OtakuNews two new ghibli movies to be released this summer

Studio Ghibli and its distributor TOHO officially announced Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Is Rising) and Kaguya-hime no Monogatari (The Tale of Princess Kaguya), the latest films from studio co-founders and directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, on Thursday. Both are scheduled to open throughout Japan next summer.

In February 2009, Miyazaki launched a two-part manga mini-series called "Kaze Tachinu" that focuses on Jirō Horikoshi, the designer of Japan's famed Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane of World War II. Author Tatsuo Hori also wrote a novel called Kaze Tachinu, and the film's tagline references both real-life figures and paraphrases Hori's book: "Show respect for Jiro Horikoshi and Tatsuo Hori. We must try to live." (Hori himself was reportedly quoting Paul Valéry's "Le cimetière marin" or "The Graveyard By The Sea" poem, which read, "Le vent se lève! . . . il faut tenter de vivre!" or "The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!")

Frequent Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi is composing the music of the film. Miyazaki is not only directing the film, but he conceived the story and wrote the screenplay himself. This will be the first film from Miyazaki since Ponyo about five years ago.

The famous Japanese folktale Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) centers on princess named Kaguya who was discovered as a baby inside the stalk of a glowing bamboo plant. Taketori Monogatari has inspired dozens of manga and anime stories, such as Reiko Shimizu's Kaguya Hime and Arina Tanemura's Sakura-Hime Kaden.

Takahata already revealed in 2009 that his next film will be based on the folktale. The tagline on the film's website reads, "A princess's crime and punishment."

Shinichiro Ikebe (Future Boy Conan, Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha) is composing the film's soundtrack. Takahata conceived the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Riko Sakaguchi. This will be Takahata's first film since My Neighbors the Yamadas about 14 year ago.

TOHO had already registered the domains for the websites for these two films, but it opened the websites on Thursday.

Both films will open on the same day, but separately. The last time that Miyazaki and Takahata had films opening on the same day, or even in the same year, was a quarter of a century ago when Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro and Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies were shown back-to-back in Japan in 1988.