Well friends, “Miyazaki Madness” is officially over. We’ve had 4 weeks of match ups, voting, comments and best of all, appreciation for the films of Studio Ghibli! In total, the tournament brought in nearly 10,000 visitors, racked up nearly 300 votes and I have to say it was a tremendous turnout! Thank you all for stopping by to participate in this event (I bet you’ll be glad to see an end to my Twitter and Facebook updates, huh?).
So who gets to wear the winner’s crown and strut their stuff all around the animation world?? Well click the image below (for a hi-rez version) and find out for yourself…
That’s right anime fans, getting more than half the votes in each poll throughout the tournament, the winner of “The Greatest Miyazaki/Takahata/Studio Ghibli Film” is SPIRITED AWAY!!!
Going into the finals, it was Hayao Miyazaki’s top seeded Spirited Away vs Isao Takahata’s emotional anti-war film. Mismatched sure, but what a great cross section of Studio Ghibli’s wonderful film resume! True, a feel good Oscar winner against a tough-to-watch heart breaking film is kind of a one sided match-up. However, I’m really impressed to find so many Grave of the Fireflies fans come out of the wood work and take it from the number 15 seed all the way into the championship round! Sure have to give Takahata some real credit for that!
Well now that it’s all over, we can all sit back and let Chihiro/Sen, Haku, Yubaba, Zeniba, No Face and the rest of the gang enjoy their win. Like I said before there’s really not a loser in the group. Ghibli films are inspirational and really are a treat for the eyes, ears and hearts. They foster imagination and encourage the characters to believe in themselves and teach us to do the same.
Whaddya say Ghibli fans…you happy with the winner of “Miyazaki Madness“? Who did you think was going to win??
10 Comments
Novroz
I am very happy 🙂
It is my all time favorite animation.
Thanks for doing this nice ‘battle’ Marc
MarcC
Hey Nov, I had a great time putting it together and am pretty happy with the amount of people who showed up for it. Glad you enjoyed it:)
Andrew
Boo. Not even being contrarian, I really do like Grave more than Spirited Away.
MarcC
To each their own. I wasn’t an avid fan of either of the finalists. I like them both but I think Ponyo and Laputa, Whisper of the Heart and even Pom Poko are better stories imo. Also I’m a huge fan of Howl’s Moving Castle even if the story makes lesser sense than most of the more popular Ghibli films:P
Andrew
That’s sort of the beauty of Miyazaki’s work, I think. His films are so diverse that each can serve as anybody’s favorite among his body of work.
Tom Clift
I like SPIRITED AWAY but I voted for GRAVE myself. I think SPIRITED would be about my third or fourth favourite Ghibli film, after MONONOKE and HOWLS.
I hope you do another one of these tournaments, maybe with another directors filmography. There was a huge, multi-director one over at Row Three recently which was also a lot of fun.
MarcC
Nice to find another fan of Howl’s Tom:) But funny you should mention doing another one (I take it you liked this one then huh?:P). When I was setting this up I imagined this as a sort of litmus test for a Greatest Animated Film Tournament. If I did that, it’d be many months from now but it is on the back burner so keep your eyes open for it:)
I like the idea of another director and right off the bat Tim Burton, Ridley Scott, and Steven Spielberg come to mind. But what I learned real quick doing this is that a tournament may be very esoteric. Need to keep it wide open to accommodate film fans with wide tastes. I’ll get back to you:P
Novroz
I have reviewed your given DVD with a lot of love 🙂
Maybe you are interested in reading it.
Loon Billy Saefong
Mononoke and Spirited Away should have been on opposite sides! But Spirited Away is still great!
Tom
Mononoke should have won 🙁