For much of the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, Disney animation formed the bedrock of countless kids’ movie experiences through the company’s regular cycles of theatrical re-releases, new movies, and home-video debuts. That’s still true, of course, but one advantage of the digital era is the way that streaming has opened up the possibilities in terms of what can be considered canonical childhood staples. Japan’s Studio Ghibli, for example, has made a major play for that classic status. Even the best Studio Ghibli movies may not have the same universal recognition as Frozen—in fact, they almost definitely do not. But the studio’s output, particularly the films of master animator Hayao Miyazaki, is more accessible than ever, with the full line-up streaming perpetually on Max, and even playing in movie theaters nationwide through a series of annual Fathom Events rereleases. (Princess Mononoke is getting a new IMAX remastering this month.)
It would be a shame, then, if kids were introduced to this studio’s style through the anti-magic of AI-generated images. That’s exactly what flooded the internet this week, as OpenAI unveiled its latest art-stealing technology, which allows users to recreate familiar images in the distinctive Ghibli style without learning how to draw, imitate, or think beyond mindlessly combining memes with an art that (somewhat inexplicably, as it turns out) is a major touchstone for exactly the kind of Silicon Valley dumbasses who fetishize these affronts to actual creation. Said fetishists do not include Miyazaki himself, who, upon viewing an AI animation demo some years ago, said: “I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all.” He went on to describe it as “an insult to life itself.”
Life itself is exactly what Ghibli’s animated films are imbued with, and why they make such excellent additions to the early-cinema canon. To be clear, there are plenty of more mature Ghibli titles, too, and even their younger-skewing movies aren’t strictly children’s films. But it’s especially gratifying to come across great works of art that you can show to a five-year-old and have them genuinely understand it, as so many parents have found to be the case with the Ghibli movies. Yes, I understand that once you have seen a bunch of their moves, the idea of feeding your own photos (or photos of famous TV shows, yuk yuk) into some kind of machine that can spit out a Ghiblified avatar seems fun and even harmless, a tribute to something you already appreciate.
But besides the fact that this involves machines “learning” by stealing, the more people that do this, the more it increases the odds that a kid will first see Studio Ghibli-style images in the form of Trump yelling at a kid on the White House lawn or whatever. Would you want a kid’s first experience with Bart Simpson to be a hideous bootleg t-shirt, or their first exposure to Elmo as a prolonged meeting with one of those guys in an Elmo suit in Times Square? It’s bad enough that there was apparently a generation that knows Looney Tunes from Space Jam—but at least Space Jam was made by humans. So if you like humans, here’s an age-ordered breakdown of how to introduce some of Studio Ghibli’s most beloved titles into a child’s life. (Or yours.)
Ages 2+: Ponyo (2008)
OK, two years old is a little young for a proper movie, but most kids are probably familiar with some kind of screen-based entertainment by then, and there’s something about Ponyo that seems to speak to the smallest of children, maybe because it’s somehow both zany and gentle. (When I finally caught up with it as an adult, having long heard of it as one of the younger-skewing Ghibilis, I was surprised by how funny it is, and also by its chase sequences.) It’s like a dream-logic retelling of The Little Mermaid, sans the overt romance: Here, a fishy sea creature defies her father, meets a five-year-old human boy, and begins to transforms into a human girl, calling herself Ponyo. It’s somehow both a little gnarlier than a mermaid story (Ponyo in her creature form looks a lot like a goldfish, so it’s a bit more of a major transformation, and there’s something weirdly visceral about her developing a taste for ham) and far sweeter, less scary than mysterious.
Ages 4+: My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
In another decade or so, this movie will probably be just as widely seen as those early Disney movies (Snow White, Pinocchio, etc.), if not more so. It seems like heavy subject matter: two young sisters are living in the country with their father as their mother recovers from an unspecified illness in a nearby hospital. But the film doesn’t convey the experience of losing or grieving a parent so much as the mysterious in-between state where so much of childhood happens, when kids are aware of certain problems and anxieties but not necessarily allowed the power to change them. (Really, are any of us?) As they wait for their mother’s return, the girls meet a bunch of forest spirits, including the rotund cat-like Totoro of the title (if you haven’t seen the movie, you may have seen the merch), and have some low-key adventures; the film is more observational than plot-driven (it barely qualifies as episodic), and I’ve never met a young child who minded in the least.
Ages 6+: Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
An aspirational story for any kid who thinks, Hey, I think I could go to the store by myself, or possibly, I would like to be a witch. Kiki (voiced in the English-language dub by a young Kirsten Dunst!) is a self-starting young witch who moves away from home as a young teenager (apparently it’s a normal witch thing) and strikes out on her own to start a courier business. Somehow this extremely gentle and, again, episodic little adventure, hardly scary in the least, also belongs in the witch-movie pantheon. (In other words: top that!) Many of the English dubs of Ghibli movies are both star-studded and unusually high-quality; this one, with Dunst playing opposite the late, great Phil Hartman as her cat, is particularly delightful.
Ages 8+: The Boy and the Heron (2023)
The most recent Miyazaki film, and an Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature, goes further into dream logic, closer to the beloved and occasionally nightmarish Spirited Away than the more pastoral likes of Totoro. It shares some similarities with both the Alice in Wonderland-ish Spirited and the rural move of Totoro, only it deals with grief more directly: After his mom dies in the firebombing of Tokyo in World War II, a young boy accompanies his father and pregnant stepmom as they evacuate to the Japanese countryside. A bird-man creature hiding within a heron takes him to a world that bends time and reality; admittedly, the specifics can be hard to follow, but the quietly grief-stricken emotional core of the movie shines. This is around the age that kids might well be able to follow along with subtitles, but there’s no shame in sticking with the dub, considering what a wonderful vocal performance it elicits from treasured weirdo Robert Pattinson. (You won’t recognize his bizarre squawk.) The fact that this movie became Ghibli’s biggest-ever domestic hit by a fair margin indicates just how much the company’s stature has grown over the past few decades.
Ages 10+: Princess Mononoke (1997)
In case all this talk of gentility and quiet grieving has made you apprehensive, rest assured that there are also some Ghibli movies that just kick ass. Princess Mononoke is a bit more violent and horrific than some of their more broadly kid-friendly films, but that just means it gets its environmental concerns across more clearly and vividly than the likes of, you know, The Lorax or whatever. The movie doesn’t necessarily side with nature over encroaching humanity; as with a lot of Ghibli projects, Princess Mononoke is more interested in the complexities of how and why humanity fits into the natural world. Those themes are part of so many of the studio’s projects— indicating, to me, that Miyazaki’s rejection of AI is not a knee-jerk anti-technology sentiment, but a genuine, thoughtful, and well-considered position that we’d do well to heed.