Some few weeks ago, as the Tokyo 2020 Olympics began their delayed and controversial opening ceremonies, a beautifully animated short film appeared on the internet to surprisingly little fanfare. Clocking in at only 8 minutes 28 seconds, Tomorrow’s Leaves features breathtaking visuals – noticeably reminiscent of the house style of the globally beloved Studio Ghibli – rousing music, and an only somewhat confusing plot. It also sports a not-so-subtle Olympic message. Indeed, the short was commissioned by the Olympic Foundation of Culture; according to a press release, its stated themes are “Olympism,” with the short being “…a landmark work of art celebrating the Olympic Values of Excellence, Friendship and Respect.”
While a sense of “Olympism” propaganda may slightly taint the film for some, it is still true that Tomorrow’s Leaves is a work of art. Fluid, vibrant 2D animation (aided by some CG mapping) is used to quickly demonstrate a fantasy world of disparate people groups united by the interconnected influence of nature. Sports and friendly competition show a path towards cooperation. With a few hundred thousand views on YouTube, the short has been well received – by those who’ve seen it. Yet, like much of the content produced thus far by Studio Ponoc – a Japanese animation studio known more for its lineage than its actual output – it seems word just isn’t quite getting out.
Coming of the Dawn
Studio Ponoc, animators of Tomorrow’s Leaves, burst onto the anime scene in April 2015 to a good deal of fanfare. 2015 was a significant year, in that it was the start of a dark age for fans of the vaunted Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki Hayao, co-founder of Ghibli and director of such beloved classics as Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Totoro, Nausicaa, and more, was recently retired. Mutual co-founder Takahata Isao’s film The Tale of the Princess Kaguya had released to critical acclaim but underwhelming box office receipts. Ghibli production stalled after 2014’s When Marnie Was There; its long-standing animation department was let go. An era in world animation seemed to have ended.
Then came word of a successor studio, founded by Ghibli veterans. Its very name, Ponoc, Serbo-Croatian for midnight and the dawning of a new day, symbolized new beginnings. A gorgeously animated feature film was in the offing; a trailer reflected many of the Ghibli stylings. On screen, a precocious young girl rode a broom through a fantastical world of deep, vibrant colors. Perhaps the Ghibli magic truly could live on in a new studio!
Six years onwards, the question remains: what is Studio Ponoc, really?
Breakaway Studio
In June of 2015, there arose some confusing news. Nishimura Yoshiaki, head producer of Studio Ghibli since long-time frontman Suzuki Toshio stepped down in March the year previous, was revealed to be producing animation for another studio. Although Ponoc had come into existence two months earlier, its nature as a haven for Ghibli veterans was not yet well understood; Anime News Network‘s reporting on the issue reveals doubt as to how Nishimura could be producing an advertisement for Ponoc while still working at Ghibli. The article in question even felt the need to make clear that “Studio Ponoc runs separately from Studio Ghibli.”
Indeed, this was an uncertain time in Ghibli’s history; was the studio shutting down? Why was Nishimura working for another company, while still claiming to be a producer for Ghibli? What was this Studio Ponoc?
Nishimura himself is at the center of the tale, one which echoes past history. Studio Ghibli was founded in 1984 by two directors, Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao, in conjunction with producer Suzuki Toshio. Discussion of the production company has since revolved around the story of these three men. Ponoc, for its part, is similarly the product of two individuals: Nishimura Yoshiaki and Yonebayashi Hiromasa.
A New Set of Founders
43 years old as of this writing, Ponoc studio head Nishimura joined the Ghibli team back in 2002 upon returning from a university study abroad in the US. His initial duties at Ghibli involved copyright management; shortly, however, he was put in charge of film promotion. He managed advertising for 2004’s Howl’s Moving Castle, 2006’s Tales from Earthsea, and 2008’s Ponyo. In 2006, Nishimura also achieved the status of producer for Takahata’s long-gestating final masterpiece, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. The film was released in 2013; in 2014, Ghibli released its last theatrical film to date, When Marnie Was There. Nishimura also produced this film, working closely with director Yonebayashi Hiromasa. This relationship would soon serve as the basis of Studio Ponoc.
For his part, Yonebayashi joined Studio Ghibli all the way back in 1996 as an animator. He provided keyframe animation on numerous Miyazaki-helmed films, starting with the beloved Spirited Away. (In fact, it’s been variously claimed that the No-Face character was based on Yonebayashi, or that Miyazaki felt Yonebayashi drew the character in such a way that it resembled the artist.) A good reputation and long years spent at the company led to Yonebayashi becoming the youngest theatrical director in Ghibli history with 2010’s Arrietty. At the time, he was only 37 years old. (Although the director of Ghibli’s first film for television, 1993’s Ocean Waves, had been 34.)
