Studio Ghibli

“The Boy and the Heron” winning Best Animated Feature was a genuinely significant moment for Ghibli's international standing, not because the studio needed validation, but because it signaled the Academy finally treating Miyazaki's late-career work with the same seriousness as his 1980s and '90s classics. Miyazaki has announced his retirement and walked it back more than once before, so reports of further work in progress aren't surprising to longtime followers.

The HBO Max licensing deal that brought the full Ghibli catalog to American streaming was arguably as important for the studio's global reach as any single new release — it's the first time most of these films have been easy to watch legally in the U.S. without hunting down physical media.

Our take: the studio's succession question — who leads creatively once Miyazaki fully steps back — is the more interesting long-term story than any individual film, and it's one Ghibli has been visibly reluctant to answer directly.