The Best of Grumpy Miyazaki

The filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki is a legendary artist, a bankable box office bet—and a certified grump. An interview from November surfaced today in which an intrepid reporter approached the founder of Studio Ghibli on the street for comment. At the time, the anime juggernaut Demon Slayer looked like it would become Japan’s biggest box office hit ever, breaking the record set by Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning classic Spirited Away (which happened later in December). What did Miyazaki think of that?

“I don’t watch TV, I don’t watch movies. I’m a retired old man picking up trash,” he said.

All things considered, this was actually a rather polite interaction, given that the reporter ambushed him in the middle of midday chores, presumably outside his own home. But longtime fans recognized the words of a man who has never shied away from being blunt and sometimes brutal with fans and reporters. For a guy known for his whimsical modern fairy tales of giant animal friends and magical bath houses, Miyazaki can be an absolute savage. His protege Hideaki Anno, known for the influential Neon Genesis Evangelion series, once put it simply: “He’s a really mean old guy!”

What follows is a look back at some of the maestro’s most curmudgeonly comments of all time. Harsh, always, but wrong? Never.

1. 2016 - Miyazaki devastates wide-eyed animators 

Imagine you are a young animator, excited by the creative opportunities afforded by modern technology. You work to combine your interest in computing with your interest in art. After countless diligent hours, you develop an artificial intelligence that can animate spooky characters for maximum animated creep-out.

Then, in a surprise turn, Hayao Miyazaki—the man, the icon, perhaps your very inspiration for getting into animation—appears before you to look at your work! With bated breath, you show him the product of your hard earned efforts. He pauses, and says:

“I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all.” He goes on to say, “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”

Better luck next time!

2. 2014 - Miyazaki thinks “Anime was a mistake,” (but not really).

The popular notion of grumpy Miyazaki owes a lot to one frequently memed quote: “Anime was a mistake.” People slap this on photos of Miyazaki working at his desk and have a good laugh about how the father of modern anime hates his own genre.

One problem - Miyazaki never actually said this. The line is incorrectly drawn from a 2014 interview, where Miyazaki expresses a much more nuanced, but no less withering opinion.

“You see, whether you can draw like this or not, being able to think up this kind of design, it depends on whether or not you can say to yourself, ‘Oh, yeah, girls like this exist in real life. If you don’t spend time watching real people, you can’t do this, because you’ve never seen it. Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans.”

The man has standards, and he expects people to meet them.

3. 2014 - Miyazaki hates people who are too into guns.

“Otaku,” generally speaking, is a Japanese word for superfan. It’s commonly associated with anime, but really you can be an otaku for anything, even guns. Back in 2014, one interviewer, probably fishing for a spicy quote about obsessive anime fans, asked Miyazaki to comment on otakus generally, and he said this:

“Otaku? The people I hate most are those gun otaku. Speaking honestly, I think they’re really low level, and out of firearm fans, the pistol nuts are the worst. They’re the ones that have the most immature character traits left over.”

We’re guessing the overlap in the Venn Diagram of NRA members and My Neighbor Totoro fans is small, but perhaps this take will reach them and change their hearts and minds.

4. 2008 - Miyazaki disses the Prime Minister of Japan.

If Miyazaki hasn’t explicitly said anime was a mistake, he has had plenty of harsh words for anime fans, whether it’s the average dude watching home alone or Japan’s top officials. Responding to news that Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso likes manga, the director and one time manga artist said:

“It’s an embarrassment. He should do that sort of thing in his private time.”

Imagine telling a reporter that Obama shouldn’t waste so much time on those immaculately well-balanced playlists he releases every year, and instead just keep it to his private Spotify account. You might think it, but do you say it? You don’t, but Hayao Miyazaki does.

5. 2010 - Miyazaki thinks you look gross with your iPad.

Journey back with us to 2010: Steve Jobs is still alive and Apple has just released its first iPad. It’s like your computer screen, but smaller! Or your phone, but bigger! Just how cool is it? Hayao Miyazaki (a known Luddite who doesn’t use email and draws by hand) doesn’t think it’s cool at all, no thank you. In an interview for Studio Ghibli’s in house publication, he called the tablet a “game-machine type thing.”

“For me, there is no feeling of admiration or no excitement whatsoever. It’s disgusting. On trains, the number of those people doing that strange masturbation-like gesture is multiplying.”

Next time you scroll, take a moment to think about how you look.

6. 2005 and 2013 - Miyazaki welcomes the environmental apocalypse.

2004 to 2005 was arguably a peak for Miyazaki in terms of global popularity. Following the success of Spirited Away, the hype machine fully activated for the follow-up Howl’s Moving Castle, which is secretly a fashion film about a young hat-maker and her wizard friend with adventurous taste in grooming and hair dye. Miyazaki got the full New Yorker profile treatment, where he offered up a dark vision for the future.

I’d like to see Manhattan underwater. I’d like to see when the human population plummets and there are no more high-rises, because nobody’s buying them. I’m excited about that.

Eight years later, in the (pretty good!) Studio Ghibli documentary The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, he offered up another dark prediction:

"The future is clear: it's going to fall apart. What's the use worrying? It's inevitable."