Susan Napier

MIYAZAKI WORLD

A life in art

352pp. Yale University Press. 20[pounds sterling] (US $30).

978 0 300 22685 0

Miyazakiworld" is Susan Napier's term. It denotes "the immersive animated realm" marked by "the unique imagination" of the Japanese director and animator Miyazaki Hayao--a world of precisely drawn and beautiful scenery (European-style cities, Japanese countryside, industrial towns, ancient forests, barren landscapes of the future) in which humans, nature and technology come together in sometimes catastrophic, sometimes harmonious ways (and often both in the same film). So vivid is the animation, and so unified (while still, also, varied) the director's oeuvre--not least in the anime produced by Studio Ghibli, which he co-founded...