Similarities Between 3 Miyazaki Films

12-7-06

In class I have watched 3 Miyazaki films, all of which I have seen before. When watching all of these I noticed some similarities in all of his movies. In Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke the monsters or demons look the same. They both have big black or dark colored monsters that are covered in some type of goop. With each of these monsters comes a hidden surprise inside, which usually requires some pulling to get. Miyazaki also likes to include characters from one movie and work them into another movie. For example, the little black and spiky balls from Spirited Away are also in My Neighbor, Totoro. I have also noticed that in his movies, the main character is almost always a girl. The girls he creates are always different though. Take the girl from Spirited Away’ she was not very brave at times while the two girls from Princess Mononoke and My Neighbor Totoro are brave. Another character similarity I noticed was that along with having a main girl, he also has a boy who creates a little love story side plot. The music or soundtrack for these three movies sounds the similar also. I do not know if they are similar, but all three of them have piano music playing through many parts of the movie. I think he may have chosen the piano as a main music choice because it is an easy instrument to create different feels in the music with. For instance, you could always tell when there was a lot of action or when something sad was happening just by the way the music sounds.