This dynamic anime theme changes 14 times throughout the day. Also each image has a small white Totoro hidden in it, think of it like a Easter Egg Hunt! Thank you Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli for creating these wonderful characters and worlds for us to enjoy! Here are the characters in this theme (in order): Tanuki - Pom Poko | Kiki - Kiki’s Delivery Service | Porco Rosso | Sophie and Howl - Howl’s Moving Castle | Seita and Setsuko - Grave of the Fireflies | Kodama - Princess Mononoke | Laputa Robot Soldier - Laputa: Castle in the Sky | Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea | Nausicaa - Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind | No Face - Spirited Away | Cat Bus - My Neighbor Totoro | Soot Sprites - Spirited Away | Totoro - My Neighbor Totoro | The Baron and Muta - The Cat Returns — Save Totoro’s forest! It would be sad to see this forest fade away http://totoroforestproject.org

Here are all the images in this theme in order:

Click the ponyo image for the full size

Hopefully this game will come to the PS3 I’m dying to see Studio Ghibli animation in a video game!

Other Source

Having spent my fair share of time enamored in the various imaginative worlds of both Level5 and Studio Ghibli, it is with great delight that I get to share news that will have fans weeping with happiness. Acclaimed development studio Level5, which was responsible for games like Dark Cloud, Jeanne D’Arc, and Professor Layton, and world-renowned animation house Studio Ghibli, known best for the likes of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, are teaming up to produce a new game called Ninokuni which will land in Japan next year.

Studio Ghibli will be handling all of the in-game animation for the game, which revolves around the magical exploits of a young boy. The game will ship with a fully illustrated book called The Magic Master which, judging by the scans from the latest Famitsu, will have a variety of shapes which represent spells to be cast in the game. The player will “need to refer to [the book] from time to time.”

Currently, the game is scheduled to release first on the Nintendo DS and then later on an “undecided” console. The two versions will be similar, both employing the aforementioned book, but Level5 has said that it wants to separate the console version from the handheld version in order to make both experiences worthwhile for a single player. Either way, though, it’s going to be impossible to resist the brainchild of two leaders in their respective industries.

I saw this quote on the official Studio Ghibli web page.

Up till now Miyazaki and the Studio Ghibli staff pursued elaborateness. This time they threw that style away. “The number of SAKUGA will be unprecedented!” said Miyazaki, daring to try and use hand drawings in an age in which CG can draw so much in a short amount of time. “I always tell my staff that if they don’t like to draw by hand deliberately, then they should give up animation. It’s easy to distinguish if pictures are drawn by machines or human hands. If we give up the tough way, we will lose the richness in our art.”

All films that are overseen by Mr. Miyazaki are amazing films. Even his very first film “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” still holds a special place in my heart. I watched this movie in Japan when I lived there from 83 - 85. Didn’t understand it due to it all being in Japanese, but I still enjoyed it. I watched it over and over threw the years. And I finally got a subtitled version of the movie in 2000. The animation of the movie is still impressive to this day!

My future wife Clara got me a Ohmu model for Christmas and I’m still putting it together, but it’s looking great! I’ll post it on my flickr account when it’s done. Here is some history about the Ohmu.

The kanji (Chinese characters) used for Ohmu are “King” and “Insect”, so it means “King Insect” or “King of Insects”. Reading those kanji as “Ohmu” is a bit unusual. According to Miyazaki, the sound “Ohmu” came from “Oh Mushi” (king insect), “Ohkii Mushi” (large insect), “Sando Uomu” (Japanese pronunciation of “Sand Worm” from “Dune”), “Aum” in Buddhist belief, and others.

Studio Ghibli has some cool collections you can get from the Nausicaa movie as well. See here.

Every movie made my Mr. Miyazaki I love, they are movies I look forward to watching over and over. They have such a human element to them that nothing else has. Hard to explain, but you’ll know when you watch them. It’s all the little details he puts into his movies that makes it special. His movies are all very memorable too. Even if you not a anime fan, give his movies a try. You’ll be pleasantly surprised!

Here are my favorite movies from Mr. Miyazaki:

Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind
Laputa: The Castle in the Sky
My Neighbor Totoro
Kiki’s Delivery Service
Porco Rosso
On Your Mark [Music film]
Princess Mononoke
Spirited Away
Howl’s Moving Castle
Ponyo On A Cliff (out in summer 2008, but I know I’ll love it! )

If you’re an anime fan, this is some real interesting piece of news for you! I’m absolutely convinced that most of you have seen the movie Nausicaa. In this movie, the princess Nausicaa uses some sort of flying wing to travel. Once again, our Japanese friends are giving life to what used to be fiction, and created some kind of glider designed exactly like Nausicaa’s flying wing. This is the OpenSky 2.0 project jointly developed with NTT. Cool, eh?

[Source - Akihabaranews & Engadget / OpenSky 2.0]

Videos of it in action