I went to see Whisper of the Heart at the cinema a while ago with my friend and the only day we could see it was the Japanese version. Then during the opening credits I saw that Seiji Amasawa was voiced by Issey Takahashi and I thought to myself "Huh. Where have I heard that before?" and then remembered that I watched Shin Ultraman and went "wait, wasn't he in that too?" And yeah, while we were on the way back I looked him up and yeah! He was the voice of Ultraman in that film! Apparently it was a dream come true for him, which is nice for him.

There's two reasons I find this useless fact funny. One is just the insane difference between the two roles. The other is because Whisper of the Heart was written by Hayao Miyazaki, who fucking DESPISES Ultraman with a passion. His reasoning for this hatred is that he believes it convinced a generation of children that "the world inside television was more appealing than reality", which honestly isn't what I expected, I feel like a more reasonable criticism that would be in line with his views would be how violent Ultraman, especially during the 60s and 70s, could be (like unnecessarily so, Ultraman Ace in particular is infamous for how over the top the kills are, and from what I've seen of that era of Ultraman most of it goes completely uninterrogated, Ultraman is definitely a good guy despite how needlessly cruel he is to the Kaiju he's fighting). I appreciate practical effects and am a fan of other Kaiju media like Godzilla, Gamera and especially Mothra (which won't happen but I imagine Hayao Miyazaki could make a good adaptation of, Toshio Suzuki alleges it was an influence on Nausicaä), so Ultraman is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. It's not exactly intelligent but sometimes you're not in the mood for high art!

It's also funny because long time friend of Miyazaki, Hideaki Anno, loves Ultraman, and he wrote Shin Ultraman (though unlike the other Shin films, Shin Godzilla, Evangelion 3.0+1.0 AKA Shin Evangelion in Japan and Shin Kamen Rider, he didn't direct this one, it was directed by Shinji Higuchi, who also directed the Giant God Warrior Appears in Tokyo short that Anno also wrote, and that I think didn't get much use out of using the Giant Warriors), I wonder if that caused a strain in their relationship lol. It's also not the only overlap Studio Ghibli has with this film, as Kenshi Yonezu, who performed the credits theme of The Boy and The Heron, Spinning Globe, also did the credits theme of Shin Ultraman, M87 (and that song is the best part of the film).

After such a long time, I finally bought both these books! 🥹❤️ Spirited Away and Kiki’s Delivery Service. Just like the movies, these stories bring me so much happiness and comfort. There’s something special about revisiting the worlds that make you feel at peace. ✨📚🌸

Those 3 turrets never let out plumes of steam out, throughout the movie. What’s the difference? The turret let out steam when it was looking like that crab frog thing, but not when it was on the original castle

I watched
1. The wind rises (my favorite)
2. Spirited away
3. Nausicaa
4.My neighbor totoro