Spirited Away
Spirited Away is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli. Spirited Away tells the story of Chihiro "Sen" Ogino, a ten-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood, enters the world of kami (spirits of Japanese Shinto folklore). After her parents are turned into pigs by the witch Yubaba, Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba's bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and return to the human world.
Miyazaki wrote the screenplay after he decided the film would be based on the ten-year-old daughter of his friend Seiji Okuda, the film's associate producer, who came to visit his house each summer. At the time, Miyazaki was developing two personal projects, but they were rejected. With a budget of US$19 million, production of Spirited Away began in 2000. Pixar animator John Lasseter, a fan and friend of Miyazaki, convinced Walt Disney Pictures to buy the film's North American distribution rights, and served as executive producer of its English-dubbed version.
Wolf Children
Wolf Children is a 2012 Japanese anime drama film directed and co-written by Mamoru Hosoda. The second original feature film directed by Hosoda and the first work written by him, the film stars the voices of Aoi Miyazaki, Takao Osawa and Haru Kuroki. The story's central theme is "parent and child”, depicting 13 years in the life of a young woman, Hana, who falls in love with a werewolf while in college, and following his death must raise the resulting half-wolf half-human siblings, Ame and Yuki, who grow and find their own paths in life.
Hosoda established Studio Chizu for production. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990) and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), designed the characters. Wolf Children had its world premiere in Paris on June 25, 2012, and was released theatrically on July 21, 2012, in Japan. Funimation licenses the film for North America[6] and Manga Entertainment handles UK rights.
Your Name
Your Name is a 2016 Japanese animated romantic fantasy film written and directed by Makoto Shinkai, produced by CoMix Wave Films and distributed by Toho. It depicts the story of high school students Taki Tachibana and Mitsuha Miyamizu, who suddenly begin to swap bodies despite having never met, unleashing chaos on each other's lives. The film was inspired by the frequency of natural disasters in Japan.
Your Name premiered at the 2016 Anime Expo in Los Angeles on July 3, 2016, and was theatrically released in Japan on August 26, 2016; it was released internationally by several distributors in 2017. It features the voices of Ryunosuke Kamiki and Mone Kamishiraishi, with animation direction by Masashi Ando, character design by Masayoshi Tanaka, and its orchestral score and soundtrack composed by Radwimps. A light novel of the same name, also written by Shinkai, was published a month prior to the film's premiere.
Paprika
Paprika is a 2006 Japanese adult animated science fiction psychological thriller film directed by Satoshi Kon. The film is based on the 1993 novel of the same name by Japanese author Yasutaka Tsutsui. It is Kon's fourth and final feature film before his death in 2010. The script was co-written by Kon and Seishi Minakami, who also wrote for Kon's TV series Paranoia Agent, the character design and animation director was Masashi Ando (known for Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Your Name), the music was composed by Kon's frequent collaborator Susumu Hirasawa, and the art director was Nobutaka Ike, who worked on all of Kon's works. Japanese animation studio Madhouse animated and produced the film.
The story is about a battle between a dream terrorist who steals a device that allows others to share their dreams and causes nightmares for people, and a research psychologist who enters the dream world and changes into Paprika, a dream detective, to investigate the cases.