Animator and leading figure in manga

Born: October 29, 1935;

Died: April 5, 2018

Isao Takahata, who has died aged 82, was the co-founder of the prestigious Japanese animator Studio Ghibli, one of the world’s most respected animation studios. In the face of the growing use of computer-generated images in animation, Takahata stayed with the traditional hand-drawn techniques of Japanese manga animation.

He founded Ghibli with Oscar-winning animator Hayao Miyazaki in 1985, hoping to create Japan’s Disney, and is well known for directing Grave of the Fireflies, a tragic tale about wartime childhood; he also produced some of the studio’s films. A native of Mie Prefecture of Japan, Takahata was a graduate of the University of Tokyo and developed his technique at Toei, one of Japan’s major film and animation studios.

As Hollywood began to move towards more realistic animation, Takahata was determined to maintain the much more stylised traditions of Manga.

“It is about the essence that’s behind the drawing,” he said. “We want to express reality without an overly realistic depiction, and that’s about appealing to the human imagination.”

His 1982 rendition of Gauche the Cellist, a classic by early 20th century poet-writer Kenji Miyazawa, was inspired by oil paintings. He said Ghibli strove to fuse Japanese and Western filmmaking styles.

Although he did not win an Oscar, Takahata won many other awards, including those from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Lorcano International Film Festival.

Pixar’s Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3, said Takahata influenced Michael Arndt’s script for Little Miss Sunshine, a road trip comedy about a family of losers trying to survive.

“Grave of the Fireflies is an amazing, emotional film. And My Neighbors the Yamadas is incredibly charming,” Unkrich said. My Neighbors the Yamadas chronicled the daily lives of the Yamada family.

Strong female characters were a Takahata trademark. Takahata was planning to do a film about exploited girls, forced to work as nannies with infants strapped on their backs.

Although his films were often fantasies, he was a realist, insisting, for instance, on genuine musical instruments being played that matched what was depicted on the screen. He was gentle but also a perfectionist, grilling his voice actors till the tone and character interpretations were just right.

All his stories, he said, held the message of urging everyone to live life to their fullest, to be all they can be and to avoid getting bogged down by petty concerns like money and prestige.

“This earth is a good place, not because there is eternity,” he said. “All must come to an end in death. But in a cycle, repeated over and over, there will always be those who come after us.”