Porco Rosso (1992)

Between the First and Second World Wars, the Adriatic Sea is packed with travellers, pirates and bounty hunters, all flying various seaplanes. The most famous of them all is Marco Pagot, a war veteran with the face of a pig, who is known across the sea as the legendary "Porco Rosso".

Porco Rosso is the sixth animated feature film by Japan's most popular and acclaimed animator Hayao Miyazaki. It is based on a three-part manga he wrote and illustrated some years earlier. In Japan it was by some distance the highest-grossing feature film of 1992.

In terms of Miyazaki's overall career Porco Rosso sits comfortably between the family-friendly adventure of Kiki's Delivery Service and the more mature fantasy of Princess Mononoke. Tonally it lies somewhere in the middle of the two: there is plenty of broad comedy for a younger audience, but there's also some more mature themes and character relationships as well. It is a nice combination, which makes this a particularly great film from this legendary filmmaker.

The Wind Rises (2013)

I have been putting off the day I would watch The Wind Rises, because it's purportedly the final feature film ever from the acclaimed director Hayao Miyazaki. Once I watched it, there possibly wouldn't any any more to see. Actually going by the odds that's almost certainly untrue. He's claimed he was retiring from making films before, and accidentally made more films. In fact one estimate has him announcing his retirement on seven separate occasions in 1986 (after Laputa: Castle in the Sky) and again in 1992, 1997, 2001, 2004, 2008 and 2013. True to form he's currently directing a 10-minute CGI short to screen exclusively at the Studio Ghibli Museum near Tokyo, and my gut says if he likes the CGI medium there will be a feature to follow.

For now The Wind Rises is it. It feels like an unusual film. It retains the animation style, and the beautifully observed human movements and expressions. It boasts a superb orchestral score by regular composer Joe Hisaishi. It has a remarkable warmth and emotional resonance. Beyond that it stands pretty far apart from Miyazaki's other works. There's comparatively little whimsy to the piece, and no fantastical elements. Instead its a biographical drama based on the aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi: the inventor of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane.

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013)

This past weekend I had my own little two-day Studio Ghibli film festival, first catching Isao Takahata's The Tale of Princess Kaguya on Saturday and then seeing the documentary The Kingdom of Dream and Madness on Sunday. The documentary, by Japanese filmmaker Mami Sunada, follows director Hayao Miyazaki around for a period of months as he works on his final feature animation The Wind Rises.

This is a beautifully constructed film. Rather than directly interview Miyazaki and his workmates, talking heads-style, Sunada purposefully allows the personalities and opinions to flow organically over the course of the film. We meet and observe Studio Ghibli's harried producer Toshio Suzuki, who is handling The Wind Rises while simultaneously trying to coax Takahata to finally complete Princess Kaguya so he can release it into cinemas. We meet former Ghibli employee turned successful Evangelion director Hideaki Anno as he's unexpectedly coaxed back into the fold to voice the lead character of The Wind Rises. And of course we meet Hayao Miyazaki himself, a smiling, wry, chain-smoking bundle of contradictions as he supervises work on the final feature film of his career.

Kiki's Delivery Service: 25 years on

There are few films in the world more delightful to watch than Studio Ghibli films, and there are few Studio Ghibli films as delightful as Kiki's Delivery Service. I've heard it said that the first Hayao Miyazaki film you see will always be your favourite, and while I'm not entirely sure I could pick a favourite these days I can't deny I will always have the warmest of affections for Kiki.

Today it turns 25, since it was on 29 July 1989 that it premiered in Japanese cinemas. It remains one of my favourite films, so it seems appropriate to wish it a happy birthday.

It was a critical production for Studio Ghibli, since its preceding double-bill of My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies had failed to turn a profit, and the high cost of producing animation meant that the studio would close shop if Kiki wasn't a hit. Thankfully it turned a healthy profit, grossing almost three times its ¥800 million yen budget by the time it left cinemas.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Today Studio Ghibli and its co-founder Hayao Miyazaki are both synonymous with quality animated film. Miyazaki is regularly hailed as the greatest director of animation of all time, a claim that is surprisingly difficult to dispute. His films effortlessly blend character, tone, aesthetic and imagination, creating movie experiences that are unparalleled in world cinema. He is also unusually effective and creating and animating female protagonists, which is far too rare in the motion pictures of any country.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which was released in Japan in 1984, is his first original feature and a forerunner to Studio Ghibli, the animation company that Miyazaki set up with fellow director and producer Isao Takahata. It is visibly an early work: elements that would later feel standard for Ghibli films are only just being formed, and the visual aesthetic has not fully settled down to the signature Miyazaki “look” audiences will later grow to adore. The film is also a far more mature and adult work than his later family friendly films such as Kiki’s Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away.

A thousand years after an apocalyptic war devastated the Earth, the planet is dominated by an enormous poisonous jungle that is populated by giant insects and which is lethal to human life. In the nearby Valley of the Wind, a small kingdom lives out a peaceful existence – ever-watchful for the dangerous spores that may float from the jungle and infect their own forests and meadows. When an aircraft from the warlike Kingdom of Tolmekia crash-lands nearby, it results in a military invasion by Tolmekian forces – and leads the young Princess Nausicaä on a quest to finally learn the secrets of the poisonous jungle.