Studio Ghibli Movies: A Guide to 16 Films and Where to Start

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

A thousand years after a war poisoned the earth, a princess who studies the giant insects of a toxic forest tries to stop two kingdoms from fighting over it. Made just before Studio Ghibli was founded, it is usually counted with the studioʼs films. Serious, with some battle scenes.

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

A mining-town boy catches a girl who floats down from the sky wearing a glowing crystal, and both of them end up chased by pirates and the army toward a legendary flying island. The most straightforward adventure film on the list, and a good one for kids who like action.

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Two sisters move to an old house in the countryside to be near their mother in the hospital, and find large, soft forest spirits living nearby. The bus stop in the rain is one of the best-known scenes in animation. Almost nothing bad happens; it is the easiest place to start, at any age.

Directed by Isao Takahata

A teenage boy and his little sister try to survive alone after the firebombing of Kobe in 1945. Takahata tells you how it ends in the first minute, and it is still hard to watch. Released on a double bill with Totoro, but it is not a childrenʼs film.

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

At thirteen, Kiki leaves home to spend a year as a witch in a new town, as tradition requires, and sets up a delivery service. The trouble she meets is ordinary: loneliness, work, a creative slump. One of the gentlest films here, and one many adults return to.

Directed by Isao Takahata

A 27-year-old office worker from Tokyo takes a vacation on a farm in Yamagata and keeps remembering herself at ten. It moves between the two years in different drawing styles. A quiet film for adults, about work, choices and the small humiliations of childhood.

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

In the 1920s Adriatic, a former fighter pilot who has been turned into a pig hunts sky pirates for money. There are seaplane dogfights, a hotel on a tiny island and a lot of dry humor. One of Miyazakiʼs most relaxed films.

Directed by Isao Takahata

Shape-shifting raccoon dogs try to stop a new town from being built over their hills outside Tokyo, using tricks, pranks and a huge ghost parade. It is silly and often very funny, and gets sadder as it goes on. Includes some frank folklore about tanuki anatomy.

Directed by Yoshifumi Kondō

A girl who reads constantly notices the same name on all her library cards, and meets the boy behind it, who wants to make violins in Italy. A quiet film about first love and figuring out what you want to do, set in ordinary Tokyo suburbs. Directed by Yoshifumi Kondō, written by Miyazaki.

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

A cursed young prince travels west and lands in the middle of a war between an ironworking town and the gods of the forest, with a girl raised by wolves on the other side. Nobody is simply the villain. It has blood and severed limbs, so wait until kids are older.

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

A sulky ten-year-old wanders with her parents into an abandoned theme park that turns out to be a bathhouse for spirits, and has to work there to save them. Full of strange, memorable creatures, some a little frightening. The best-known Ghibli film and a good first one for kids eight and up.

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

A young hat-maker is cursed into the body of an old woman and takes a job cleaning the walking castle of a vain wizard, while a war goes on in the background. The plot gets tangled in the second half, but the castle, the fire demon Calcifer and the romance carry it.

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

A goldfish girl wants to become human after she meets a five-year-old boy in a seaside town, and her wish floods the coast. Drawn in soft crayon-like colors, simple and cheerful. Best watched with young children, who tend to love it.

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

A loosely fictionalized life of Jiro Horikoshi, who designed Japanese fighter planes used in World War II, mixed with a love story from a 1930s novel. It is about loving beautiful machines that will be used for war. Slow and melancholy, and mainly for adults.

Directed by Isao Takahata

Takahataʼs last film retells the old Japanese story of a tiny girl found inside a bamboo stalk who grows into a princess courted by nobles. It is drawn in loose charcoal and watercolor that looks unfinished on purpose. Beautiful, and sadder than you expect.

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

During the war, a boy whose mother died in a hospital fire moves to the countryside, where a talking gray heron leads him into another world. It is personal, dreamlike and not always easy to follow. Better as a later Ghibli film than a first one.