Guillermo del Toro is a film director renowned in the movie industry for his stellar world-building, as his films grow from the sketchbooks that he fills with ideas for interesting creatures and places.
Del Toro’s status as a versatile and groundbreaking director comes from his work such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Pacific Rim, and The Shape of Water.
The Shape of Water helped him bag 3 Oscars for Best Directing, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Motion Picture in the year 2018. While most of his ideas come from monster flicks and horror movies, some of them actually come from anime as well.
Del Toro’s love for anime stems from Ghibli films and Hayao Miyazaki
The Hollywood director is a massive fan of anime and manga. It has significantly shaped his cinematic pursuits, evident through successful live-action films like “Hellboy” and the inspiration drawn from Neon Genesis Evangelion for “Pacific Rim”.
After taking a glimpse of his bookshelves and work desk, it’s safe to classify him as a “weeb”.
As fans would recognize from the books he owns, Guillermo Del Toro is a massive fan of Ghibli films.
While writing about Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, Del Toro revealed that the man’s works admittedly shaped his childhood. He has watched not only Hayao Miyazaki-san’s films from Ghibli but also his works at Toei Animation. Now that’s an old-school fan!
I discovered Hayao Miyazaki’s Toei Animation films as a child-films like The Wonderful World of Puss ‘n Boots and series like Heidi and Marco, in which his style and influence became increasingly identifiable. Encountering My Neighbor Totoro as an adult, my mind snapped back to those earlier works, and I recognized how much this man had shaped my childhood.
The director had watched anime since his childhood days in Mexico. And the kind of titles he checked out were the same as any kid growing up in Japan.
That means, he kind of had an idea of how many projects Japan pump out back in those days. But what he didn’t expect is that number would double or triple in the later years.
Del Toro’s main concern for the modern-day anime industry
At the time, the director was asked if he still keeps up with anime. Despite the medium’s massive growth, Del Toro says he tries to keep up with its newest entries. However, he struggles hard in the process because there are so many titles coming in every season. Something fans from the current generation face as well.
I try. Anime is too big. It’s thousands of titles. I stay with the artists I love, Katsuhiro Otomo, Hideshi Hino, Naoki Urasawa. I’m not aware of super-new manga. Even the ‘new’ stuff I like, like Gantz, or Blame!, is a few years old.
This actually poses a problem for new anime fans, as they wouldn’t be able to recognize which show is which, because, according to some of them, a lot of anime from a particular genre feels the same. That’s because modern-day animators tend to copy old stuff and repackage them as new.
Nevertheless, Del Toro’s love for anime had him try making a live-action adaptation of Monster by Naoki Urasawa and have it greenlit by HBO. Unfortunately, despite having drafted a few episodes, his idea was met with resistance and failed to take off as hoped.
However, Del Toro remained optimistic despite HBO’s rejection and concentrated on finding additional potential platforms willing to host his adaptation.
Monster by Naoki Urasawa is now available to watch on Netflix.
