Ghibli’s partnership with Japanese stationery brand Rollbahn expands to include three more theatrical anime.
In the digital age, you don’t actually need to write by hand in order to put your thoughts into readable words, but many will say that nothing gets the creative juices flowing quite like putting pen to paper. And if artistic inspiration is the goal, being in the presence of great artwork might just make your creative process even juicier.
That philosophy is embodied by Studio Ghibli’s partnership with Rollbahn, a line of notebooks from Japanese stationery maker Delfonics. With so many memorable anime in the Ghibli filmography, the collaboration couldn’t cover all of them at once, and the line is now ready to expand with three new notebook designs, including some that don’t always get a lot of attention in the Ghibli merch world.
Starting with an unquestioned classic, though, is the new notebook saluting Castle in the Sky/Laputa. The stylized cover depicts Pazu’s daily routine of climbing onto his roof and greeting the morning (and the local flocks of birds) with a song from his trumpet.
Next we have a council of tanuki from Pom Poko, who’ve assembled to discuss how to deal with human encroachment into their living spaces, with the group expressing their approval of reviving the art of shapeshifting in order to walk among Tokyoites and observe their ways.
And finally, Tales from Earthsea, the most-maligned of Ghibli’s major theatrical releases, actually gets some love with a gorgeous cover showing Arren communing with a very important dragon in his life.
Studio Ghibli and Rollbahn are both famous for being very detail-oriented, and the notebooks have a number of thoroughly thought-out design elements. A thick, high-quality paper is used to resist ink bleeding or writing on the page’s opposite side from showing through. The pages all have a grid pattern, making them usable for writing or diagramming, and each page is perforated as well, allowing for a clean tear-out if you need to pass it off to someone else. A clear pocket at the back of the notebook also gives you a place to store any supplementary slips of paper you might need to keep nearby.
A cloth strap helps keep the book snugly closed while you’ve got it stashed in your bag when out and about, and even the colors of the binding rings and reflective text on the front are subtly differentiated to best coordinate with each cover design.
In addition to the three brand-new notebooks above, the Ghibli Rollbahn line has over a dozen different other designs for fans of My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and more, though the older notebooks fluctuate in and out of availability based on current inventory levels.
Each of the notebooks is priced at 1,430 yen (US$9.40) and can be ordered through the online store of Studio Ghibli specialty shop Donguri Kyowakoku here.
Source: Donguri Kyowakoku
Top image: Donguri Kyowakoku
Insert images: Donguri Kyowakoku (1, 2, 3, 4)
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