Importantly, Yonebayashi was seen as a potential candidate for establishing the longevity of Studio Ghibli. Both he and Miyazaki’s own son, Goro, were the only directors besides Miyazaki or Takahata to helm more than one film for Ghibli. In 2014, Yonebatashi’s Marnie released to good reviews and fair financial returns — but its inability to capture the top spot at the annual box office in Japan signaled that Ghibli was entering uncertain waters. As Ghibli began to shut down production, what was a Ghibli successor in waiting to do?
The Leavetaking
On the official website for his film Mary and the Witch’s Flower, Yonebayashi described the frustration and sadness of this period in his life.
“After Studio Ghibli broke up its production department, I left the company with many other staff members. For someone who loved Ghibli, this was a very regrettable thing. This is because, after completing Marnie, I had but one thought in my mind. As much as possible, I wanted to continue making animated films.”
Yet, without the backing of an established studio, how could Yonebayashi accomplish that goal? Nor was Yonebayashi the only former employee of the esteemed Ghibli to find themselves reeling from the change in their status quo. A whole production company’s worth of world-class animators was now out of a job.
The answer came from Nishimura. The brass at Ghibli may have decided that time was up, but that didn’t mean they needed to stop making films. Why not do what the Ghibli founders had done back in the early 1980s: take a team of experienced animators with shared history, and create something new?
The result was Studio Ponoc.
Commercial Endeavor
Now, starting a new theatrical animation studio from scratch is no easy thing. Even for creators and producers with as impressive a curriculum vitae as Nishimura and Yonebayashi, the way was fraught with difficulties. Their initial proving ground was a short 15-second advertisement for the West Japan Railway Company – a far cry from a two-hour-long feature film. Yet, in terms of quality, the short showed that the sheer skill of Ghibli was still alive in the animators at Ponoc.
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Nishimura brought in longtime Ghibli workhorse Momose Yoshiyuki to direct the commercial. Momose first came to Ghibli as a layout artist for Takahata’s 1988 devastating wartime tragedy Grave of the Fireflies; he’d continued working with the studio ever since. In terms of sheer experience and artistic ability, Momose was among the studio’s very best. He also had a good deal of short film and commercial animation directorial experience. Among other things, he’d been the director for the animated scenes in the Ghibli co-produced RPG Ni no Kuni; he also directed the short theatrical film Ghiblis 2, which aired in screenings before 2002’s The Cat Returns.
Momose’s work speaks for itself; the commercial, extremely short, still manages to impart emotion and story in an impressively economic fashion. In Ponoc’s future work, Momose would again show his mastery of delivering feelings on a short time scale.
A Difficult Road
The commercial was a success and proved that Ponoc could produce artful, impactful animation. However, there is a vast difference between a 15-second commercial and a theatrical film. The growing staff at Ponoc knew they wanted to do more; the financial realities of animation production made things less simple.
“This was a very difficult, tough three years for us,” Nishimura told The Verge in 2017. “We were at Studio Ghibli until the end of 2014. And then two and a half years later, we had to complete a feature film, starting from zero, basically. And the two main difficulties were that we didn’t have the Studio Ghibli brand name, because our new studio was not known, and so trying to collect the financing was difficult. We had to work with a rather low budget. And at Studio Ghibli, there were 150 to 200 creators with the wonderful environment, with hardware, software, computers, servers all set up in the production studio itself. Whereas we had to start from zero, and build up that environment and equipment for our production.”
The Little Witch That, Sort Of, Could
What they were building up to was Mary and the Witch’s Flower. Based on Mary Stewart’s 1971 novel The Little Broomstick, Nishimura hoped the film would be the thematic opposite of Yonebayashi’s previous film, the somber Marnie. Both he and Yonebayashi also hoped to focus on different themes than the aging Miyazaki and Takahata had insisted upon in recent years.
Nishimura spoke on this subject during his interview with The Verge. “…A lot of the stories toward the end were stories of parting. Tale of the Princess Kaguya and The Wind Rises reflected the directors’ stage in life, dealing with issues of life and death. Those stories resolve in parting. When [Miyazaki and Takahata] were younger, in their 30s and 40s, they handled different types of topics — lively encounters of people meeting… We’re at the same age when Miyazaki and Takahata first started off, and now that we are parents of small children, we want to have that kind of active starting-off, people-meeting-up kind of story.”
