BigMrJosh presents: Top 5 Studio Ghibli Movies – Staff Picks

DISCLAIMER: BigMrJosh Enterprises has a workforce of one, so it’s actually just my picks. I thought it sounded more important if I called it staff picks though. I’m allowed to make that sort of executive decision, cos I’m the boss.

DISCLAIMER, The SECOND: Be aware that I am going to indulge my inner fanboy here. If anime is not your thing, then just look at the pictures and then move on, okay, Mum? If a list of anime films is the most unusual thing you’ve ever read about in a blog then you obviously don’t have an RSS feed at savagehermaphrofights.com. Which means you now have something to do after reading this post.

Disclaimer, The Third. This will be the last disclaimer. Sorry if you don’t like disclaimers. I have to protect my staff.

If there’s one thing the Japanese love, it’s cartoons. And I respect that. If there’s another thing the Japanese love, it seems to be young girls getting raped by alien tentacles. That, I’m not so fond of. But the good news is that Studio Ghibli – my favourite Japanese animation studio – don’t really go in for that whole rapey tentacle thing. If that’s what you’re after, this will not help you. But then, if tentacle rape is what you’re after, you are probably beyond my help anyway. What was I saying? Oh yeah, Studio Ghibli rocks. Most of their films are good for the whole family. Not that I care, since I don’t have a family, but I’m always impressed when entertainment can appeal to a wide age range. I think that’s got to be tough. In fact, most Studio Ghibli films feature children as the main characters, so they can be quite inspirational for a young audience.

Without further ado, here are my top 5 favourite Studio Ghibli films. You owe it to yourself to see at least one of these if you haven’t already. They can usually be found in the kids section at the video store, a place that I am always slightly ashamed to peruse, which is not fair!

My Neighbour Totoro – This film has such a sweet story about family and belief. I think everyone should watch this film as part of their training to be a human. That being said, even if this was a 2 hour video of Mei giggling, it would still be the best Studio Ghibli film ever. But you also get the Catbus, the soot sprites and Totoro himself. Great stuff. There’s a reason why Totoro is the official Studio Ghibli mascot, because this is about the coolest movie ever.

Yeah, bitches!

Kiki’s Delivery Service – It’s well documented that witches are the brides of Satan, but Idon’t know how to reconcile that with the story of Kiki, a 13-year-old witch who just wants to achieve some independence. Like just about every Studio Ghibli film, Kiki’s Delivery Service features a cute sidekick. Jiji is Kiki’s cat and he kind of steals the show.

Spirited Away – If you’ve heard of any Ghibli movie, odds are this is the one. The only anime to win an Academy Award. That feat earned it a small cinematic release here in New Zealand, and I’m really glad I got to see it in a theatre. It’s about a girl who is moving house with her parents. They all get lost, the parents turn into pigs and she enters the spirit world. So you can see how I would feel some personal connections to the story.

Princess Mononoke – This is where it all started for me. I suspect the memory increases my love for the film. I first saw Princess Mononoke at a fringe film festival in Dunedin that I originally hadn’t even wanted to go to. I’m glad I did. Isn’t it funny how something unexpected, or even unwanted, can be quite influential? The cut that I saw that night was heavily edited to make it more palatable to western audiences. I didn’t even realise how savage the film was until I bought it on DVD many years later. This one is definitely not for kids, unless your kids are well-versed in things like bloody exploding heads. I like that no holds barred approach to the film’s environmental message; if anything’s going to make me get serious about recycling, it’s a giant pissed-off unkillable boar.

Separate cans and plastics! Bwoarrggggh!!

My Neighbours the Yamadas – I suppose in a country where your neighbours are so close they can steal your rice without leaving their own apartment the idea of neighbours is important. Still, I wouldn’t be caught dead naming two movies “My neighbour...”. This is a very different movie from My Neighbour Totoro though. It has more of a light-hearted take on life, it is set in the real world and deals with real family issues and it has an endearing, almost unfinished look to the animation. I can say that it’s not for everyone, as I loved it and my wife did not. But she likes Kenny G and she’s not on staff, so don’t listen to her! P.S Honey, I love you. Please don’t hurt me.

Honourable Mentions

Pom Poko - Raccoons have magical testes. The movie is called Pom Poko because that’s the sounds raccoons make when they’re using their testicles as drums. The End.

Howl’s Moving Castle – Takes a book that makes no sense and... well, the movie also makes no sense, but at least it looks good!

Grave of the Fireflies – I haven’t seen Grave of the Fireflies for a good ten years. I’ll have to watch it again before I go to Japan. Why? Because it deals with the firebombing of Kobe during World War II. Last time I watched it I could never have imagines I would go there to live one day. Everyone remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but because it was a simple firebombing Kobe doesn’t get that kind of attention. I’m looking forward to seeing the memorials when I get there.

Sucky Mentions

You can’t hit a home run every time. Especially when you're playing golf, but that's another story. The following Studio Ghibli movies... just suck. Avoid.

Porco Rosso – “Pigs will fly before Studio Ghibli make a bad movie.” I present to you Porco Rosso, a stupid movie about a pilot who also happens to be a pig. But he’s not really a pig, it’s actually a curse or something. Rubbish!

The Cat Returns – The cat should have stayed away. You suck, cat!

Laputa Castle in the Sky – I’m going to ruin the ending of this one for you. In the final scenes, the female lead uses love to dodge bullets. Yikes.

