If there’s one abiding message behind Studio Ghibli’s animated output, it’s that nothing is permanent. Happiness is delicate; summers pass; memories fade. But the brilliance of the Japanese animation house’s movies is that they find joy in the fleeting, not just melancholy. The encounter between two children and adorably rotund woodland spirits in My Neighbor Totoro is all the more special because it’s presented very definitely as a one-off: a chance meeting that can never happen again.

Studio Ghibli was founded in 1984 following the success of Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind, Hayao Miyazaki’s masterful, dazzlingly detailed sci-fi fantasy. From that point on, Miyazaki was established as the sharpest prong on Ghibli’s creative trident, the others being producer Toshio Suzuki and director Isao Takahata. The latter, Miyazaki’s old creative partner from his days at Toei Animation at the end of the 1960s would, of course, soon go on to make the shattering war drama, Grave Of The Fireflies.

Together, Miyazaki, Takahata and Suzuki forged a studio that has long since become an envoy for Japanese animation. Laputa: Castle In The Sky was a hit, but it was My Neighbor Totoro, released in 1988, which brought Ghibli to wider attention. Grave Of The Fireflies, also released in 1988 on the same bill as Totoro, was described by Roger Ebert as one of the best war films ever made.

Porco Rosso, Kiki’s Delivery Service – with each subsequent release, Ghibli’s stature grew both in Japan and overseas. The sprawling, unexpectedly dark ecological fable Princess Mononoke (1997) earned the studio Oscar attention; 2001’s Spirited Away (2001) finally got them the statue. As the affection for those films spread, so too did Studio Ghibli’s fame.