yesterday night, I had the pleasure of going again to the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Director’s Fortnight), an independent sub-section of the Cannes Film Festival where important directors are allowed to show their work to the general public and critique beforehand, work which normally is not selected for the main event.  This time the screening was one of the two Studio Ghibli movies of 2014, being that the other one is Hayao Miyazaki‘s newest and final work ‘The Wind Rises‘ (which I have not seen yet). The movie in question is the most recent work of Isao Takahata, who although less known than Miyazaki, has achieved a prominent status in the Japanese animation school, as important as Miyazaki, who by the way is a long-time friend and collaborator of Takahata.

the main difference between Miyazaki’s and Takahata’s approaches and commercial success, is that while Miyazaki has a…