The theatrical features
Dates are Japanese theatrical release. Nausicaä predates the studio and is included because everybody counts it anyway.
| Year | Film | Director | One honest line |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind | Miyazaki | Pre-Ghibli, and the manga is better. |
| 1986 | Castle in the Sky | Miyazaki | The purest adventure film he made. |
| 1988 | Grave of the Fireflies | Takahata | Extraordinary. Once may be enough. |
| 1988 | My Neighbor Totoro | Miyazaki | Almost no plot and completely unimprovable. |
| 1989 | Kiki's Delivery Service | Miyazaki | The best film about creative burnout ever aimed at children. |
| 1991 | Only Yesterday | Takahata | Hits differently after thirty. |
| 1992 | Porco Rosso | Miyazaki | A middle-aged man's film, and unbothered about it. |
| 1994 | Pom Poko | Takahata | Funny, structurally odd, quietly furious. |
| 1995 | Whisper of the Heart | Kondō | The one I recommend most and nobody expects. |
| 1997 | Princess Mononoke | Miyazaki | No heroes, no villains, real blood. |
| 1999 | My Neighbors the Yamadas | Takahata | A newspaper comic that became a feature. |
| 2001 | Spirited Away | Miyazaki | The obvious answer, and still the right one. |
| 2002 | The Cat Returns | Morita | Light, brief, charming, minor. |
| 2004 | Howl's Moving Castle | Miyazaki | Gorgeous, and the plot does come apart. |
| 2006 | Tales from Earthsea | G. Miyazaki | The weakest, and its director has said so. |
| 2008 | Ponyo | Miyazaki | Hand-drawn water. Watch it with a five-year-old. |
| 2010 | Arrietty | Yonebayashi | Scale and sound design done beautifully. |
| 2011 | From Up on Poppy Hill | G. Miyazaki | Warm, small, better than its reputation. |
| 2013 | The Wind Rises | Miyazaki | His most argued-about film, deservedly. |
| 2013 | The Tale of the Princess Kaguya | Takahata | The one I would save from a fire. |
| 2014 | When Marnie Was There | Yonebayashi | Melancholy, and unusually well structured. |
| 2020 | Earwig and the Witch | G. Miyazaki | Full 3D CG. The experiment did not land. |
| 2023 | The Boy and the Heron | Miyazaki | Late, strange, personal. Not a first film. |
Beyond these there are television films, the museum short films that screen nowhere else, and Ocean Waves (1993), a made-for-TV feature by younger staff that is worth an evening.
Four ways in
If you have never seen one
- Spirited Away — the full range of what the studio does, in one film.
- My Neighbor Totoro — recalibrates your expectations about plot.
- Princess Mononoke — shows you the studio has teeth.
- Kiki's Delivery Service — the emotional heart of the early period.
If you are watching with young children
- Ponyo, then Totoro, then Kiki.
- Hold Spirited Away until they are older; the parents-into-pigs sequence lands hard.
- Mononoke and Grave of the Fireflies are not children's films in any sense.
If you already like film and want the interesting stuff
- Only Yesterday, Whisper of the Heart, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.
- Then Porco Rosso and The Wind Rises as a pair about aviation and complicity.
If you want the argument
Watch The Wind Rises and then read about the response to it. A film about a man who designs beautiful aircraft that become weapons, made by a lifelong pacifist who loves aircraft, released to accusations from both directions at once. It is the most productive fight in the studio's history.
Dub or subtitles
An American opinion, offered as one: the dubs are good, and the sub is better. The English casts of the Disney-era releases are genuinely well directed, and for children who cannot read fast enough the dub is the correct choice. But dubbing has to fill mouth movements, and Ghibli scripts leave a lot of silence. Filled silence is a different film.