Isao Takahata

Isao Takahata (高畑 勲) is one of the most famous directors of anime, or Japanese animated films. Born in Ujiyamada (now Ise), Mie prefecture, Japan, he is a long-term colleague of Hayao Miyazaki and co-head at Studio Ghibli. His four animated films at Studio Ghibli have spanned a remarkable range of genres: war-film (Grave of the Fireflies), romantic drama (Only Yesterday), comedy (My Neighbors the Yamadas), and ecological adventure (Pom Poko). Of these Grave of the Fireflies, in particular, is considered by film critic Roger Ebert one of the greatest war films ever made.

Graduating from the University of Tokyo French literature course in 1959, Takahata joined the newly-created Tōei Dōga animation company (Toei Animation) where a short time later he met Miyazaki, and also directed his first feature film Hols: Prince of the Sun. Ostracized within the company after the financial failure of the film (despite its artistic success), he and Miyazaki left in order to work together, and collaborated on many other films. Unlike most anime directors, Takahata doesn't draw and never worked as an animator before becoming a full fledged director.

According to Hayao Miyazaki, "Music and study are his hobbies". He was born in the same town as fellow director Kon Ichikawa, while Japanese film giant Yasujiro Ozu was raised by his father in nearby Matsusaka.

Career
Takahata was originally intrigued by animation after having seen the French animated cartoon feature Le Roi et l'oiseau (The King and the Mockingbird) based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. He was impressed by the film, asking "Can these kind of things be done by animation?"

While he was job hunting at his university, Takahata was tempted to join Toei Animation by a friend who knew the company wanted an assistant director. For fun he took the company's entrance examination as he had been originally interested in animation. When he was notified of the informal decision, he joined the company.

The reason he decided to join the company was his thought that "If it was animation, I can be something interesting, too." However, there were more than ten people joining the company that same year, two recruited by Toei Animation and the surplus workers sent by Toei head office. Because of the competition, he had a hard time achieving the status of director.

Takahata finally directed his first film after he was recommended for the spot by Yasuo Ōtsuka, who was both his and Hayao Miyazaki's instructor. His directorial debut was Hols: Prince of the Sun. Hols was a commercial failure. He was among the production team deemed responsible for the failure and was accordingly demoted. He also had difficulty making a new film as the remaining staff members who had not been demoted for Hols were working on a different Toei film.

In 1971, to make the animated feature Pippi Longstocking, Takahata left Toei Animation with Yoichi Kotabe and Hayao Miyazaki and transferred to "A production" (present: SHIN-EI ANIMATION Co., Ltd.)”, an animation studio founded by his former superior, Daikichiro Kusube (楠部大吉郎). They travelled to Sweden to acquire the animation rights and to hunt for locations, only to be turned away at the door by author Astrid Lindgren. Though their plan was frustrated, Miyazaki found inspiration in the fortified town of Visby and would later set both Stockholm and Visby as the stage of Kiki's Delivery Service.

In 1971, Takahata and Miyazaki requested to direct episodes seven and onward of the first Lupin III TV series anime, due to the low ratings and, for the time, exceptionally high levels of sex and violence in the initial episodes directed by Masaaki Osumi. Since the animation director was Yasuo Ōtsuka, an old acquaintance, they accepted the offer under the condition that "the names of the two people were not released, and direction was credited only to 'A production directors group.'" Unlike Miyazaki, he did not participate in the second series, though his directing in the original was well-received.

Later in 1971 Zuiyo Enterprise invited Takahata, Kotabe and Miyazaki to direct an animated series of the novel Heidi and all three took the offer. The result was Heidi, Girl of the Alps. Afterward, when the production section of Zuiyo was established as a subsidiary company of the animated cartoon production of Zuiyo Eizo (present: Nippon Animation), they both joined the company. On the picture side, animators drew carefully the nature of Europe and a change of season, and the everyday life of people on location in Switzerland. On the other hand, on the story side, Takahata made the animation version easy to accept by thinning a Christian element of the original besides the earnest Christian (especially, in the latter half).

In the case of 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, the summary of the story followed the original, but he created many episodes and original characters because the story was less than 100 pages. He expressed the protagonist Marco as a boy of independent spirit who did not flatter adults too much and adults as onew who committed the crime even if they were comparatively good men. He brought the world of this anime close to the reality or more by doing so. However, Kotabe and Miyazaki felt frustrated by his direction and did not feel pleasure even as they drew it, and they left Takahata.

In Anne of Green Gables, Takahata directed it along the original basically, but he was able to deepen an impression about Marilla and Anne by describing it as the para-parenthood which was heavier than the original.

