the other main characters, and her ironworks knowingly exploit the nearby forests for raw materials. However, her character is not portrayed as an archetypal villain: she also provides a productive home for lepers and former prostitutes in her city. Princess Mononoke is resolved when Lady Eboshi’s industrial city reconciles itself with its non-industrialized neighbors.

Some of Miyazaki’s early films featured distinctly evil villains, such as Count Cagliostro in Castle of Cagliostro or Muska in Laputa: Castle in the Sky; other films are remarkable for having no villain at all, such as Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro.

The influence of Miyazaki’s early interest in Marxism is apparent in some of his films, such as Porco Rosso. In Laputa: Castle in the Sky, the working class is portrayed in an extremely idealized manner, with the male protagonist, Pazu, also being a working class child. Miyazaki claims to have abandoned Marxism while creating his manga Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. He states he “stopped seeing things by class, as it’s a lie that one is right just because he/she is a laborer”.[14][15]

According to Toshio Suzuki, Miyazaki holds the view that “to be successful, companies have to make it possible for their female employees to succeed.” This is mirrored in his films, as women are often seen working, such as at the bellows in Princess Mononoke, or building the plane in Porco Rosso.[16]

Also, both Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke feature strong environmental and anti-war themes. Miyazaki’s care for the environment can for example be witnessed in Spirited Away, when the disgusting Stink God actually turns out to be a River God, whose river has been polluted to the point where he was no longer recognizable.

Several motifs recur in many of Miyazaki’s films. Especially in later work, he deliberately paces his films to allow brief excursions into the animated environment. The image of wind blowing gently across fields of grass or grain has been used in several of his films, as has a close shot of a stone darkening with raindrops. Although subtle, these brief shots often help establish a larger reality of his animated worlds.

Miyazaki’s films contain deep-seated references to the changing earth and environmentalism. In My Neighbor Totoro, the great tree tops a hillside in which magical creatures reside, and the family worships this tree. This ecological consciousness is echoed in Princess Mononoke with the giant primordial forest, complete with gigantic dragonflies, trees, flowers and wolves. In Princess Mononoke, Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the ecological paradise is threatened by military men and violent state-controlled armies. In each film, the conflict between the natural way of life and the military destruction of culture, land and resources is central to the plight of the protagonist(s). When battle scenes are shown in each, the militaristic music and ecological destruction is paramount to the endangerment of the inhabitants of the villages.

Flight, especially by characters, is a recurring theme in Miyazaki’s films. In addition to the many aerial devices and drawings of Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which is a flying city, this theme is found in Nausicaä piloting her Mehve in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind; Kiki riding her broomstick and watching dirigibles fly over her city in Kiki’s Delivery Service; the large Totoro carrying Satsuki and Mei across the night sky in My Neighbor Totoro; Chihiro being borne by Haku in his dragon form in Spirited Away; and Howl and Sophie soaring above their town in Howl’s Moving Castle. In Porco Rosso, the protagonist, a man/pig, flies to a remote island to escape his duties, yet when the military is shown, it is with dark, foreboding flying machines, as compared to the protagonists’ lighter, happier music and flyers. Miyazaki’s self-professed passion for flight allows him to create very naturalistic depictions of flight in his films.