(To check out earlier Miyazaki essays in this Studio Ghibli Saturday series follow one of these links down the rabbit-hole: Lupin, Nausicaa, Spirited Away, Mononoke)

First off, a big thanks to everyone who follows this site and has been keeping up with Studio Ghibli material. It’s been an interesting 11 weeks covering the film career of Hayao Miyazaki. But now, I’ve exhausted his oeuvre as feature-film director and find it’s time to move on to the works of Studio Ghibli’s co-founder Isao Takahata.

Takahata began his animation career in 1959-1960 at Toei Studios. The competition was fierce there, but after a few years, he was able to begin working on big projects, initially as an assistant director on four films between 1961-63. From there he began work as a pick-up episode director on Ken the Wolf Boy from 1963-63, then as the director for the opening theme of Hustle Punch in 1965. By 1965, he had gained enough skill, expertise, and trust with the company execs to gain the go-ahead for his first feature film as director.

Although production began in 1965, the film wouldn’t be complete for three years. The work was rigorous and Takahata had an auteur’s one-pointed focus in making sure that the resulting film would be the greatest animated feature released up to that point by a Japanese studio. Hayao Miyazaki worked as a key animator on the film, which would be his first such job on a major animated film. Takahata and Miyazaki’s professional relationship blossomed during this point and began what would be become a more than fifty year artistic collaboration. When Horus was completed and premiered to public to little commercial success, but uncharacteristically high critical acclaim for an animated feature at that time, Toei limited Takahata’s powers at the studio ensuring he wouldn’t make another box-office bomb. Toei’s actions prompted Takahata and Miyazaki to leave Toei for other prospects.

The story is set in a Scandinavian locale generally speaking, but this was always so. The screenwriter for Horus based this work off of a play called The Sun Above Chikisani by Kazuo Fukazawa. that version of the story took place in Hokkaido where its protagonists were Ainu peoples. Further, Fukuzawa got the idea for his play and reinterpreted it from an epic tale in the Yukar, the oral tradition of the Ainu peoples. Because of Ainu identity movements and the lack of a will on the part of Toei to attach themselves to the movements either for or against, that is to say Toei’s desire to avoid controversy, they changed the locale to Scandinavia. But for those in the know, viewing Horus can be a fun experience of identifying Ainu legends and traditions as the film progresses.

Horus is the story of a young man who lives with his father in the wastes of his world. They are asocial actors who reside by themselves and outside society. Horus is unaware of any other human societies around him and spends his days hunting, fishing, and fighting wolves to help out his ailing, aging father. One day, a group of wolves led by a silver wolf attack Horus, who kills off many of them during the fight, but seems constantly overwhelmed and gets inured repeatedly. As the fight turns against his favor, he climbs atop a large rock that suddenly begins to move in response. The wolves run away as Horus is lifted high into the air by what turns out to be a massive rock golem, Moog. Moog has a thorn in his shoulder and asks Horus to try and pull it from his body.When Horus inspects the “thorn”, he finds that it is a sword, and not just any sword, the legendary Sword of the Sun.

When Horus returns home to recount the day’s events, he finds that his father’s illness has taken a turn for the worse. His father recounts his history. How an evil demon, Grunwald, attacked his village long ago and overwhelmed his people. How he ran away to live a life of solitude far from that region and how he wishes for Horus to go and do battle with the demon and free his people, as a last dying wish. Horus and his friend, the bear cub Koro, travel far north to find the village and meet many evil creatures along the way, including the demon Grunwald who tries to tempt Horus to his own side, offering power and status as rewards. Horus refuses and narrowly escapes the demon.

Later, Horus finds the village and helps them to destroy a large fish that was exhausting their fish supply and killing any human who tried to stop him. Horus gains respect in the village and helps them to build new structures and create a small communitarian enclave that showcases Takahata’s political and social concern and his belief that helping one another helps society as a whole. But the silver wolves return and attack Horus, and the village. He fights them off and follows their leader far into the forest, where he meets a young woman playing a harp. Her name is Hilda and she brings joy to the village through her songs, but is the adopted sister of Grunwald. Hilda is a morally ambiguous character who can bring happiness to young children, but simultaneously work out evil plots to destroy the human race. Her internal conflicts, Horus’ heroics, and Grunwald’s evil hegemony over the village all come to a head dramatically alongside the return of Moog, the rock golem, and the reforging of the Sword of the Sun to create a tale of epic proportions.

And more importantly for the time, a Japanese animated feature with complex narrative, visual-artistic dynamism, socio-political themes, moral ambiguity and psychological realism, and flair that were previously absent from the industry. All in all, the film challenges the hitherto dominant mode of Japanese storytelling: the Disney-Tezuka paradigm. Furthermore, it was the first radical step in to a redefinition of Japanese animation as children’s cartoons into its current designation as a commercial artform with the potential to analyze any complicated social, political, artistic, philosophical, or existential problem. Its influence changed the future of anime and began to shape a space wherein animators could bring their ideas both thematic and visual to bear on the form. and potentially, this film is the reason why anime became the cultural force it is today.

Cody Ward

[Next up: Panda! Go, Panda! ]