Mamoru Hosoda, one of Japan's greatest living animators, was plucked from obscurity to take over from Hayao Miyazaki. Then why was he abruptly fired?

There’s no greater imaginable honour for a young animator than to be described as the new Hayao Miyazaki – just as there’s no greater imaginable horror than to be fired by the old one. The beloved co-founder of Japan’s legendary Studio Ghibli and director of Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro is one of the most revered animators ever to have lived: John Lasseter, chief creative officer at Disney and Pixar, puts him on a pedestal alongside Walt himself.

But Miyazaki is 75 years old; his Ghibli co-founder, Isao Takahata, 81 – and for decades, the pair scoured their country’s teeming animation industry for a worthy successor. Together, they’d built a wondrous chocolate factory, but they needed a Charlie to take over. In Mamoru Hosoda, they thought they’d found him.

Back in 2000, Ghibli’s arguably greatest ever creative period was cresting: Whisper of the Heart, Princess Mononoke and My Neighbours the Yamadas had come out in what counts as relatively quick succession, and work on Spirited Away, the first and to date only Japanese animation to win an Oscar, was in full swing. But the mood at the studio was sombre. Two years earlier, one of its most promising young filmmakers, Yoshifumi Kondo, had died aged 47 of a heart condition brought on by overwork.