Earwig, and a talking black cat named Thomas, try to protect themselves from the witch’s magic and force her to be a little nicer to them. The rest of the film is standard evil stepmother stuff. Sometime later, Earwig is adopted by the Bella Yaga and the Mandrake, a witch and a demon respectively, who force her into magical servitude. It’s an anonymous, ugly work made all the worse by the things it shares in common with Goro’s father’s masterpieces, playing like a movie actively seeking to take all the qualities that make Ghibli great and render them insipid.Įarwig is the daughter of a witch who, while mysteriously on the run from some other witches, leaves the child at an orphanage. Studio Ghibli’s first CGI-animated film is wholly devoid of, well, everything that has made the studio an industry titan. It’s this that makes Goro Miyazaki’s latest, Earwig and the Witch, so monumentally disappointing. Look, for example, at a few frames of Satsuki running in My Neighbor Totoro and you’ll find a fluidity and a conveyance of personality sorely missing in most other major animation. Miyazaki’s films, though they are recognizable to the untrained eye as anime, look like Miyazaki films, a phrase that conjures specific images and emotions that are integral to his works. Other acclaimed auteurs in this space, like Makoto Shinkai and Mamoru Hosoda, make films that, whatever their many other merits may be, reflect a similar style to much of the common anime found on television. No, what makes Studio Ghibli’s founders the biggest names in the form is much simpler: storytelling strengths aside, their work has a look and feel that is leagues ahead of most of what is out there. Name recognition has little to do with luminaries Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata’s placement atop the anime pantheon. Earwig and the Witch is one of the ugliest major studio animated works in years and an incredible stumble for Studio Ghibli.
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