Don’t call him the Walt Disney of Japan: How animator Hayao Miyazaki became a cultural icon by doing everything Pixar doesn’t

Don’t call him the Walt Disney of Japan: How animator Hayao #Miyazaki became a cultural icon by doing everything #Pixar doesn’t: Traditional animation is on its way out. In the age of Pixar, Dreamworks and other big-budget production companies that specialize in children’s entertainment, technology trumps tradition. There’s something exemplary about 3-D animation, something that fits in with contemporary culture in our desire to render magic real. We want to feel like we’re inside the same room as the characters we watch on the screen, even, oddly, when it comes to representational entertainment, like cartoons. In the age of hyperrealism, fantasy worlds must blend with our own, and imagination takes a back seat to spectacle.