Reporter Pan Yuzhen/Taipei Report
Director Takahata, the animation master who co-founded Studio Ghibli with Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, has a low-key personality and is rarely exposed in front of the camera, but still has a profound influence on important figures in the global film and animation industry. When Takahata passed away unfortunately due to illness in 2018, “STAR WARS: The Last Jedi” director Ryan Johnson mourned, and wrote “Grave of the Fireflies” on the social platform Twitter as “the saddest movie ever made.”
Michael Andit, the gold medal screenwriter who created the films “Toy Story 3” and “The Wish of a Little Sun”, even publicly stated that when he fell into a creative bottleneck, Takahata helped him get out of the trough: “In 2000 at MoMA New York Modern Art After seeing Takahata’s Yamada-kun next door at the museum, I was inspired to finally sit down and write The Little Sun’s Wish—following years of delay.”
The animated shorts “Panda Family” and “Panda Family: The Circus in the Rain” are animated short films jointly produced by Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki. Because my grandmother went out for my grandfather’s death anniversary, she began to learn to take care of her life alone. Unexpectedly, she found two chubby pandas with magical powers in the backyard, so they formed a strange and happy family with the panda father and son. Because the plot was combined with the upsurge in the topic of pandas being presented to the Ueno Zoo in Japan, the cute panda image brought a warm response. The cute panda father and son in the film “Panda Family” are considered by many fans to be the prototype of “My Neighbor Totoro”, and “Panda Family: Circus in the Rain” shows more Miyazaki’s superb ability as a screenwriter and scene designer. The climax scene of the great flood in the film echoes the tsunami-themed “Ponyo on the Cliff”. The scene of the circus train galloping through the flood is highly similar to the concept of the sea train in “The Hidden Girl”. It can be seen that “Panda Family” has a profound impact on the works of Studio Ghibli over the years.
The studio held the “Takahata Film Festival”, including “Grave of the Fireflies”, “The Little Bits of My Childhood”, “Heisei Tanuki Fighting”, “Yamada-kun Next Door”, “The Story of Kaguya Hime” and teaming up with Hayao Miyazaki The planned production of “Panda Family” will return to the big screen in the summer vacation. The movie trailer released today shows Takahata’s lifelong efforts, starting from the nostalgic Japanese Shinkansen, and the famous scenes of each animation are matched with warm singing. It is particularly inspiring in the social atmosphere affected by the epidemic. “Takahata Film Festival” will be screened exclusively at Village Roadshow Cinemas in Taiwan from July 8.