In Jarinko Chie, じゃりん子チエ （meaning of Chie the Brat) in 1981, Yasuo Otsuka who belonged to Tokyo Movie Shinsha / Telecom Animation Film Co., Ltd. offered Miyazaki, a Telecom colleague, to make this comic an animated cartoon, but he refused. Therefore, Otsuka consulted Takahata, but he also expressed disapproval first. However, Takahata who had visited Osaka (which was the stage for the story) felt that the world drawn in the comic was actually there. He took the request, left Nippon Animation, and moved to Telecom. This work, which paired Yasuo Otsuka and Yoichi Kotabe, was praised and settled for a TV animation series because it got a favorable reception, and Takahata became the chief director.

In 1982, Takahata was elected the director of Little Nemo &mdash; the work that tried to be produced so that Telecom could move to the United States. With Miyazaki and Otsuka, who started at Telecom earlier, Takahata went to America, but the discord between in the Japan-U.S. difference in production technique, meant Takahata resigned and  left Telecom. Miyazaki and others followed him. On the other hand, the cultural exchange was born between Japanese animator and seniors of Disney who had been cooperating in this project.

Afterward, Takahata was invited by Miyazaki to join his animation production company Studio Ghibli after the success of Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The first movie directed by Takahata for Ghibli was Grave of the Fireflies. It got good reviews in foreign countries partly because it was taken up by Roger Ebert.

In Kiki's Delivery Service, Takahata did the music direction for Miyazaki.

Takahata was awarded the Special Award at the Kobe Animation Awards on November 4, 2007.

Influences and style
Takahata has been influenced by Italian neorealism, Jacques Prévert, and French New Wave films during the 1960s. The Bicycle Thief has been cited as specifically influencing 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother. These influences make Takahata's work different from most animation, which focus on fantasy. His films, by contrast, are realistic with expressionistic overtones.

Neo-realism's influence on his film is evident in the amount of attention to detail he takes in displaying everyday mundane events. Entire episodes of his early TV shows were devoted to looking at events such as going to church every week, having a job cleaning out bottles, or detailing the work farmers do out in fields. All of these events are shown in meticulous detail and often form a major part of his work. With the exception of Horus: Prince of the Sun (a Disney-esque musical with darker and more political overtones), Pom Poko (an environmentalist film about magical tanuki trying to save their land), and Gauche the Cellist (a film about a struggling cellist who is helped by talking forest animals), the majority of his works are dramas set in mostly realistic environments.

One of Takahatas' most praised films is Omohide Poro Poro (literally, 'Memories Like Falling Raindrops'). The film was released in 1991 in Japan to critical acclaim, and was re-titled as Only Yesterday for release to English-speaking audiences. A film aimed squarely at an adult audience, Omohide Poro Poro revolves around Taeko, a single woman working a desk job in Tokyo, who takes her annual vacation in the countryside with the family of her brother-in-law to work as a farmhand. During her holiday, Taeko finds herself looking back nostalgically at her youth as a schoolgirl growing up in 1966, while simultaneously attempting to resolve her current issues with love and career.

The expressionistic influences in Takahata's work are usually marked by scenes where a character's imagination comes to life on screen. For instance, in Omohide Poro Poro, after Taeko encounters her first love she, defying gravity, runs up into and floats through the red-colored sky. The scene ends with her slowly gliding into bed and then cuts to an outside shot of her house where a giant heart emerges from her window. These expressionistic sequences run counter to Takahata's realistic storyline and animation, but are consciously used by the director to transition back and forth from realism to the unreal world of animated fantasy, thereby further enhancing the character. These scenes can be found to some degree in all of Takahata's work, beginning with the "forest of delusion" sequence in Horus: Prince of the Sun.

Takahata's films have had a major influence on Hayao Miyazaki, prompting animator Yasuo Ōtsuka to say that Miyazaki gets his sense of social responsibility from Takahata and that without Takahata, Miyazaki would probably just be interested in comic book stuff.

As with Miyazaki, Takahata and Michel Ocelot are great admirers of each other's work. Ocelot names Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies and Pom Poko among his favourite films, while Takahata has used Ocelot's Kirikou and the Sorceress as a key example of objectivity used to a positive effect, as well as adapting and directing the Japanese dubs of his films.

