They say he’s Hayao Miyazaki’s heir: Mamoru Hosoda, Japanese animation director’s six best movies ranked, from new release Belle to Summer Wars

Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda is eyed by many as the natural inheritor of Hayao Miyazaki’s unofficial crown as ‘Japan’s greatest living animator’

From the beautifully chaotic Summer Wars to Mirai – which earned an Oscar nomination for best animated feature – we rank six of his best films

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A still from Belle, the latest feature from Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda, who is eyed by many as the natural successor to Hayao Miyazaki as “Japan’s greatest living animator”.

Published: 12:15pm, 27 Oct 2021Updated: 7:57am, 28 Oct 2021

When Belle, the latest animated feature film from Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda, premiered this year at the Cannes Film Festival, it was greeted with a rapturous 14-minute standing ovation. This bodes well for the director, whose 2018 film Mirai earned him an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature.

Distributors of Belle, scheduled for release in the United States on January 14, 2022, are clearly hoping to repeat the success of its predecessor, and perhaps go one step further and bring the Oscar home. Should that happen, it would be only the second time a Japanese film has won the category, after Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away in 2003.

Such a victory would also mark a high point in the career of Hosoda, who is eyed by many as the inheritor of Miyazaki’s unofficial crown as “Japan’s greatest living animator”.

Comparisons between the two filmmakers should come as no surprise. Hosoda’s work has a similar sensibility to Miyazaki’s, often telling coming-of-age stories fronted by adolescent female protagonists with their feet in a recognisable homespun reality but their heads stuck in visually extravagant fantasy worlds.

Japanese animation director Mamoru Hosoda promoting Mirai in 2018. Photo: Nora Tam

Hosoda even worked for a brief spell at Studio Ghibli – the company founded by Miyazaki and contemporary Isao Takahata – developing an early incarnation of what became Howl’s Moving Castle. He left the project because of creative differences, and the film was later completed by Miyazaki himself.

Hosoda began his career at Toei Animation, where he oversaw a pair of Digimon Adventure feature films, as well as One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island. It was not until he moved to Madhouse animation studio, however, that Hosoda was given the freedom to tell his own stories.