On March 25, OpenAI announced a new ChatGPT feature that allows users to turn text prompts into images in a number of familiar cartoon styles. Options included The Simpsons, Rick and Morty and Pixar, among others. But as soon as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman changed his X profile picture to a Studio Ghibli-inspired image of himself, it was clear which style was the favorite, and ChatGPT users soon began to revel in making their own Ghiblified pictures, too.
Of all the iconic aesthetics available, why was it the Ghibli style that exploded online? There are quite a few factors at play, from the internet generation’s relationship with Ghibli to the studio’s enduring signature style.
Ghibli films “don’t talk down to children.”
Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, were the first generation to grow up with Studio Ghibli (and internet communities that fostered Ghibli’s global significance). A pivotal moment was The Walt Disney Company (DIS)’s 1996 deal with Ghibli’s then owner, Tokuma Shoten, to distribute its films globally. Disney dubbed Ghibli films for English-speaking audiences, releasing Princess Mononoke in theaters and Kiki’s Delivery Service on VHS at a time when Disney animation was in its own renaissance period. With such reach, Disney brought Ghibli’s work to an entire generation, “and it was a touchstone to the larger globalization of anime as a whole,” Toussaint Egan, an animation expert and editor for the entertainment news site Polygon, told Observer.
The Disney boost wouldn’t have counted for much, though, if Ghibli films didn’t capture audience hearts and imaginations. Egan touts these movies’ tone as a big reason as to why they have enjoyed such enduring adulation. He considers their subject matter as surprisingly mature and intelligent, given how much of the work operates on a level of childlike innocence. “These films do not talk down to children or their audiences. They treat children as just as intelligent as, if not more than, adult audiences, [like] they’re more intuitive,” he said.
Hand-drawn simplicity and nostalgia
But it’s not the impressive and moving story arcs that people are seeking to replicate with A.I., it’s the aesthetic that they’ve come to associate those narratives with. Ghibli’s hand-drawn, 2D animation has long distinguished itself from competitors, thanks to the studio’s scrupulous attention to detail towards everything from fluffy clouds to flowing tears. But on a more fundamental level, it’s the most basic things that stick for people, like a character’s silhouette.
“When you’re able to strip away all of the surface details of a character’s design and you’re able to hone in on their silhouette, it’s very distinctive,” Egan said. “You can tell who Totoro is, you can tell who San from Princess Mononoke is, you can tell who the robot is from Castle in the Sky. It’s so easy to identify, it’s so immediately distinctive and so well done.” Most significantly, he added, Studio Ghibli “found a way to create characters that are both simplistic and easily legible, and yet enduringly expressive.”
That stylistic endurance has made Ghibli an outlier in contemporary animation. Disney ditched hand-drawn animation in favor of the more modern computer-generated style years ago; the studio has only produced two traditionally animated films in the past 20 years (2009’s The Princess and the Frog and 2011’s Winnie the Pooh), compared to 16 films with computer-generated animation in the same period.
Studio Ghibli’s stylistic consistency ironically makes its output unique, giving each movie a timeless quality. That aesthetic nostalgia has likely been a driving force behind the generative A.I. craze, with Ghibli’s fondly remembered style allowing people to wear some rose-colored glasses in the face of ongoing arguments about generative art, its validity and its legality.
Hayao Miyazaki’s unique aesthetic
Perhaps a part of the trend also has to do with ChatGPT allowing people to gain proximity to a major auteur with a unique aesthetic. Studio Ghibli is known for its “house style,” and the director Hayao Miyazaki is inextricably linked to that look. Miyazaki has directed more films for the studio than anyone and was heavily involved in many Ghibli movies he didn’t helm. His hand-drawn style “is part of and distinct for Studio Ghibli,” Egan said, and so Miyazaki is the person who ChatGPT takes its cues from here.
In that sense, this social media storm exists on the same plane as the “Accidentally Wes Anderson” phenomenon, in which a travel Instagram page dedicated to places that look like they’ve sprung from a scene in The Grand Budapest Hotel or Moonrise Kingdom became a massive internet brand touting numerous books and global exhibitions. With this online guide and similar social media accounts, people can feel like they’ve stumbled into a finely crafted world created by a renowned contemporary artist.
But unlike ChatGPT’s “Ghiblification” craze, these sites and images have been found, not generated. That key difference is what makes this influx of A.I.-generated images so troubling. Animation is a painstaking medium, especially when performed at Studio Ghibli’s caliber. Miyazaki’s most recent (and potentially final) film, The Boy and the Heron, premiered in 2023; he began working on it in 2016. That work pays off when seen on screen, but it’s cheapened when run through a computer program to fit a person’s fleeting fancies.
“These A.I.-generated image models are a technology that, as they are being used now, explicitly exist in a way to disentangle artistic expression from human labor,” said Egan, and it’s a painful irony that Miyazaki made similar comments years ago, expressing his concern that human beings were losing faith in their own artistic expression.
While plenty of people have voiced opposition to OpenAI’s co-opting of Studio Ghibli’s style, it seems that many, many more have been happy to partake in it. And though Ghiblified pet pics or group photos might look cute now, a computer program will never really be able to replicate the heart and soul of a Studio Ghibli work.
