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Studio Ghibli Returns with an Uncanny Trial in CG Animation


I was really rooting for Earwig and the Witch. I mean it is the return of Studio Ghibli, their first feature in seven years and the first sign they are looking to a future without Hayao Miyazaki, the studios’ visionary founder and genius director. And I thought that this being a CG-animated movie was an interesting and bold choice. Plus, I just wanted a win for the director, Goro Miyazaki, whose previous films Tales from Earthsea and From Up on Poppy Hill though good are often seen as lesser entries in the companys’ catalogue next to all the classics -and his dad is just real mean to him about his efforts too. It would be a great validation if he successfully brought Studio Ghibli into the CG animation sphere. Sadly, what Earwig and the Witch does instead is tarnish a legacy. In thirty-five years and twenty-one features, many of which rank among the greatest animated films, Studio Ghibli has not made a bad movie… until now.
Earwig and the Witch is the second Ghibli film adapted from a book by Diana Wynne Jones (one of her last) after the hugely successful Howl’s Moving Castle. Structurally, it’s much less complex than that -in fact it’s almost annoyingly simple as it tells the story of an orphan girl, the daughter of a witch, who is adopted by another witch and a warlock to basically be their housekeeper. It has the feel of an old Roald Dahl story crossed with any of the multitudes of anime about young girl witches, excepting of course Ghibli’s own signature entry in that genre. It’s got all the staples: magical mischief, a sassy black talking cat, a timid and nerdy best friend of the opposite sex, a mild coming-of-age narrative, and a last act ellipsis. It wouldn’t be that interesting or original a story on its’ own, salvageable maybe, but by no means dependable. However that is not what sinks this movie.
There is no denying it, the animation is hideous. When it comes to Studio Ghibli’s artistry, it’s usually so uniformly great that the only reason to discuss it is to praise its’ awesomeness, depth, vivacity, or creativity (that’s true of Miyazaki’s past work too, much as his father may say otherwise). Thus why it’s so incredibly disheartening  that on this film it is the animation that is by far the most egregious and fatal component. Every person, object, and bit of texture looks plastic and uniquely lifeless, like bad claymation crossed with a Disney Junior show. Characters move and interact with an unnerving awkwardness and the expressions are shallow at best, uncomfortable at worst. It would have all the signs of a first foray into animation but insultingly there’s competence behind it, which you can see in some of the details and layouts. The animation doesn’t look ugly because the animators don’t know better, but because they’re adapting the form but not the technique of traditional anime.
For as wide-ranging and versatile as anime is, it is beholden to distinctive visual choices and stylistic peculiarities exclusive to the form: certain facial expressions, emotional imagery, heightened character designs, transformative aesthetics based on tone, all things you’d recognize if you’ve seen any anime and perfectly cohesive within that style that facilitates them. But removed from that style, they really don’t work. It’s where most of the nightmare fuel in Earwig and the Witch comes from: big and outrageous expressive choices far too specific or bizarre  to translate organically into a stunted CGI context. Even just the traditional anime eyes look so off-putting. This choice greatly effects the dubbing too. Where the discrepancy between traditional anime lip movement and dialogue (even in the original Japanese) is not bothersome due to the easy adaptability of that lip movement, in a CG framework with a 3D model where the lip movement has to be highly sophisticated, that disparity is much more pronounced and distractedly noticeable. Talented folks like Dan Stevens and Richard E. Grant might as well be talking over the movie for how rarely what they’re saying lines up with the motions their characters’ mouths are making.
As far as that goes I’m glad there’s less singing than the films’ promotional imagery let on. A minor development that the film seems to inordinately want to sell is that the witches are rock stars, which seems like something that ought to be more focused on in lieu of Earwigs’ plots of pettiness against her authoritative new mother –who’s perhaps played with a bit too much villainy to earn the casual attitude the movie gives her relationship to Earwig. Earwig’s real mother is another curious point, and we’re never given a decent explanation as to why she gave her daughter up. It’s one of several little plot points not to have any real purpose, alongside Earwig’s friendship with a dweeby boy tragically named Custard, and the mystery of the warlock Mandrake’s private room. A whole assortment of ideas that are not given their due and would benefit the film greatly with a little expansion. As is, even discounting the animation, there’s almost nothing to latch onto in the story or characters –areas where even the weakest Ghibli films have triumphed.
Honestly, I can envision a version of this movie that works. It operates after all off of a tried and true formula of stories like Matilda and Annie. And I’m sure the source material is worth it. The animation even could be made more tolerable without having to be a hand-drawn aesthetic. But the character of anime doesn’t suit it, and I don’t know that it can be made to. I’m not familiar with the breadth of anime enough to know if there have been successful trials into CG animation –but I know that it’s been attempted enough times that surely there  must be some that have turned out better than this. Experimentation in any art form is good and I wouldn’t deny Studio Ghibli the opportunity to continue trying to work with a CG style. But they need to evolve into it considerably and work out the bugs before it has any chance of matching the extraordinary power of their previous work. Because Earwig and the Witch looks like it was made that way just because it could be. It is not the homecoming we wanted and is unusually careless. Studio Ghibli has ripped off the band-aid, we now know they have the ability to fail as much as any other long-running company. I hope it doesn’t set a precedent.

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