The resulting movie is beautiful but narratively uneven. Here I must editorialize; Yonebayashi’s two films for Ghibli are perhaps lesser efforts for the studio, but are still wonderful films. Mary, sadly, isn’t at the same level. The film feels more like good-but-forgettable Ghibli clones from other studios. (Origins: Spirits of the Past and Children Who Chase Lost Voices spring to mind.) However, the movie still shows incredible technical skill; in the last 45 minutes, it even achieves real excitement and audience engagement. It also features music by Muramatsu Takatsugu, composer for Marnie, whose sound has gone on to become another Ponoc staple.
Short-Changed, So Changed to Shorts
In the end, Mary grossed $41.8 million at the worldwide box office. In its home country of Japan, it was the 6th biggest domestic film of the year. Not bad for an anime film, but not a massive success. Critically the film fared much the same; good, not great, in a not particularly memorable way. Continually noted has been the derivative feeling the movie gives off. It can feel like a Ghibli’s greatest hits collection, mixing and mashing elements of Kiki’s Delivery Service, Howl’s Moving Castle, and more. Despite being based on an older book, the movie also feels very Harry Potter-lite. Even the film’s tagline seems to evoke this derivation of the witchy Kiki’s: 「魔女、ふたたび。」”A witch, once again.”
Still, the film was a success, even if not an unadulterated one. More than anything, it put Ponoc’s name on the map; even as Miyazaki came out of retirement and Ghibli restarted production on his and his son’s new films, somewhat confusing the “Ghibli successor” narrative for Ponoc. Surprisingly, Ponoc chose not to follow up Mary with a second film to pad out their catalog. Rather, the next Ponoc picture was to be three smaller pictures. Modest Heroes, an anthology of short films, was born.
Nishimura has listed various reasons for the decision to eschew feature-length animation. “There was something amazing I had not realized about working on short films,” the producer said in an interview for US distributor GKids. “People tend to think of short films as a step taken because you can’t work on full-length films, most likely. But animated short films are their own medium of expression.”
Setting Apart by Returning to the Past
Nishimura also invoked the long history of Disney animated shorts as being fertile ground for creating characters and styles. He also mentioned the nature of the famed-but-rarely-seen Ghibli Museum shorts; short animated films of theatrical quality created to be shown only at the Ghibli Museum. He also made the difference between Ghibli and Ponoc resources known, however. “Ponoc,” unlike Ghibli, “is not financially prosperous.” Comparatively, Ghibli literally possesses its own dedicated museum theater to show its short films at, a venue that attracts incredible amounts of patronage each year.
However, Nishimura felt that these creative short films were a way to set his company apart. “There are so many animated films these days, and we risk not standing out.” Without strong financials, short films have seemed a safer bet.
Creatively, the bet seems to have paid off. Modest Heroes is a great collection of short films, demonstrating diverse styles of animation and incredible talent. Better yet, the short films each possess a mastery of narrative and timing lacking in the lengthy Mary. Each film is directed by a different Ghibli veteran, truly demonstrating the world-class talent long possessed by that studio. (And again, they also possess great soundtracks by Muramatsu.)
Embarrassment of Directorial Riches
The first film, Kanini and Kanino, concerns a family of tiny river-dwelling humanoids; the mother has left to give birth on land, leaving the father to fend for his two children. This was based on director Yonebayashi’s own recent experiences. His wife had given birth but was taken ill. With his spouse hospital-bound, Yonebayashi had to care for his family on his own. The short’s theme of “family reunion” came from this life experience. Yonebayashi, no stranger to depicting tiny humanoids thanks to Arrietty, again shows his ability to portray our normal world from a different perspective.
The second film, Life Ain’t Gonna Lose, is almost devastatingly earthbound – at least in terms of narrative. But with Momose directing the short. its animation is wonderfully expressive, portraying a story that could easily be a live-action drama elevated by a visual presentation only animation could achieve. According to Nishimura, Momose was the first director he approached for the Modest Heroes project. He always wished Momose would have directed a feature-length film for Ghibli.
The third short, Invisible, is action and character-oriented. Another Ghibli legend directs; Yamashita Akihiko had been lead animator on all of Miyazaki’s films since Howl’s Moving Castle, and Nishimura also desired to see what he could do if allowed to helm a project. (Yamashita had directed once for Ghibli, creating the adorable museum-exclusive A Sumo Wrestler’s Tail.) His short is full of incredible motion, energy, and even pathos; it’s a tour de force writ small.
(A fourth short was also in the planning stages. The director was to be none other than Ghibli co-founder Takahata Isao – who sadly passed away before the project could be brought to fruition. Modest Heroes is dedicated to the acclaimed director, with whom Nishimura worked for so long.)
