I guess that’s why an anime movie deserves its own ranking. Going by your method, a series definitely have much more time and chance to make an impression on you:) Besides, people would probably call out on you if you decide to rate Animerican movie and TV series in the same ranking (choosing whether Sopranos or Godfather is better) so same logic could be applied to anime too…

I never really looked at the directors in detail before. I knew Kamiyama and obviously knew Watanabe. I did know that Nagahama directed Mushishi but I had no idea he also did DMC, that’s an absolute shocker! I honestly should pay more attention to directors when they make more than one hit

The lack of movies is a personal preference thing. I just don’t get into movies the same way I do with tv series. Some people seem to rate things starting from 10 and knock off points for every failure. I start from 1 and work my way up.

Chigira seems to be Gonzo’s ace and I never realized the difference in style Nagahama can produce!

Also, there definitely seem to be a lack of movies in your top 30 list (only Akira makes it) so perhaps the lack of any Ghibli films run a lot deeper than just that studio…

I guess the thing about Gonzo is that it is such a hit-and-miss that just frustrate people. They can produce quality tItles like Gankutsuou and Last Exile which are pretty well-received and I also love Bokurano to death though it seems to be so under-recognized. However, there are also so much garbages or series that start with a lot of promise that does not live up to it.

Now take Seita from Grave of The Fireflies. Raised as the elder son of a showa era family living during the twilight of the Bushido he is a stuck between two different viewpoints and with no way out of the changing era but for death. On the one hand he finds himself acting on pride and the need to protect his brother and sister, but seeing that the war effort is futile refuses to throw himself and her into it directly and thus is tossed out of society and forced to fend for himself and his sister. His acts of sensibility and pride combined with the folly of youthful discretion ultimately leads to his own sister’s demise in what can be described as a classical tragedy and finds himself in the Grave of The Fireflies he had no way of avoiding.

There’s a certain maturity and sense of purpose to Ghibli’s collective writing and presentation that is masked in a childish and whimsical exterior that reminds me of how Tezuka Osamu constructed his much celebrated manga. This is among the reasons I enjoy their works greatly. Anyway which Deus Ex Machina endings are you referring to? The only one that I can think of right off the top of my head is Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind.

About the other topic.…the reason I and many others dislike Jason Miao is that he’s still doing the same things he did when he ran Blogsuki (which used to be an aggretator of blogs) wherein he tried to enforce his views upon it by delisting and blacklisting anybody that dared to post anything about anime that he disagreed with. It was incredibly petty and carries on to today where he will blacklist and i.p blocking anybody that dares to challenge anything he writes on the new blogsuki rather than owning up to it by responding to or defending it.

To you and “his readers” he may come across as some sort of hero for not caring about what other people say (I think it’s reasonable to ignore some of the things other people say, but not to the full extent nor in the way that he does), and that’s your view of him to have in all fairness, but too me and many others he comes across as a legendary coward and hack of the highest order who lives in his own fantasy world of made up facts and ideas about anime, it’s producers, and a whole bunch of other concepts he seems obsessed with enforcing. It’s all funny in my eyes but in a pathetic way that has me comparing him to Big Brother from the book 1984.

It’s his loss to have though as all it’s going to lead to is him never learning or experiencing anything about what the blogosphere, anime and the whole picture has to offer in it’s true reality. I might call it a tragedy at some point, but his final story isn’t written yet so I’ll hold off on committing to that conclusion for a while.

Ghibli have many problems too though, such as convinient Deux ex Machina endings and insufferably perfect lead characters, a sense that the director never really thought the story through and sometimes tossing things in just because he liked the look of them. Most annoyingly is that none of the dialogue ever feels real, which is why Howls is my favourite because of its more fairy-tale nature it never needed realistic dialogue.

The Jason Miao thing is that I’ve only recently noticed that many of the older ‘bloggers’ (as if most of them have written anything worthwhile in years) are butthurt because of some fuss he kicked up years ago over his aniblog aggregator. I tend to like bloggers who are seeminly unfazed by outside opinion, expressing their own totally biased views. Difference in taste I guess

As for Jason.…there is no love lost between me and his blogging style. I’ve always had a rule and that is that whatever I see him doing I take note to either do the opposite or simply not do it at all. His blog is hilarious to read on account of how predictable it is with all of his self-coined memes that he uses over and over and over again and how he often stumbles over a near total lack of accurate information and reasoning to apparently nobody else’s awareness but my own. All of this is the source of much hilarity for me, but yeah IMO it’s really just awful reading when I get right down to it.

So no comment on my suggestions for watching Ghibli with a different viewpoint then? Not saying that you ought to, just that it might be worth considering.

Take a look at my blogroll. Yup, listed down there is blogsuki. Jason did nothing more that look at his favourite anime, see who made them and rate accordingly. This post was not in any way a copy of his (in fact I think I wrote this before he did his) but that’s all I’ve done as well. You’d have noticed that all I did was look at my favourite anime and see what studio made them, if you had read the post properly that is. Heck, it’s in the bloody title in case you didn’t notice. If you were to base them from an objective perspective than the list would be totally different and most certainly not have Gonzo rated number 1.

Read a post properly before you rant. Jason is a moefag and I have totally different tastes from his but I also enjoy reading his blog more than 95% of the other anime blogs out there. Yup, these are my readers

This is far better of course (not hard when you aren’t Jason) and yeah I agree that unless you are Jason Miao it’s kind of tough to justify Kyoani as a real top pick unless you are a die hard moe fan. I think you might need to take another look at the Ghibli movies though. Pay attention to the way the images are conveyed through the animation, the consistent smoothness of said animation, Hisaishi Joe’s music (usually it’s him) and be sure to suspend your disbelief and allow yourself to be taken into whatever world and tale they are trying to spin. They use a lot of symbolism too so try to pick up on that as well and you could very well find yourself having a great time. As for A-1 I agree that there newness is a fair reason to exclude them from any favouritism yet. Same reason I had for Kyoto Animation after Haruhi.