The Ghibli style is one artistic style designed to achieve cartoons and today there are many photographs created or modified in Ghibli style popular on the web. Designed by Japanese Studio Ghiblifounded in 1985, which is one of the most well-known animation studios in the world and has made highly successful films, also winning two Oscar awards, was called “ghibli” in homage toCaproni Ca.309 “Ghibli” aircraft, built from 1937 to the years of the Second World War by the Caproni company for the Italian Air Force. The term ghibli comes from Arabic and indicates a hot desert windthe same one that gives its name to the aircraft. Hayao Miyazakia great aviation enthusiast, chose this name to evoke the idea of a new wind blowing in the world of animation, just like the “ghibli” crossing the Sahara.
What is Ghibli style and why is it so popular
Ghibli style is one type of aesthetics for animated filmsused mainly to create or edit images. It creates a cartoonish effect and is characterized by the use of warm and soft colors and for them “soft” and rounded linesfrom which a magical and highly evocative atmosphere derives. Human figures are typically represented with a sweet appearance and big eyes.
The style owes its name to Studio Ghiblia studio that makes animated films founded in Tokyo in 1985 by some animators, including Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, he created some of the most viewed films in Japanese cinema, including masterpieces such as The enchanted city, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki – Home deliveries And Princess Mononoke. Two of the Studio’s films were awarded the Oscar for best animated film: The enchanted city in 2003 and The boy and the heron in 2024. Other films made by the Studio have earned nominations for the Academy Award or received others prestigious film awards.
Studio Ghibli “invented” the style that bears its name since the 1980s. The popularity of the style, however, has increased in recent years because it is used by artificial intelligence software, which can create or transform photographs. In particular, thelatest version of ChatGPT he creates images in Ghibli style: a real trend has arisen from this and social networks are now full of images created or modified with the aesthetics of the Japanese studio: memes, images of famous people, landscapes, personal photos transformed by users. Even some politicians have used Ghibli-style images on their official profiles.
Origins and meaning of the name of Miyazaki’s studio: how to pronounce it
The name of Studio Ghibli comes from a Italian military plane produced during fascism by the Caproni company: the twin-engine Caproni Ca.309which had functions as a reconnaissance aircraft, liaison aircraft and, occasionally, a light bomber. The plane, entered in service in 1937was designed to be used in the Libyan desert and was therefore called “ghibli”, which in Arabic is the name of warm wind from the Sahara. Produced in 247 examples, the Caproni Ca.309 “Ghibli” was used in the North African theater during the Second World War and was withdrawn from service after the end of hostilities.
What does an Italian plane have to do with an aesthetic for animated films created in Japan fifty years later? It has something to do with it because one of the founders of the studio, Hayao Miyazakiit’s a military aeronautics enthusiast and, in particular, of Italian warplanesand therefore in 1985 he chose to name the studio after the aircraft (in turn derived, as we have seen, from the name of the desert wind). Miyazaki, moreover, paid homage to the Italian Air Force in other ways too, for example by inserting the character of Gianni Capronifounder of the company that bears his name, in the film The wind picks up of 2013, and giving the name Ghibli to the seaplane in the film Porco Rosso of 1992. Pay attention, however, to the pronunciation: in Japanese the word ghibli is not read with a hard g, as in our country, but with a soft g: therefore “gibli” and not “ghibli” as we read in Italy.
