After much thought, I decided that I should share the entire interview here in the pages of Ghibli Blog. Hopefully, you will find it enjoyable and illuminating and spark new discussions about these great works of art. It's very long, so be prepared for a lengthy read. Enjoy!
Could you tell me a little bit about your career and your connection to Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli?
I’m part of that first generation of American anime fans, back when it was known as “Japanimation” mostly to diehards who would trade videocassettes at sci-fi conventions. There was a show called Star Blazers that aired when I was in early grade school, and I thought it was the most amazing thing in the universe, after Star Wars, of course. Years later, we were exposed to shows like Robotech and a lot of American cartoons that were animated in Japan, shows like Inspector Gadget and Transformers and Ducktales.
In the late 1980s, comic books were going through a transformation, thanks to Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Scott McCloud and, of course, Art Spiegelman, whose Maus became required reading in schools. There was this fantastic comic book (“ugh, it’s a graphic novel,” the teenagers would whine) from Japan called Akira. It seemed to take the worlds of Blade Runner and Neuromancer and fuse that to the gritty violence and dark realism from The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke and take it to a whole new level.
Then the Akira movie arrived in the States sometime in the early 1990s, and it just exploded like a thermonuclear bomb. There were a few previous attempts to bring Japanese animation to our shores, but they met varying degrees of resistance and either played in a handful of art-house theaters or disappeared on home video. Those works could be dismissed as “cheap, low budget, Saturday morning cartoons” by critics and animation lovers who worshipped at the feet of Walt Disney. Akira just blasted through all of that. It became the first major anime work to be seriously respected. And, of course, it scared the hell out of parents who probably thought it was another nice cartoon to pacify the toddlers. You know, like Bambi, except that Bambi’s mom gets her head shot clean off with blood splattered all over Thumper’s back side while the forest animals slash out endless strings of f-bombs.
Anyway. I loved Akira and sometime around 1994 I found myself scouring the neighborhood video rental stores for more “Japanimation” to discover. I don’t remember any names, but the movies I watched were mostly terrible, low-budget affairs. One movie depicted God as a giant green slug who drove a flying saucer straight into the side of Mount Fuji. I have no idea what that was about. I lost interest shortly after.
In the late ‘90s, you could be expected to find at least one really good anime film per year making its way to the States. There was Ghost in the Shell, which I thought was pretty good but a little stiff. Ninja Scroll was very popular and would get played often when at a co-worker’s apartment for Saturday night binge drinking. I don’t remember the plot very much, only the ridiculous amount of sex and gore which always embarrassed me at the time.
The “big” anime movie for 1999 was Princess Mononoke. I knew nothing about the filmmakers, but I really enjoyed this movie. It felt more mature and disciplined than all the others, and actually had compelling characters and an interesting story. Over the next couple of years, I would stop and watch the movie anytime it was showing on cable, and my respect for it grew and grew. A housemate at the time told me that Mononoke was his favorite animated movie ever, and I found myself agreeing with him.
