follow-up: female characters and Miyazaki's films

[chimerically]

As a follow-up to my post earlier today about Pixar's not-so-great record of female character numbers (only 22% of voiced characters are female, and only one is *possibly* a main character), I wanted to highlight that making popular animated movies with good female lead characters can be, and in fact has been, done right. Hayao Miyazaki, of Studio

Comments

[olego]

Totoro is male? I always thought it's a huge cuddly gender-less cat. :-)

[chimerically]

It's likely that at least some others also think that, though Totoro (and Catbus) did have male voice actors in both the Japanese and American versions.

[olego]

Catbus made sounds?? Hmm, I thought it just meowed, in all languages. :-)

[chimerically]

BTW, there ended up being a number of comments over at Facebook (which automatically imports public LJ posts) here:

http://www.facebook.com/notes/morgan-ames/follow-up-female-characters-and-miyazakis-films/10150177957681604

[chimerically]

There are a few other great anime movies that I've seen that aren't Studio Ghibli: Paprika, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Millennium Actress are all amazing (probably best for older kids, though -- there are a couple of scenes in Paprika in particular that are disturbing, even though it's otherwise my favorite in this list). Pale Cocoon, Eve No Jikan, and Ghost in the Shell are also good and provocative.

[guardmisfit]

You can add the Secret World of Arietty to this list now. Saw it last night.

Main character: Arietty (female)
Secondary character: Sean (male)

Other characters: 3 female, 2 male, and a cat

It also fits with your last paragraph description.