The Similarities Between Several Movies by Hayao Miyazaki

At different times throughout the semester, Ms. Chiang showed us movies by a man named Hayao Miyazaki. Mr. M's name takes such a long time to type that from this point forward he will be refered to as Mr. M. The movies we have watched included Spirited Away, My Neighbor, Totoro, and Princess Mononoke. They are all animated, anime-style movies directed by Mr. M.

I was no present at school at the time of the showing of My Neighbor, Totoro, so the movie descriptions below will only include Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke.

These movies are strangely similar to each other in more ways than one. As Ms. Chiang noted in class, both of the ones I've seen have had large blobs in them. In one movie there were very large and roundish tears. In another there were many blobs of black ooze. All of these blobs looked similar to each other. I wonder if they are related. Then again, I'm not used to trying to determine the facial features of blobs of liquid.

The animals, in both movies, were very detailed. They were so detailed that you could see the warts and hairs on the pigs' snouts. Now that I think about it, pigs played a large part in both of the movies I saw. That could be another similarity. The music in both movies was also similar. I would not be surprised if the same composer wrote the music for both of them.

These movies had many similarities, some well disguised. When watching them back-to-back, it would be easy for one to recognize that they were made by the same man.