HOW TO RANK GHIBLI FAIRLY
Ranking all twenty-three Studio Ghibli films fairly requires acknowledging that the studio is not one filmmaker's vision- it's primarily two filmmakers' visions (Miyazaki and Takahata), occasionally supplemented by a third (Yonebayashi), and complicated by the question of the Miyazaki Goro films and the later Miyazaki returns-from-retirement. The Miyazaki films and the Takahata films are doing different things- Miyazaki building a mythological universe rooted in Shinto animism and ecological urgency, Takahata making formally precise films about Japanese social history and grief. Ranking them as a single body of work requires accepting that 'best' means different things in each filmmaker's register.
A note on sentiment: Ghibli rankings built on childhood attachment tend to put My Neighbor Totoro or Spirited Away at the top because those are the films people saw first. This ranking is built on formal achievement and completeness of argument. That produces a different order. Sentiment is a legitimate reason to love a film; it's not a ranking criterion.
TIER ONE- THE FORMAL SUMMATIONS
Princess Mononoke (1997): Miyazaki's most formally ambitious film. A war between gods and humans about the ownership of a forest, in which no one is the villain because everyone's claim is partially legitimate. The ecological argument at its most complex- the film actively resists the resolution it seems to be building toward, and the ending refuses the triumph that two hours of escalation seem to promise. The formal achievement is sustaining genuine moral complexity across a two-hour action film with enough narrative momentum to keep a mainstream audience engaged. The production is Ghibli's most technically demanding.
Grave of the Fireflies (Takahata, 1988): The most formally precise film in the studio catalogue and its most emotionally devastating. Not an animation experience- a film experience that happens to be animated. Two children surviving, or failing to survive, the American firebombing of Japan in 1945. The formal decision to begin with the boy's death- to tell you in the first minute that both he and his sister will die- removes the narrative tension and replaces it with the specific suffering of watching people you already know are lost move toward their end. Released on the same double bill as My Neighbor Totoro in 1988. The juxtaposition was intentional.
Spirited Away (2001): The most complete entry in Miyazaki's mythology-building project and the most formally accessible. A ten-year-old girl works in a bathhouse for spirits while trying to rescue her parents. The specific quality of Shinto animism- the everything-has-spirit worldview that underlies the visual universe of every Miyazaki film- is made legible here to any audience willing to bring attention to it, regardless of cultural knowledge. Formally the richest Miyazaki film in terms of the density of visual information per frame.
TIER TWO- THE GREAT FILMS
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984): The film that made Ghibli possible- produced by Topcraft before Ghibli was formally established, but treated as the first Ghibli film retrospectively and released as such. The ecological argument in its earliest and most urgent form. Less formally refined than Princess Mononoke- the ending compromises the moral complexity in a way the later film corrects- but more raw in its urgency. Essential.
My Neighbor Totoro (1988): The warmest film in the catalogue and a perfect children's film that is not only for children. Two girls and their enormous forest spirit in rural Japan in the late 1950s. The grief underneath it- the mother's illness, never directly addressed, present in every frame the girls spend away from the hospital- gives it a weight that lifts it above the simply charming. The most formally deceptive Ghibli film: it looks like it's only doing one thing and it's doing three.
The Tale of Princess Kaguya (Takahata, 2013): His final film and the most formally beautiful thing the studio produced. Animated in a deliberately unfinished watercolour style- the lines visible, the edges soft, the whole image looking like a sketch that never quite resolved into a finished thing- which is formally appropriate for a story about impermanence. A Japanese folk tale about a woman who came from the moon. About beauty as something that exists only in the act of perceiving it. Takahata's masterwork in the sense that word is occasionally earned: the film he spent his career building toward.
Only Yesterday (Takahata, 1991): The most underrated film in the Ghibli catalogue. An adult woman's present- she's travelling to the countryside for a working holiday- and her childhood past, told in alternating sections that are formally distinguished by animation style. The past sections are the most naturalistic animation Ghibli produced. The formal argument is about memory- the way the past is always being revised by the present that's looking back at it. Still not widely available; worth seeking out.
TIER THREE- ESSENTIAL VIEWING
Howl's Moving Castle (2004): A war allegory disguised as a fairy tale, made during the Iraq War, in which Miyazaki's anti-militarism is at its most directly stated. Formally less disciplined than the peak films but visually extraordinary- the castle itself is one of the great animated images. The ending is the most formally conventional Miyazaki conclusion and the only part of the film that feels slightly wrong.
Porco Rosso (1992): A seaplane pilot who is literally a pig. Miyazaki's most self-indulgent film and his most personal- the film he made for middle-aged men, he said, who are disillusioned with the world. Formally unusual in the Ghibli catalogue: slower, more elegiac, more interested in the specific texture of 1930s Mediterranean light than in narrative momentum. A pleasure rather than a formal achievement.
The Wind Rises (2013): Miyazaki's last film before his first retirement and his most morally complex- a biography of Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who designed Japan's WWII fighter planes. The film that makes the fewest concessions to comfort. Formally beautiful, morally uncomfortable, and the most serious engagement with Japanese history Miyazaki attempted. Worth watching specifically because it doesn't resolve into the warmth of the earlier films.
Sentiment is a legitimate reason to love a film; it's not a ranking criterion.