Adapted mostly from the novel The Farthest Shore, it pulls in some characters and situations from other books.Įarthsea is widely regarded as one of Ghibli’s worst entries, so its low ranking here shouldn’t surprise anybody. Le Guin’s fantasy series, Tales From Earthsea tells the story of young Prince Arren, who kills his father, steals an enchanted sword, and sets out into the world to discover why it is dying. If there’s a silver lining here, it may be that the first 3D movie in the studio’s filmography is so damn bad it might also end up being its last, too.- Andy CrumpĪdapted from parts of Ursula K. Earwig and the Witch is, by normal standards, a misfire-and by Ghibli’s standards it’s much worse. ![]() ![]() That’s not about to dissuade Earwig from trying to get herself a magical education, though! While Earwig and the Witch’s tragic animation is its greatest detriment, the screenplay does the film no favors, either. Earwig immediately brightens up and tries to get Bella Yaga to teach her magic, but all Bella Yaga keeps her around for is the execution of low-skilled labor around the house. Earwig doesn’t have much choice, of course, but upon arriving at the couple’s home, she learns that her new mom, Bella Yaga (Shinobu Terajima in Japanese, Vanessa Marshall in English), is a witch. The film leans on a familiar Ghibli blueprint, following a child, Earwig (Kokoro Hirasawa in Japanese, Taylor Paige Henderson in English), who, having been abandoned at an orphanage when she was just a babe, grows up fond of her surrogate home and nearly refuses to leave when she’s adopted by a bizarre couple at 10 years old. What’s most baffling about this mercifully brief film is that given a palette swap, it might’ve been good-not a revelatory entry in Ghibli canon but certainly a warm, welcome addition to it. ![]() Aesthetically, the film is closer to early 2010s efforts like Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart than modern, sophisticated examples of the medium output by Pixar, DreamWorks and arguably even smaller outfits like Illumination and Blue Sky. Whatever Goro Miyazaki hoped to prove with or pull off by adding 3D to Ghibli’s repertoire, the experiment didn’t pan out: This is a deeply depressing movie to behold, not simply because 3D is such a departure from Ghibli’s visual signature, but because the 3D itself looks old, clunky and not of this era. Here is every Studio Ghibli film, ranked:
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