Ghibli films don't behave like other animation. Characters stop to eat. Weather takes its time. Sequences exist purely so you can look at a landscape for a while. Miyazaki called it ma - the empty space that lets everything else breathe - and it's why these films feel like memories rather than plots.
Spirited Away is the obvious high point and remains the only hand-drawn, non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for animation. It also contains No-Face, a character who is lonely, then monstrous, then quiet again, and who says almost nothing throughout.
The studio's attitude to villains is unusual too. Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke and Totoro all decline to provide a straightforward antagonist. People are difficult, nature is indifferent, and the resolution is usually understanding rather than victory.
Totoro himself has become a kind of universal shorthand for comfort, which is a strange fate for a forest spirit who mostly sleeps.
This collection covers Totoro, Calcifer, Sophie, No-Face and Haku. Quietly lovely on any desktop.
