Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/08/the-airships-of-hayao-miyazaki.html
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A nice little video on a number of levels. He eloquently describes the broader point about directors making one film in terms of both style and substance, and chooses a particularly thoughtful director as an example. Miyazaki’s balance of humanism and hard reality is what always makes me want to live in the universes he creates. Koriko, the city in “Kiki’s Delivery Service” that exists in a universe where WWII never happened, has always held particular appeal for me.
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Aircraft, not airships. Some of his aircraft are lighter than air airships/aerostats, some are heavier than air flying boats, some are heavier than air airplanes, some are…it’s not clear. All are wonderful.
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Porco Rosso is my favorite Miyazaki film. Mostly for the planes over the beautiful Adriatic (the Edith Piaf-alike fantasy nostalgia doesn’t hurt) I was raised on WWII planes by my grandfather who was a mechanic in the Korean War (he couldn’t apply to be a pilot because he’d lied about his age to enlist early) I could watch Miyazaki’s fantasy take all. day. long.
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I wish Miyazaki had made the sequel that would have been set during the Spanish Civil War.
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Thanks for that. Of course, the distinction is a matter of arbitrary convention; “airship” would have been perfectly suitable as the umbrella term for all flying machines.
And we should bear in mind that our language rules are descriptive, not prescriptive. English speakers are free to choose any term for a flying machine. I choose “daffodil”.
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If you want people to understand you, you’d better follow convention. Otherwise when someone sells you a transatlantic flight in a daffodil you may be in for a nasty surprise.
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When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.
The question is which is to be master – that’s all.
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Fuck yeah.
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What a great little essay! My first reaction as I was watching, was to wish more science fiction directors had this kind of self dicipline in depicting spacecraft.
…but by the end, I found myself wishing that the art of diplomacy, the ways of averting war, were as romanticized and celebrated as the tools of war.
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Caused me to flash back to Crimson Skies, one of my favorite PC games ever:
I will definitely be checking Miyazaki out, thanks!
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Can’t watch this at the moment. Do they classify raccoons using oversized scrotums to glide as airships?
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That sounds oddly Trumpian! 
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Dumptian, actually.
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Not exactly? Though the joy/desire for flight being some sort of inherent trait of humans is illustrated in a variety of ways, including via Totoro.
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I’d snap up a new version of Crimson Skies if it came out. The speed and scale of the game (not too fast, and not too big) really hit the sweet spot for me.
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I SO want a Mehve!
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Yes! This was beautiful. I kept comparing his fantastic interpretations with the rigidly mechanical, yet equally beautiful, designs in shows like Shinichiro Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop.
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