If by miraculous happenstance you either a) take my advice and view one of these fine films, or b) terrorists kidnap you and force you to watch Porco Rosso on pain of death, please drop me a comment and let me know what you think.

Modernising Sports

As our world continues its relentless march towards eventual ragnarrok or supernova oblivion (depending on your point of view) my 6 readers have begun asking themselves the big questions:

How can we achieve world peace?

What to do about all the pollution and stuff?

When will bigmrjosh increase the awesomeness of our tired, old sporting pursuits?

Well I can only answer two of those questions. Let’s start with sports!

Sports, right? They’ve been around for a while. We don’t know who for sure originally invented sports, but we do know that sports used to be cool. Way cooler than it is today. The Aztecs or the Mayans or something (meticulously researched) used to play their version of basketball with the heads of defeated warriors. Dribbling the ball would have been a problem... but otherwise, hell yeah! Thanks to our namby pamby fear of dismembered heads and limbs getting snapped like kindling, we have dumbed down our sporting pursuits ever since. I’m here to fix that. I’m going to do for sports the same thing I did for the cat that peed in my washing basket: kick it hard into the future. I’m going to modernise sports. Buckle up.

Wrestling

When I called the wrestling hotline and declared my intention of creating a new modern wrestling league, the guy at the other end wanted to know if I had come up with my acronym. I slapped my head with exasperation. Of course! It’s an unwritten law that all wrestling leagues must be preceded by an obscure acronym. Three letter acronyms like WWF or ECW are for wimps. I went the four.

In the spirit of honesty, I have forged the Straight Out The Closet (SOTC) Wrestling Federation (TM). Featuring only those athletes most eager to be oiled up and thrown at another oily dude.

I haven’t even oiled up yet! GOD I WANT YOU ON ME!

I don't know how watching two guys in mankinis pretend to fight but actually just rub their balls all over each other came to be considered a sport, but if you're a fan you might as well just admit it: you like the luncheon truncheon. And I have yet to meet a real woman who enjoys the 'sport' of wrestling.

V8 Supercars

If there’s one thing NZers with mullets love, it’s the V8s. For those of us with jobs: the classic V8 setup consists of 30 cars driving around a circular track 1600 times for the chance to become ultimate circle driving champion. Boring.

Now, usually if you like the V8s you dropped out of primary school, so you can’t afford to construct a circular track for your own car racing amusement. Don’t worry! The New Zealand Government thought of everything, and they have built a track for you, at tax payer expense. We call it SH1.

Even though I only invented this sport 5 minutes ago, it’s already blowing up. It’s going to be huge. I know this because I see it happening every time I go to Auckland. Next time a 17-year-old overtakes me at 138kph I must remember to roll down my window and yell, “stop stepping on my intellectual property rights!”

Interviewer: What do you like best about driving in the V8s?

Driver: Well, I never really mastered using the turn signal, so it’s good to have that taken off the playing field.

Interviewer: Great stuff! Good luck, man!

Driver: I locked my keys in the car. My house keys. My car keys are locked in my house.

Basketball

“Yo! I learned how to play basket ball on the street! That meant whenever a car came along the street I had to step off the street. Onto the footpath, holmes!” – My street credentials

When I was a kid everyone wanted to play basketball because it was fun. And NBA Jam had taught us that if you dunked hard enough the backboard would explode.

"...aaaaaaand ‘SPLODE!"

Michael Jordan managed to be our hero simply by playing the sport he was insanely good at, without accidentally sexing any underage girls, strippers, prostitutes or underage stripper prostitutes. As far as I know.

Before you start to think I’m talking about golf, let’s get back on track: the streets, man. As I said, I was raised on the mean streets (of Mollywood, check the sign) and like every other black kid or really tall Chinese kid, the streets is where I learnt my insane b-ball skills. I think we can make basketball more relevant for the modern age and harken back to our savage ancestral Mayan-style sport by having the losing team get knifed in a drug deal gone bad. Easy fix.

What other sports really need to be modernised and get with the times? Drop me a comment and let me know. Can we fix it? Yes we can. Like a cross between Bob the Builder and Obama.

Breaking News

I have exciting news. If we were to live in a world where it was even possible for my blog to be more awesome than it already is, that world would begin sometime in the months of July or August.

Why, I hear you plaintively cry? Because that, dear reader, is the time frame for my emigration to Japan! That's right, Japan, where awesomeness was invented along with Godzilla, Nintendo, giant Tanuki balls and swords so sharp they can cut through an idea.

As a man, I think I would rather plummet to my death than try to use my balls to break my fall. But that's why I'm not an awesome tanuki.

My wife and I both applied to the JET scholarship for the opportunity to be placed in Japan - where, we aren't sure just yet. I'll keep you posted on that though, count on it! - and given employment as assistant language teachers. Needless to say we were accepted. It's been in the works for a long time. (What I think is long and what a nation that didn't even really talk to other nations until the mid 1800s are two very different things.) It's also the culmination of a lot of planning and not a few sacrifices to get to a place where we could do this, so it's extremely gratifying that the selection committee recognised our passion and our ability. And our awesomeness.

So as I said, it is entirely possible that we are on the cusp of a new world of awesomeness beamed direct to you through the magical powers of the interweb. As always this will be tempered by my laziness, my body's way of telling me to do something more important. But here's where you can help! Your comments are like the twigs that keeps the sputtering flames of my soul from dying out completely. I'm already anticipating being quite out of my depth. But I also know that an experience like this will be hugely inspiring for my writing.

I may even learn how to use words other than awesome.