BODY: When Studio Ghibli announced it would become a subsidiary of Nippon TV, producer Toshio Suzuki made a striking confession at the press conference: every attempt to cultivate a successor to Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata had ended in failure. For fans who assumed Ghibli's succession crisis was a recent problem tied to Miyazaki's repeated retirements, the historical record tells a very different story.
In fact, Ghibli invested in young talent surprisingly early. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, the studio actively courted directors who might carry the brand forward, running training programs and inviting outside filmmakers into its orbit. But each promising path quietly closed. The studio gradually reorganized around Miyazaki's singular creative vision, and projects that didn't align with his sensibility were shelved or redirected.
Among the most tantalizing what-ifs: Mamoru Oshii, the future director of Ghost in the Shell, was once attached to a Ghibli project that never materialized. Sunao Katabuchi—who would later direct the acclaimed In This Corner of the World—served as assistant director on Kiki's Delivery Service and was reportedly being groomed before his trajectory diverged from the studio. Goro Miyazaki and Hiromasa Yonebayashi did make features under the Ghibli banner, but neither was positioned as a true heir.
The pattern points less to a lack of talent than to the impossibility of replicating an auteur-driven house style built around two specific personalities.
The insider take
In Tokyo anime circles, this story isn't shocking—it's confirmation. Industry veterans have long whispered that Ghibli's "training" often amounted to working under Miyazaki's exacting standards without the room to develop a distinct voice. The Nippon TV deal effectively ends the pretense: rather than producing a successor, Ghibli is becoming a stewardship operation, with the IP and brand outliving the studio's original creative engine. It's a very Japanese resolution—preserve the legacy, accept the ending.
Originally reported by はてなブックマーク (Japanese).