Samの英語チャンネル

The two companies go way back, and apparently there’s a piece of crossover fan art hanging on the wall inside Studio Ghibli.

Late last year, Studio Ghibli quietly set up a Twitter account. As fans might expect, though, Japan’s most respected animation house isn’t pumping out self-promoting tweets for its commercial ventures, but instead giving an intimate, and often irreverent, look at day-to-day life in the studio.

おはようございます！ pic.twitter.com/gpFSu0Rgrh

— スタジオジブリ STUDIO GHIBLI (@JP_GHIBLI) April 11, 2021

So while the separate Studio Ghibli Publishing Division Twitter account is keeping followers abreast of new merchandise and upcoming events, the Studio Ghibli account has been spending the last few days following a figure of Earwig (a.k.a. Aya), the star of Ghibli’s first-ever CG anime, Earwig and the Witch, as she tours the Ghibli offices.

さて、あやつりにいくか……。 pic.twitter.com/RTnSV1J7kw

— スタジオジブリ STUDIO GHIBLI (@JP_GHIBLI) April 12, 2021

Here, for example, she stops in front of a framed piece of artwork from Kiki’s Delivery Service, another witch-related Ghibli anime, and muses “So I have a senpai…”

先輩がいるのね……。 pic.twitter.com/bIwtUHZHWU

— スタジオジブリ STUDIO GHIBLI (@JP_GHIBLI) April 13, 2021

She also stops by what appears to be the desk of Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, though she’s uses a different title for him.

▼ “The head wizard…isn’t here right now, it looks like.”

大魔法使いは……席にはいないみたい。 pic.twitter.com/mBXtxMC01l

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— スタジオジブリ STUDIO GHIBLI (@JP_GHIBLI) April 15, 2021

But one of the most-liked tweets so far from Earwig’s tour came in a tweet that talks about a different famous animation studio.

▼ “Love Pixar.”

ピクサー大好き。 pic.twitter.com/tgjTfEG45M

— スタジオジブリ STUDIO GHIBLI (@JP_GHIBLI) April 14, 2021

It’s a touching salute, made all the more meaningful by how it’s a completely unprompted show of admiration for the U.S. CG specialists. Even sweeter is that by omitting a pronoun, you could take the tweet as being a declaration of love for Pixar from Earwig herself or from Studio Ghibli as a whole. Plus if you look closely, you’ll even see that the picture Earwig is looking at, which is ostensibly on display somewhere inside Studio Ghibli, shows Totoro waiting at his iconic bus stop, with Monsters, Inc.’s Mike and Sulley standing next to him.

Miyazaki and former Pixar head John Lasseter famously formed a friendship after becoming acquainted during pre-production talks for a proposed animated adaptation of Little Nemo back in the early 1980s. As both Ghibli and Pixar found continuing success through the 1990s, the studios maintained warm relations, and Steve Alpert, then head of Studio Ghibli’s international division, recalls that “Beginning with Princess Mononoke, every new Ghibli film…screened outside the U.S. for the first time at Pixar Animation…the art of animation operates at its very highest level when the skills it took to get it there are the least apparent. Which is why Ghibli always [screened them at Pixar first],” and it looks like the warm feelings continue to this day.

Source: Twitter/@JP_GHIBLI via Huffington Post Japan
Featured image: Twitter/@JP_GHIBLI
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Source: SORA NEWS24