GoKawiilA still from My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
We’re back! With the mid-year break over, the Animation Obsessive newsletter returns with a new issue. We’ve done a ton of prep over the past few weeks to get ready for the rest of our 2026, which begins today.
Here’s the slate for this Sunday:
1. On Michiyo Yasuda, a master of color.
2. Animation newsbits.
3. The last word.
Now, let’s go!
1. Ghibli’s colors
The art of Studio Ghibli isn’t really duplicable. People have tried: the internet is full of attempts, the bulk of them machine-generated. Even when those images vaguely recall Ghibli, though, it’s not so simple to paint light like Kazuo Oga did in My Neighbor Totoro, or to animate a smile like Makiko Futaki did across the ‘80s.
Many tiny and hyper-specific choices, down to the individual frames, made Ghibli films what they are. These choices came from stars like Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, but also, critically, from the way less famous people on their teams.
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