TV

 * 1963-65 狼少年ケン (Ōkamishōnen Ken) / Ken the Wolf Boy
 * adviser, director of several episodes (episode 6,14,19,24,32,38,45,51,58,66,72,80) (only the 6th episode is "「山下勲」Isao Yamashita" name), storyboard
 * 1965 ハッスルパンチ (Hassuru Panti) / Hustle Punch''
 * director of opening theme
 * 1969-70 ひみつのアッコちゃん(Himitsu no Akko-chan) / Secret Little Akko
 * based on the comics for girls by Fujio Akatsuka (赤塚不二夫)
 * assistant director
 * 1968-69 GeGeGe no Kitaro (the first series) / ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 (GeGeGe no Kitarō) / Lowest-of-the-Low Kitarō, Kitarō of GeGeGe
 * based on the horror comics by Shigeru Mizuki (水木しげる)
 * storyboard / director （episode 62）
 * 1969-70 もーれつア太郎 (Mōretsu Atarō) / A-tarō the Workaholic
 * based on the comedy comics by Fujio Akatsuka (赤塚不二夫)
 * storyboard / director (episode 10,14,36,44,51,59,71,77,90), director of opening theme (episode 70-90)
 * 1971-72 GeGeGe no Kitaro (the second series) / ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 (Gegege no Kitarō)
 * storyboard / director (episode 5), director of opening and ending theme
 * 1971-72 アパッチ野球軍 (Apatchi Yakyūgun) / Apache Baseball Team
 * based on the comics by original: "Kobako Hanato (花登筐)" / illustrating: "Sachio Umemoto (梅本さちお)"
 * storyboard / director (episode 2,12,17)
 * 1971 長靴下のピッピ 世界一強い女の子 (Nagakutsushita no Pippi/sekai-ichi tsuyoi on-na-no-ko) / Pippi Longstocking, the Strongest Girl in the World（temporary title）
 * chief director (a plan), however, since acquisition of the right to make anime went wrong, this project shifted to the movie “''Panda! Go, Panda!”.
 * 1971 Lupin III (ルパン三世, Rupan Sansei)
 * based on the comics by Monkey Punch (モンキー・パンチ)
 * correction of direction (Episode 4-12, there is an episode largely changed, and is an episode that was hardly changed) / director (episode 13-23, direct jointly with Hayao Miyazaki by "A production" name)
 * 1972-73 赤胴鈴之助 (Akadō Suzunosuke) / Red-cuirass Suzu-no-suke
 * based on the jidaigeki comics featuring sword fighting by Eiichi Fukui (福井英一) and Thunayoshi Takeuchi (武内つなよし)
 * acting chief director
 * 1973-74 荒野の少年イサム (Kouya no Shounen Isamu) / Isamu, Boy in the wilderness
 * based on the Western comics by original: "Soji Yamakawa (山川惣治)" / illustrating: "Noboru Kawasaki (川崎のぼる)"
 * storyboard (episode 15,18), director (episode 15)
 * 1974 Heidi, Girl of the Alps / (アルプスの少女ハイジ, Arupusu no Shōjo Haiji)
 * based on the novel of Johanna Spyri
 * chief director / storyboard (episode 1-3)
 * 1975 A Dog of Flanders / (フランダースの犬, Furandaasu no Inu)
 * based on the novel of Ouida
 * storyboard (episode 15)
 * 1976 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother / (母をたずねて三千里, Haha wo Tazunete Sanzen-ri)
 * based on one episode in the novel Cuore by Edmondo De Amicis
 * chief director, storyboard (episode 1,2,4,5,7)
 * 1977 アルプスの音楽少女 ネッティのふしぎな物語, (Arupusu no Ongaku Shoujo Netti no Fushigi na Monogatari) / The Wonderful Story of Nettie, Musical Girl of the Alps
 * TV Special; storyboard and director, animated sequences only
 * 1977 シートン動物記 くまの子ジャッキー, (Shiiton Doubutsuki Kuma no Ko Jakkii) / Seton Animal Chronicles: Jacky the Bear Cub
 * based on Ernest Thompson Seton’s works
 * storyboard (episode 5,8)
 * 1978 ペリーヌ物語, Perrine Monogatari (Periinu Monogatari) / Perrine Story
 * based on the French novel, En Famille (meaning is “In Family”) by Hector Malot
 * storyboard (episode 3,6)
 * 1978 Future Boy Conan (未来少年コナン, Mirai Shōnen Konan)
 * based on post-apocalyptic science fiction novel "The Incredible Tide" written by Alexander Key
 * storyboard (episode 7,13,20) / storyboard and director (episode 9, 10 with Hayao Miyazaki)
 * 1979 Anne of Green Gables, (赤毛のアン, Akage no An) / Anne of red hair
 * based on the novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 * chief director, scriptwriter (episode 1-4,6,8,10,12,13,17,18,20,23,25-44,47-50/ 36 in total), storyboard (episode 1-4,29)
 * 1981-83 じゃりん子チエ (Jarinko Chie) (Chie the Brat)
 * based on the downtown humanity comics by Etsumi Haruki はるき悦巳 (circulation is 30 million)
 * Chief director, storyboard and director (episode 2･6･11 stories,「武元哲」"Tetsu Takemoto" name 〔originates in the name of father of Chie〕), and original bill for composition of opening theme

