remember a fond memory of watching them as you grew up.

But glitched they come to show you something else. They lose that human memory you had of them.

Instead of seeing fondly, you see in new light. I hope to distract my audience’s memory, to make them forget the emotion associated and instead to see pure aesthetical images.

I hope that an audience can see these images, look past the interesting glitch, and again see the beloved characters they grew up with.

The humanity of Miyazaki’s characters, and the potential of the anime industry can still be reignited, but we need to remember that art is inspired by life.