Studio Ghibli, the geniuses behind Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle, have been on a self-imposed hibernation for the last few years, though recently they have announced they are return with a new movie called The Red Turtle.
There is however a new piece of Ghibli animation you can watch right now. The 12th and 13th century scrolls known as Choju Jinbutsu Giga, (or Scrolls of Frolicking Animals in English), are thought to be the oldest example of sequential storytelling in Japanese art, leading them to be dubbed the world’s first ever manga. So without them, we wouldn’t have Dragon Ball or Akira. Ghibli’s animated adaptation was produced for energy company Marubeni Shin Denryoku, and is very short and sweet (only 30 seconds long), but still shows their talent for beautiful character animation, as a friendly frog helps out a rabbit in the rain.
