When talking of great modern directors of anime films, you hear names such as Makoto Shinkai, Mamoru Hosoda etc. but I always feel like the name “Hiromasa Yonebayashi” is too often missing from the conversation. I personally feel that the reason he’s not as spoken of as other directors is due to his more limited filmography but I personally admire his resilience and his films so I thought it would be worth speaking about the talented director Hiromasa Yonebayashi.
Born in Nonoichi in Japan on the 10th of July, 1973, Hiromasa Yonebayashi was inspired to work at Studio Ghibli after he saw the 1995 film “Whisper of the Heart”. Besides a few other projects, Hiromasa has predominantly worked on Studio Ghibli films such as Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle etc. as a key animator and an in-between animator while he notably served as the animator director on the Studio Ghibli short Mei and the Kittenbus.
In 2009, it was announced that Hiromasa Yonebayashi would direct the then upcoming Studio Ghibli film Arrietty which, at the age of 36, made him the youngest director to direct a feature film at Studio Ghibli. The success of Arrietty, which grossed around $148.8 million with $19.2 million coming from the US and Canada and won the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year, resulted in some discussion about Hiromasa becoming the successor to Hayao Miyazaki.
While working on From Up on Poppy Hill and The Wind Rises on key animation, Hiromasa Yonebayashi was given the task of directing When Marnie Was There. However, Studio Ghibli began to run into problems as, in 2013, the successful box office of The Wind Rises was followed by a box office bomb in the form of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. It was up to When Marnie Was There to save Studio Ghibli’s financial situation but, despite grossing over three times its budget and receiving critical acclaim, When Marnie Was There underperformed compared to Studio Ghibli’s typical box office figures. The decision was made to pause production on future films and to restructure.
With no sign that Studio Ghibli was going to begin making feature films again anytime soon, Hiromasa Yonebayashi made the tough choice to leave Studio Ghibli and to go work at the newly established Studio Ponoc which had been founded by Yoshiaki Nishimura, a former producer at Studio Ghibli. They soon began to work on a new feature film called Mary and the Witch’s Flower with Hiromasa Yonebayashi as the director which saw them struggle to secure funding, equipment and labour. Nonetheless, the film was completed and released in 2017 and proved to be quite successful at the box office, grossing $42.2 million worldwide and ranking as the sixth highest-grossing film in Japan that year. While we’re unsure what the film’s budget was, it does seem very likely that it proved to be financially profitable.
Since then, the only other work that he’s directed that I’m aware of was a segment in Studio Ponoc’s 2018 anthology film Modest Heroes called “Kanini & Kanino”. I haven’t heard of any future works announced with his involvement but I do hope to see more films directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi in the future as he has proven himself time and again when it comes to the quality of these movies. Let me know your thoughts on the resilience of the talented director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, which movies of his you’ve seen and whether you liked/disliked them, whether you also hope to see more from him in the future and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!