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Hayao Miyazaki's Post-Retirement Samurai Manga Previewed on TV
posted on by Egan Loo
On Monday, NHK's Professional Shigoto no Ryūgi (Professional Work Style) program showed the samurai manga that Studio Ghibli anime director Hayao Miyazaki is drawing after he announced his retirement from feature films. The program's latest episode dealt with the studio co-founder's September retirement announcement and showed him drawing the manga two months later. Miyazaki said that he wants to draw sengoku (Japan's Warring States Period) stories and other stories that cannot be cubbyholed.
When the NTV variety program Sekai-ichi Uketai Jugyō asked Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki last week about Miyazaki's plans after retirement, he said, "I think he will serialize a manga. From the beginning, he likes drawing about his favorite things. That's his stress relief."
NTV host Masaaki Sakai asked, "Does he like sengoku jidai no chanbara (samurai swordfighting stories set in Japan's Warring States Period)?" Suzuki responded, "That's what he is drawing now. He'll get angry if I talk too much. Let's stop talking about this."
Miyazaki himself said during his retirement announcement that there are things he wanted to do in the past that he would now do, but those things are not animation. Suzuki added that Miyazaki is already preparing a manga to run in a magazine, and noted that he is drawing the sengoku-era story as volunteer work with no fee.
Suzuki revealed in a 2012 television special that Hayao Miyazaki's son, Goro Miyazaki (Tales from Earthsea, From Up On Poppy Hill), is planning a samurai period work that combines fact and fiction. Suzuki told filmmaker Shunji Iwai that Goro Miyazaki's project is set in the northeastern Tohoku region of Japan during the Middle Ages.
Hayao Miyazaki drew the Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga before he adapted his own story into a film in 1984. He also drew two manga, "Hikōtei Jidai" (The Age of the Flying Boat) and "Kaze Tachinu" (The Wind Rises), that predated the films Porco Rosso and The Wind Rises. He also compiled art he drew for an early Mononoke Hime film concept into a 1993 picture book, but the final Princess Mononoke film depicted a much different story.
Miyazaki's last feature film, The Wind Rises, is playing now in Japan and will open in North America on February 21 (after playing last week in limited engagements in Los Angeles and New York City). The January issue of Model Graphix magazine will bundle Fine Molds' 1/72 model kit of Mitsubishi KA-14 (9-shi), the prototype fighter plane featured prominently in the film, on November 25.
The Tale of Princess Kaguya, the anime film by Ghibli co-founder and Miyazaki's friend Isao Takahata, will open in Japan on Saturday. Yume to Kyōki no Ōkoku (The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness), Mami Sunada's documentary about Studio Ghibli, opened last Saturday.
this article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history