There’s good news for Studio Ghibli fans with very little pocket money: You don’t need an HBO Max subscription to binge hours of Ghibli-related content. The newest documentary on the studio’s co-founder and main figurehead Hayao Miyazaki, 10 Years With Hayao Miyazaki, is streaming for free right now on Japanese public media organization NHK’s website. It’s four hours of Miyazaki muttering, puttering, sneaking cigarettes, and ruminating on the life-consuming dedication that led him to make anime marvels like Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and Princess Mononoke.
10 Years is similar in feel to 2016’s Never-Ending Man–a gritty, up-close documentary that included a tense scene of Miyazaki telling a bunch of artificial intelligence animation engineers that what they had shown him was “an insult to life itself.” That’s because documentarist Kaku Arakawa directed both films, shooting—as the title suggests—over the course of 10 years. Arakawa got access as long as he shot his footage alone and could withstand Miyazaki telling him to go away.
The first episode of 10 Years is by far the slowest, but the following installments pick up the pace, suggesting that Arakawa got the hang of creating nonfiction narrative arcs as he went. In the first two parts, Miyazaki pushes through creative blocks about Ponyo’s feel, story, and climax. The third episode dives headlong into the troubled relationship he had with his son Gorō Miyazaki. Arakawa captured the tension between the two on the eve of the first film Goro Miyazaki directed for Studio Ghibli, 2006’s Tales from Earthsea. He then follows up for the second, From Up On Poppy Hill, in 2011. Since Tales from Earthsea came out before Ponyo, Arakawa’s film actually jumps back in time to introduce the father / son conflict, showing that 10 Years is more focused on subject than chronology.
10 Years also highlights the behind-the-scenes impact producer Toshio Suzuki had on Studio Ghibli’s creative direction. The fourth episode reveals that Miyazaki wanted to make a sequel to Ponyo before Suzuki dared him to take on a historical story about warplane designer Jiro Horikoshi, which turned into 2013’s The Wind Rises. Look for an appearance from Neon Genesis Evangelion director Hideaki Anno at the end. They bring him in to voice The Wind Rises’ lead role and there’s some charming prominent anime director camaraderie. All in all, that’s a ton of interesting—and frankly inspiring—anime film history for your buck, which is still zero dollars!
All four parts of 10 Years With Hayao Miyazaki are streaming on demand via Japan’s public media organization NHK. The episodes are narrated in English but use subtitles for the interviews.
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