About this site

Who writes this

My name is Sanders Joseph Octavius and I write everything here. I am not an animator, not a Japanese speaker beyond travel basics, and not connected to Studio Ghibli in any way. I am an American reader who has been watching these films since a rented videotape in the nineties, and who eventually got tired of losing his own notes.

That vantage point shapes the writing, and I would rather state it than pretend otherwise. I came to this catalogue through English dubs and a distribution deal, not through a childhood in Tokyo. Where I am relaying something I have not seen myself, I say so.

How the pages are researched

• Primary sources first. Where the studio, the museum or the park has published something itself, that is what I cite in the text.
• Interviews and books second. Published interviews, documentaries and translated material, identified as such.
• Inference is labelled. When I am reading between the lines, the sentence says so. When something is my opinion, it is written in the first person so you can discount it accordingly.
• Practical details are deliberately thin. Opening hours, admission procedures and prices go stale fast, and a confidently wrong instruction is worse than no instruction. For anything operational I point at the official source instead of copying it.

Corrections policy

If something here is wrong, I want to know. Send it to hello@readbetweentheframes.com with a source if you have one. Substantive corrections are made to the page and noted at the point of the change. I do not quietly rewrite pages to hide errors.

How this site is funded

This site carries advertising, and advertising is its only source of income. That has some consequences I would rather be explicit about:

• Advertisements are labelled as advertisements. They are not written by me and are not endorsements.
• Nothing on this site is sold or booked through me. There are no ticket links, no affiliate links, no sponsored placements inside the articles.
• No advertiser has any input into what the articles say. If that ever changes, this paragraph changes first.
• Advertising cookies only run if you turn them on in the cookie banner. See the cookie policy.

Images and rights

Every illustration on this site was drawn for it as original vector artwork. There is no Studio Ghibli artwork here, no film stills, no characters and no logos. That is a deliberate choice, explained on the disclaimer page.

Getting in touch

Corrections, questions and disagreements are all welcome at hello@readbetweentheframes.com. The contact page has the full details and what to expect.