Filmwell Update: “The Next Miyazaki?”

I’ve just posted my latest article on Filmwell. Titled “The Next Miyazaki?,” it’s an attempt to address the question raised by Mark Schilling’s review of Mamoru Hosoda’s Summer Wars, specifically: who is going to replace Miyazaki as the “king” of anime? It’s a fun question to discuss and debate and writing the article gave me a chance to reflect on a few of the other great voices working in anime today.

On a related note, I came across this quote from Miyazaki — taken from a 2005 interview with The Guardian’s Xan Brooks — that for me, sums up so much of why I love the man’s films and why I find them so powerful and affecting:

Personally I am very pessimistic. But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can’t help but bless them for a good future. Because I can’t tell that child, “Oh, you shouldn’t have come into this life.” And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making.