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Fantasy and Realism - Comparative Analysis of Selected Films by Walt Disney and Hayao Miyazaki

The task of both Walt Disney and Hayao Miyazaki was to be different from other animators. While the former was paving new ways at the very beginnings of the history of animation in the States, the latter had to fight the giant and attract global attention with a distinctive style, which is simultaneously typically Asian i.e. far removed from Hollywood. The aim of the paper is to compare approaches to realism through story and stylization in animated features produced at the Disney and Ghibli studios as the two most famous and most profitable studios in the world. The paper focuses at six films, which are most frequently listed as the directors’ top releases: Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940) and Bambi (1942) ; and Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Princess Mononoke (1997) and Spirited Away (2001). Although their approaches to realism are different, there are certain common aspects that lend themselves perfectly to a comparative analysis. Disney abandons metamorphosis, respects the laws of gravity and introduces life-drawing classes during which animators study the actors’ movements and by using the multiplane camera, he creates the illusion of the third dimension. With his cute aesthetics and escapist world, he focuses on his target audience – children. Miyazaki, however, does not avoid taboo topics and realistic human struggles. He creates characters any viewer can immediately recognize as anime despite being physically different from the typical characters of Japanese animation. Although plants and animals generally do not communicate in his films, certain characters are capable of supernatural jumps and flights. This, however, does not affect the overall experience of reality and the aspect is compensated by the extraordinary representations of landscapes as well as interiors, which are given one of the main and most interesting roles in the films.

animated features, realism, metamorphosis, aesthetics, anime

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