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One of the world's finest animation studios is stopping making feature films
STUDIO GHIBLI, the animation studio behind the Oscar-winning feature film "Spirited Away", has frequently been described as Japan's answer to Disney. It's perhaps closer to the truth to call it Japan's antidote to Disney. Studio Ghibli's lush, hand-drawn, 2-D animation, disregard for Hollywood narrative formulae and guiding philosophy--that animated films can be for grown-ups--are sadly foreign concepts in the paradigm of modern animation. This is the studio that released the whimsical cinematic lullaby "My Neighbour Totoro" on the same bill as "Grave of the Fireflies", a devastating second-world-war drama that Roger Ebert called the most realistic animated film he'd ever seen, not because of how it looked, but how it felt.
In the wake of the retirement of its visionary director, Hayao Miyazaki, last year, Studio Ghibli is taking an indefinite break from the production...