If you’ve ever tried to pick up a complete collection of the works of Hayao Miyazaki on DVD or Blu-ray, you may have had the misfortune of buying one of the several bootleg or substandard quality sets available frequently on both eBay and Amazon. Finally Disney and Studio Ghibli are set to release a Blu-ray boxed set by year-end, including all eleven of the director’s full-length films.
The Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki will be available exclusively from Amazon and is expected to ship November 17, 2015. It includes Blu-ray editions The Castle of Cagliostro, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo, and his last film, The Wind Rises.
If you have already purchased the individual Blu-rays, the special features may entice you:
- Yuki no Taiyo (Yuki’s Sun) — a 1972 television pilot based on a manga by Tetsuya Chiba. It was directed, storyboarded and animated by Hayao Miyazaki.
- Episodes 26, 27, and 41 of the 1972 anime series Akado Suzunosuk (Little Samurai). The storyboards were created by Miyazaki.
- Miyazaki’s Retirement Press Conference.
- A book The Great Dichotomy: Looking at the Works of Hayao Miyazaki by Tomohiro Machiyama, author of Cruising the Anime City, Half of Americans Do Not Know the Location of New York, Really Like this Song, and 55 Fabulous Women in America.
Miyazaki’s most stunning masterwork is the 2001 release Spirited Away, about a little girl who drifts away from her parents on an outing. His most beautiful is probably the environmental themed 1984 release Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. His most commercial–and accessible–is the 1997 fantasy with an almost Star Wars feel, Princess Mononoke, and his most fun, 1988’s My Neighbor Totoro. The most bizarre? The 1992 adventure Porco Rosso, about a World War I pilot in Italy that looks like a pig.
No pricing or Amazon pre-order option has yet been released for the boxed set, but we will provide updates here at borg.com as information becomes available.
C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com