Movie

 * 1961 The Littlest Warrior (安寿と厨子王丸, Anju to Zushiōmaru）/ Anju and Zushiōmaru, the original is "山椒大夫 Sansho Dayu" of Ougai Mori (森鴎外).
 * assistant director
 * 1962 たのしい文明史 鉄ものがたり (Tanoshii Bunmeishi Tetsu Monogatari) / Interesting history of civilization, Story of Iron
 * assistant director, script supervisor
 * 1962 The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon (わんぱく王子の大蛇退治, Wanpaku Ōji no Orochi Taiji) / Big snake extermination of the naughty royal prince
 * assistant director
 * 1963 暗黒街最大の決闘 (Ankokugai Saidai no Kettō) / The Biggest Duel in the Underworld
 * live action, not an anime, temporary transfer
 * assistant director, film director is Umetsugu Inoue (井上梅次)
 * 1964/65 狼少年ケン (okami-shonen Ken) / Ken, the wolf-boy
 * Television series works （episode 14 and episode 72） were released the theater.
 * 1968 Hols: Prince of the Sun (太陽の王子 ホルスの大冒険, Taiyō no Ōji - Horusu no Daibouken) / The great adventure of Hols: Prince of the Sun
 * based on "'Sun of CHIKISANI" of the puppet play of Kazuo Fukazawa who used Ainu's tradition as the motif.
 * chief director
 * 1972 Panda! Go, Panda! (パンダ・コパンダ, Panda Kopanda) / Panda and child panda
 * chief director
 * 1973 Panda! Go, Panda! Volume of Rainy Circus (パンダ・コパンダ　雨降りサーカスの巻, Panda Kopanda Amefuri-Saakasu no Maki)
 * chief director
 * 1980 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother / (母をたずねて三千里, Haha wo Tazunete Sanzen-ri)
 * edited the TV series again for a movie. original run: July 19, 1980
 * supervisor
 * 1981 じゃりン子チエ (Jarinko Chie) / Chie the Brat
 * chief director / scriptwriter (with 城山昇, Noboru Shiroyama)
 * 1982 Gauche the Cellist (セロ弾きのゴーシュ Sero-hiki no Gōshu)
 * based on the children's story of Kenji Miyazawa (宮沢賢治)
 * chief director, scriptwriter
 * 1983 Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland / (NEMO/ニモ, Nimo)
 * based on the weekly comics of Winsor McKay in the United States
 * Japan side director （Fita on March 12, 1983）
 * 1984 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (風の谷のナウシカ, Kaze no Tani no Naushika)
 * producer
 * 1986 Castle in the Sky (天空の城ラピュタ, Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta) / Laputa: Castle in the Sky
 * producer
 * 1987 柳川堀割物語 (Yanagawa Horiwari Monogatari) / The Story of Yanagawa's Canals
 * chief director, scriptwriter, documentary film of culture
 * 1988 Grave of the Fireflies (火垂るの墓, Hotaru no Haka)
 * based on the novel of Akiyuki Nosaka (野坂昭如)
 * chief director, scriptwriter
 * 1989 Kiki's Delivery Service (魔女の宅急便, Majo no Takkyuubin) / Witch's Delivery Service
 * based on the Children's literature of Eiko Kadono (角野栄子)
 * music direction
 * 1990 赤毛のアン－グリーンゲイブルズへの道－ (Akage no An – Guriin Geiburuzu eno Michi -) / Anne of red hair, Road to Green Gables
 * edited the TV series again for a movie. original run: September, 1990
 * direction / editing
 * 1991 Only Yesterday (おもひでぽろぽろ, Omohide Poro Poro) / Memory like rain (in drops)
 * chief director, scriptwriter, translated lyrics of the theme song
 * 1994 Pom Poko (総天然色漫画映画 平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ, Sou- Tennensyoku Manga Eiga - Heisei Tanuki Gassen Pon Poko) / Total natural colour comic movie - Heisei era raccoon dog battle Pom Poko
 * original, chief director, scriptwriter
 * 1999 My Neighbors the Yamadas (ホーホケキョ となりの山田くん, Hōhokekyo Tonari no Yamada-kun)
 * based on the caricature of Hisaichi Ishii (いしいひさいち)
 * chief director, scriptwriter
 * 2003 Winter Days (冬の日, Fuyu no Hi)
 * he participated in this movie with 35 animation creators in the world
 * Recently
 * Taketori Monogatari, 2010

Translator & director of Japanese dubs/subtitles for Ghibli Museum Library films

 * Kirikou et la Sorcière (キリクと魔女 Kiriku to Majo)
 * Les Triplettes de Belleville (ベルヴィル・ランデブー Beruviru Randebu)
 * Princes et princesses (プリンス＆プリンセス)
 * Le Roi et l'oiseau (王と鳥 Ō to Tori)
 * Moya Iyubov (春のめざめ Haru no Mezame)
 * Azur et Asmar (アズールとアスマール)