Who are Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata?

Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata met at Toei Animation in the 1960s, where Takahata directed and the younger Miyazaki drew, and their partnership, equal parts admiration and argument, runs through Japanese animation from Heidi and Future Boy Conan to the founding of Ghibli. Producer Toshio Suzuki, who spent decades mediating between them, is the third founder and the partnership's public voice.

Their methods opposed each other almost point for point. Miyazaki storyboards his films himself, builds worlds before plots, and pursues movement, flight and mechanical detail with a craftsman's obsession. Takahata, who did not draw, directed from research and text, pursued everyday realism and historical weight, and treated animation as a medium that could hold subjects, war, farming, domestic failure, that live action avoided. Grave of the Fireflies and Only Yesterday are his register; no other director at the studio worked there.

Their filmographies define the studio's range. Miyazaki: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Ponyo, The Wind Rises and The Boy and the Heron. Takahata: Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko, My Neighbors the Yamadas and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, his final film, drawn in a watercolour story sketch style that pushed the studio's craft as hard as any Miyazaki spectacle.

Takahata died in April 2018, and his memorial exhibition in Tokyo drew crowds that confirmed his standing beside the more famous Miyazaki. For collectors, director attribution is the first sort on any Ghibli shelf: Japanese editions and art books are organised by film, but the Miyazaki and Takahata lines are the two spines of the studio, and a collection that holds only one of them holds half the argument.