After six months, we reached the end of the road and felt it worth a marker of some sort to let us see what a journey it has been. So, an awards ceremony was born which was held in the greenery of Montrose Playing Fields (aka “Mattress Park”) by the beautifully named Silk Stream followed by a lunch at Bang Bang Food Hall.
Ghibli Club started as a result of some idle chat around there being lots of films that you could watch but not actually getting around to it - and thinking that maybe it could be a somewhat shared experience. I said that all the Ghibli films were on Netflix (pretty much) and that I would be happy to watch them all again (or for the first time in some cases). Then we thought, if you are doing it, then it does not take any extra effort to ask other people too.
I wanted it to have very low “barriers to entry” and so was not keen on there being discussions or something that would eat into time more than the two hours for each film. It would, however, be nice to show that you’d seen it so I stole an idea from the excellent caneandrinse podcast to request 3-word reviews (“3WRs”). We watched our first film, Nausicaa, before 18th January 2021 and decided on a weekly roll (on a Tuesday, which was due to a regular quiz some of us did). I posted this as a blog on 22nd January to ask if others wanted to join[1] in with the club.
After a few films, we got a better idea of how to make it work a bit better or smoother. The first thing was that people did actually want to discuss. I guess that those that actually were watching along the same schedule thought that it would be worth actually discussing but I really did not want to have one per film so we went for one every 5 films. The discussion could then take place in a “rest week” every month or so which also allowed us to choose a non-Ghibli side (or “gaiden”) film too. The first discussion was very good with 6 people in there and was the first time a few of us had met too which was pretty nice - especially in a lockdown. The discussions were feisty and fun with a clear understanding that people had to be honest - there was no need to pretend to like things or say these films were 6/10[2] when actually we thought 3/10. The spreadsheet that I used to administer the club was kept separate from other members so that reviews were kept anonymous and did not affect your view until you had already seen it - I published the relevant blog post only after I had received sufficient 3WRs. That core of 6 stayed to the end with a later, remote, addition[3] who joined the later discussions. Those discussions became a little long and unwieldy so we started having them in groups of 3 or 4 rather than 5s so that people could get to the end without falling asleep!
As we came to the last few films, there was a tone of sadness at coming to the end but I feel like it was really good that we got to see them “together” and the order was perfect for seeing how things changed and adapted over time.
The voting was done via a Google form so, again, it was kept separate from everyone and so we did not know how others had voted[4] in each of the categories. The categories were fairly simple but we also wanted to have a vote on all the 3WRs too.
The winners were:
| Favourite | Joint: Kiki's Delivery Service & Spirited Away |
| Least favourite | Joint: Only Yesterday, Ocean Waves & Tales from Earthsea |
| Favourite Visuals | Spirited Away |
| Favourite Soundtrack/OST | Spirited Away |
| Best Side | Your Name. |
For each film, the most popular 3WRs (with winning percentage) were:
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind |
Ohm My God (71%) |
Laputa: Castle in the Sky |
Pirates! Pilots! Islets! (71%) |
My Neighbour Totoro |
Imaginative Parenting Solutions (43%) |
Grave of the Fireflies |
Sibling Spirits Reunited (60%) |
Kiki's Delivery Service |
Supergirl does Amazon (57%) |
Only Yesterday |
Overcoming child abuse (43%) |
Porco Rosso |
Pig's gotta fly (43%) |
Your Name. |
Joint (29%): Sliding doors moments & Temporal Transformational Romance. |
Ocean Waves |
Romanticising Toxic Relationships (86%) |
Pom Poko |
Scrotum to totem (43%) |
Whisper of the Heart |
Joint (29%): Smitten kitten written & Baron concrete road |
Princess Mononoke |
Wolves (F)ighting (C)onsumption (57%) |
The Garden Of Words |
Rainy Shoe Rendezvous (67%) |
My Neighbours the Yamadas |
One hot mess (43%) |
Spirited Away |
No-face saves face. (43%) |
The Cat Returns |
Im-paws-ible meow-rriage tail (43%) |
Howl's Moving Castle |
Birdperson the Movie (57%) |
Tales from Earthsea |
Ghibli's expensive knock-off (29%) |
For a few dollars more |
Joint (43%): Chime calls time & Weaponised musical chairs |
Ponyo |
Joint (29%):Soup thief, ahoy! & It is Ham |
Arrietty |
Failed sugar heist (57%) |
From Up on Poppy Hill |
Who's your daddy? (43%) |
The Wind Rises |
Jiro to zero (43%) |
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya |
Joint (29%): Moonwalker thwarts suitors & Celestial Moon Presence |
When Marnie Was There |
Kuuki time travel (33%) |
Wolfwalkers |
Trances with Wolves (43%) |
1. Interestingly, I know of two film clubs that started as a result of not wanting to do this one. They liked the idea but not the films (and not seen, at that point). I am not sure how they ended up but not sure they got to 25 films! I think they wanted a discussion like a book club which seems fair. ↩
2. This was a unilateral decision by me to avoid scoring films. The problem with scoring films is that the discussion almost inevitably then becomes about the score rather than the film itself. We all, also, have quite differing views on what the bounds of scoring are. For me, an OK film is 5 or 6 and a bad film is 1-4 but many people would say bad films are still at the 6 or 7 end. It makes the whole thing somewhat meaningless without normalisation. The discussions we had, I think, really allowed people to have multiple views on the same film - being both positive and negative about a film which I do not think is quite as easy if you then start from a score.↩
3. This was someone that I knew from an excellent film quiz that he used to create and host weekly (twitter: @Jamie_Reviews and website: https://justalittlebitrandom.blog/ ) which I would strongly recommend. ↩
4. Well, I did because I had the responses but I am, of course, an honest person.↩
