Isao Takahata - Career

Career

Takahata was originally intrigued by animation after having seen the French animated cartoon feature Le Roi et l'oiseau (The King and the Mockingbird) based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. He was impressed by the film, asking "Can these kind of things be done by animation?"

While he was job hunting at his university, Takahata was tempted to join Toei Animation by a friend who knew the company wanted an assistant director. For fun he took the company's entrance examination as he had been originally interested in animation. When he was notified of the informal decision, he joined the company.

The reason he decided to join the company was his thought that "If it was animation, I can be something interesting, too." However, there were more than ten people joining the company that same year, two recruited by Toei Animation and the surplus workers sent by Toei head office. Because of the competition, he had a hard time achieving the status of director.

Takahata finally directed his first film after he was recommended for the spot by Yasuo Ōtsuka, who was both his and Hayao Miyazaki's instructor. His directorial debut was Hols: Prince of the Sun. Hols was a commercial failure. He was among the production team deemed responsible for the failure and was accordingly demoted. He also had difficulty making a new film as the remaining staff members who had not been demoted for Hols were working on a different Toei film.

In 1971, to make the animated feature Pippi Longstocking, Takahata left Toei Animation with Yoichi Kotabe and Hayao Miyazaki and transferred to "A Production" (present: Shin-Ei Animation), an animation studio founded by his former superior, Daikichiro Kusube (楠部大吉郎, くすべ だいきちろう?). They travelled to Sweden to acquire the animation rights and to hunt for locations, only to be turned away at the door by author Astrid Lindgren. Though their plan was frustrated, Miyazaki found inspiration in the fortified town of Visby and would later set both Stockholm and Visby as the stage of Kiki's Delivery Service.

In 1971, Takahata and Miyazaki requested to direct episodes seven and onward of the first Lupin III TV series anime, due to the low ratings and, for the time, exceptionally high levels of sex and violence in the initial episodes directed by Masaaki Osumi. Since the animation director was Yasuo Ōtsuka, an old acquaintance, they accepted the offer under the condition that "the names of the two people were not released, and direction was credited only to 'A production directors group.'" Unlike Miyazaki, he did not participate in the second series, though his directing in the original was well-received.

Later in 1971 Zuiyo Enterprise invited Takahata, Kotabe and Miyazaki to direct an animated series of the novel Heidi and all three took the offer. The result was Heidi, Girl of the Alps. Afterward, when the production section of Zuiyo was established as a subsidiary company of the animated cartoon production of Zuiyo Eizo (present: Nippon Animation), they both joined the company. On the picture side, animators drew carefully the nature of Europe and a change of season, and the everyday life of people on location in Switzerland. On the other hand, on the story side, Takahata made the animation version easy to accept by thinning a Christian element of the original besides the earnest Christian (especially, in the latter half).

In the case of 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, the summary of the story followed the original, but he created many episodes and original characters because the story was less than 100 pages. He expressed the protagonist Marco as a boy of independent spirit who did not flatter adults too much and adults as onew who committed the crime even if they were comparatively good men. He brought the world of this anime close to the reality or more by doing so. However, Kotabe and Miyazaki felt frustrated by his direction and did not feel pleasure even as they drew it, and they left Takahata.

In Anne of Green Gables, Takahata directed it along the original basically, but he was able to deepen an impression about Marilla and Anne by describing it as the para-parenthood which was heavier than the original.

In Jarinko Chie, じゃりん子チエ （meaning of Chie the Brat) in 1981, Yasuo Otsuka who belonged to Tokyo Movie Shinsha/Telecom Animation Film Co., Ltd. offered Miyazaki, a Telecom colleague, to make this comic an animated cartoon, but he refused. Therefore, Otsuka consulted Takahata, but he also expressed disapproval first. However, Takahata who had visited Osaka (which was the stage for the story) felt that the world drawn in the comic was actually there. He took the request, left Nippon Animation, and moved to Telecom. This work, which paired Yasuo Otsuka and Yoichi Kotabe, was praised and settled for a TV animation series because it got a favorable reception, and Takahata became the chief director.

In 1982, Takahata was elected the director of Little Nemo — the work that tried to be produced so that Telecom could move to the United States. With Miyazaki and Otsuka, who started at Telecom earlier, Takahata went to America, but the discord between in the Japan-U.S. difference in production technique, meant Takahata resigned and left Telecom. Miyazaki and others followed him. On the other hand, the cultural exchange was born between Japanese animator and seniors of Disney who had been cooperating in this project.

Afterward, Takahata was invited by Miyazaki to join his animation production company Studio Ghibli after the success of Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The first movie directed by Takahata for Ghibli was Grave of the Fireflies. It got good reviews in foreign countries and it was taken up by Roger Ebert.

In Kiki's Delivery Service, Takahata did the music direction for Miyazaki.

Takahata was awarded the Special Award at the Kobe Animation Awards on November 4, 2007.

In September 2011, Takahata confirmed a new project, however he stated that it is still in a conception stage, and may take at least two years until completion.