Painting the World of Studio Ghibli contains background paintings from each and every feature-length Ghibli anime.
There are a fair number of Studio Ghibli anime movies with a gap between their Japanese and official English titles. Some are minor (Kiki’s Deliver Service versus Majo no Takyubin/“The Witch’s Delivery Service”), some are truncated (Spirited Away versus Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi/”The Spiriting Away of Sen and Chihiro”), and some are complete rewrites (The Boy and the Heron versus Kimitachi wa Dou Ikiru ka?/”How Do You Live?”).
We could spend a long time debating whether such changes are necessary, and then just as long debating whether the reworked titles accomplish what they’re trying to do. However, I think we can agree that compared to its Japanese title of Studio Ghibli no Bijutsu (“The Art of Studio Ghibli”), this new book’s official English title, Painting the World of Studio Ghibli, gives you a clearer picture of what sort of beautiful pictures are waiting inside it.
An upcoming release from Tokyo-based publisher PIE International, the hardcover book contains 844 paintings used as backgrounds in Studio Ghibli movies. And when we say Ghibli movies, we mean all of them, as Painting the World of Studio Ghibli includes artwork from each and every feature-length anime from the studio, stretching all the way from 1984’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind to 2023’s The Boy and the Heron, including The Red Turtle and even the made-for-TV Ocean Waves and Earwig and the Witch.
With Ghibli sometimes using more than 1,000 backgrounds in a single film, this 568-page book is essentially a massive sampler of the studio’s work, but it looks to be one that Ghibli fans can savor for hours and hours. It also includes an interview with Yoji Takeshige, who first worked with Studio Ghibli as a background artist on My Neighbor Totoro before joining the studio as a regular employee in 1991 and serving as art director for films including Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Boy and the Heron. Even if you can’t read the in-Japanese interview, though, the gigantic volume of art should make the Painting the World of Studio Ghibli an absolute joy to page through, and the 29.7 x 21-centimeter (11.7 x 8.3-inch) dimensions should make all the little details easy to appreciate.
Painting the World of Studio Ghibli isn’t being released until January 22, but it’s already currently the number-one best-seller in Amazon Japan’s art collection category. It’s priced at 13,200 yen (US$88) after tax, and can be purchased through Amazon Japan here, or directly through the PIE International website here.
Source, images: PR Times
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