“I get roundly scolded on my Web site by younger Japanese people for not understanding the movie. These people don't know the books, so they're not confused, as I was.”
Toshio Suzuki, Studio Ghibli's president, acknowledged that the film had drawn some unfavorable responses. “The reactions from some animation fans have been very negative,” he said. “They compare Goro's work and his father's, just as fans of the novels complain that the film is different from the books. I discovered that many fans of Hayao Miyazaki cannot accept anything else.”
The younger Miyazaki said it was Suzuki who initially persuaded him to take the considerable risk of following in his father's footsteps.
“I had never thought about becoming an animation director,” he said. “I was deceived by Suzuki, who was very clever about making me feel I could do it.”
A slim, soft-spoken man, the younger Miyazaki has not yet said whether he will direct another animated feature, though his father and Takahata, the principal directors at Studio Ghibli, have been looking for younger directors for years, saying the organization needs new blood.
RSS