Wherefore Art Thou, Ponoc
Since Modest Heroes first screened in 2018, Studio Ponoc has sadly released only a single animation: the aforementioned Olympic short, Tomorrow’s Leaves. Nishimura has announced no other projects, whether feature or short length. A New York Times article from 2018 claims Ponoc was “…in the midst of planning another short film and several feature-length ones.” However, no official word of these has been forthcoming.
The reason may stem from a paucity of animators, who often face starvation wages and terrible hours in the anime industry. In fact, the Olympic Foundation of Culture originally approached Ponoc hoping to commission a full-length film; Nishimura turned down the offer, saying that Ponoc lacked animators who could produce a two-hour feature on a sports theme. Instead, the OFOC received a truncated eight-minute-long animation.
The studio is not simply acting passively in the face of this industry shortage, however. In April of 2021, Ponoc announced its creation of an animator training program, whose goal is to foster a new generation of feature-film animators. Nishimura says that the anime industry is facing a coming crunch, with massive global demand but not enough talent. Ponoc aims to help hold off such an eventuality – passing on the legacy of Ghibli animation while securing a future for itself.
An Animation Ethos
Studio Ponoc’s production history is hopefully in its infancy; one film, four shorts, and a commercial isn’t the most voluminous base to start from. By this point, six years in, Ghibli had Castle in the Sky, Grave of the Fireflies, Totoro, Kiki’s, Only Yesterday, and Porco Rosso under its belt. The constant comparisons with Ghibli provide Ponoc with endless public interest, but the comparison isn’t always kind.
What does impress, however, is the ethos of Studio Ponoc. In exploring the identity of his studio, Nishimura has acknowledged an important aspect of the Japanese animation industry.
In a rapidly aging Japan, animators seem to have little internet in animating for children. Rather, they want to make what they – adults – want to see. While the Japanese children’s animation industry is massive, much of animation is focused on teens and older. Nishimura wanted to shift this locus back towards animating for young audiences.
His ideas about what children’s animation means, however, are very Miyazakian. Children do not deserve “cheesy stuff”; rather, children deserve animation and films of the highest quality. Movies should strive not to distract, but to entrance. Ghibli films have remained so deeply in the hearts of children and former children like few things do; Nishimura seems to feel Ponoc must strive to do the same. And they would do so while allowing for more creative chances to be taken on different talent; rather than everything being dictated by the grand old men, like at Ghibli, creators should have their own voice.
Give the Man a Film
Then there’s Momose – someone who certainly seems to have his own voice. While I greatly appreciate Yoneyabashi’s work for Ghibli, I feel the true artistic talent waiting for full exposure at Ponoc is undoubtedly Momose. He’s by far the most experienced, with an incredible track record for emotive animation matched with meaningful direction.
Some time ago, Benjamin Ettinger of Anipages said of Momose that “in my mind, he is the obvious and only candidate to helm a Ghibli feature post [Miyazaki and Takahata].” Momose is no longer with Ghibli, but his artistic credentials as a successor to such directorial giants remain evident. Despite Yonebayashi’s stronger presence in the brand narrative, Momose has actually directed more projects for Ponoc than anyone else. (Three to Yonebayashi’s two.) And yet, Momose has never been given the reigns to a full-length animated film, despite his clear abilities, perhaps most conspicuous in his masterful Life Ain’t Gonna Lose short. Momose is in his early 70s; it would be a shame for the world to never receive a true film from such a talent.
The Ponoc That Still Could Be
Ghibli is seemingly focused on producing Miyazaki’s final legacy film, alongside producing lesser CG fare from his much-maligned son. This leaves Ponoc with an incredible opportunity to fulfill the promise the studio originally possessed; to carry on the spirit of Studio Ghibli in creating uncompromising, traditionally animated films. The studio has the talent; it has the skill. All it needs is the vision, the will, adequate staffing, and the necessary financial backing to re-enter the theatrical game at full power. Across the world, 2D animated film is being supplanted by CG animation, all while simultaneously experiencing an understated golden age under the aegises of such creators as Cartoon Saloon, Hosoda Mamoru, Shinkai Makoto, and more. Momose should add his name to that list, and alongside him, Studio Ponoc itself.
There may never truly be another “Ghibli,” nor will there ever be another Miyazaki. Yet the potential for incredible, artful animated films is as alive as ever. Ponoc could still have a real role to play in making the world of film a more engaging, varied, and fantastic place. I, for one, am cheering them on.
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