While the beloved Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli is no longer making movies, fans of My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Spirited Away have a whole lot to celebrate Friday. Amazon Studios announced it has picked up the first television series by Ghibli for streaming in the U.S. later this year, The Verge reports.
The 26-episode series Ronia The Robber's Daughter will feature English-language dubbing by The X-Files' Gillian Anderson (the Japanese-language trailer, with no subtitles, is below).
Although Studio Ghibli hasn't made a feature film since co-founder Hayao Miyazaki's retirement, it has continued to assist in co-productions — for Ronia, it teams with CGI animation studio Polygon and will be directed by Miyazaki's son. The Verge writes:
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Ronia (or Ronja, in the Japanese version) is based on a thoroughly delightful 1981 fantasy novel by Astrid Lindgren, the Swedish creator of Pippi Longstocking. The story follows a young girl growing up wild in a woodland full of strange creatures, as the only child of the leader of a band of notorious thieves. She has various adventures involving the magical creatures of the wood, but eventually forms a Romeo-and-Juliet friendship with a young boy who's the only child of the leader of a rival band of thieves. The animated series features Ghibli's usual phenomenally rich backdrops for the woodland setting, and its familiar rounded character designs, but they're clearly CGI, with a gimbaled floaty quality that Ghibli characters don't normally have. It's an unusual blend of a very traditional style with new computer animation techniques. [The Verge]
Read more about the project at Variety and The Verge.
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