“Although it was the culmination of Hayao Miyazaki’s previous works, it was a completely new work,” wrote Twitter user @castle_gtm. “I couldn’t help but admire how he could still make a film like this after reaching the age of 80.”
Fabulous cast! When will it be screened in China?
On Chinese social media platform Weibo, the topic “Hayao Miyazaki, How Do You Live?” was also a trending search term.
Discussion under this topic abounded with Chinese film fans’ excitement about the release of How Do You Live? and their eagerness to see it screened in China soon. The Japanese master of animation has always had a big following there – long before the his 1988 film My Neighbor Totoro was a big hit at the Chinese box office in 2018.What makes animator Hayao Miyazaki's films so special?
The cast of the new film, which includes popular actors Masaki Suda and Takuya Kimura, further fuelled expectation among Chinese fans.
“Fabulous cast! When will it be screened in China?” asked one Weibo user.
“I want to watch it. Please hurry up with a domestic release,” wrote another.
Many fans were intrigued by the lack of publicity and promotion for the movie. The limited information available before the release of what is supposedly Miyazaki’s last film included a poster, revealed in December 2022, of a blue and white bird drawn by the 82-year-old director, who also wrote the screenplay.
Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki said at a Tokyo event in late June that the no-advertisement approach for How Do You Live? was taken out of concern that over-promotion of previous movies could have made audience interest “wane a bit”.
But he also revealed that Miyazaki, who came out of retirement to make the 124-minute film, was worried about its lack of promotion.
The title of the Studio Ghibli film comes from a bestselling 1937 novel by Genzaburo Yoshino, an editor and writer of children’s literature, but the film’s distributor, Toho, said it apparently adopts a storyline different from the book.
Publishers of Yoshino’s book and a comic book based on it said they had decided to issue reprints.
Ahead of the film’s opening, an online rumour that its story may be based on The Book of Lost Things by Irish author John Connolly, praised by Miyazaki, made the rounds. That book’s Japanese publisher, Tokyo Sogensha Co., said it, too had decided to reprint it.
Miyazaki’s works are popular in Japan and overseas. His fantasy movie Spirited Away won the prestigious Golden Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2002 and the Academy Award for best animated feature film in 2003.His other major works include My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke (1997) and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984).
The Japanese animator announced his retirement in 2013 as The Wind Rises was being screened, citing difficulties in making films because of his age. But he later retracted the statement.
