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Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki and Hayao Miyazaki's son, director Goro Miyazaki, both say that the beloved director has no plans for another retirement.
"Hayao Miyazaki turned 85 in January of this year, and I thought he might be getting old soon, but that's not the case at all; he's incredibly energetic," Goro said during a press conference (via ManTan Web). "Why is he so energetic? His blood test results are better than mine."
Miyazaki's last feature film, The Boy and the Heron, hit theaters in 2023 and took home Best Animated Feature film at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs. It marked his first feature in 10 years, having publicly announced his permanent retirement after 2013's The Wind Rises.
It'd be sad if he stopped making films... but we'd understand. Sure, there's no other filmmaker quite like him: with a distinct style that combines soft and painterly yet extremely vibrant backgrounds with more simplified but expressive characters that you can't help but fall in love with (and the English dubs end up being really, really good, too... though we'd recommend skipping the one for Princess Mononoke)... but he's been doing this for quite some time – since 1979 to be exact. If The Boy and the Heron, which beautifully explored themes of grief and gave us some pretty impressive voiceover work from Robert Pattinson, ends up being his last film... it wouldn't be a bad way to go out.
"He has a very strong sense that he's still active and working hard. Even though he's 85, he still wants to make movies," Suzuki said during the same conference. "But that varies from day to day. On days when he's not feeling well, he clearly loses his motivation and might say things like, 'I don't feel like making movies anymore.' It's a cycle."
The Studio Ghibli catalog is streaming now on HBO Max. For more, check out the new anime coming this year.
