Howl's moving castle made me cry
but not because it was beautifully drawn
If you have opened any social media (or media in general) you already know what I am talking about: OpenAI launched a new model and people found out pretty quickly some cool and weird and scary way to abuse it.
It’s virality at work, it is exactly why people use social media, I didn’t give it much thought (also because I still don’t have access to the model 😕).
And then, as it’s customary, the outrage machine started: people keep shouting about the theft of IP, the hypocrisy.
You know already what I am talking about, this is still people jumping on the bandwagon to get some likes by showing a contrarian view.
So let me jump on this bandwagon!
Howl's moving castle is by far my favorite movie (with Spirited Away being a close second) from Miyazaki.
It’s the first “western” movie he produced and the first “political” movie since the time of Porco Rosso (another delightful quirky movie).
If you lived under a rock so far, go watch the movie because I don’t want to spoil the plot to you.
I was never a big anime fan, contrary to what you would expect from my cohort, but I had watched my fair share of famous and high quality anime series (Ranma 1/2, Cowboy BeBop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Trigun).
As I started watching the movie I had no baseline about Miyazaki but I knew what “good” looked like.
I was still blown away.
The many characters that you end up loving, the complicated quirky story, the redemption arc, the animation, the pacifist message delivered in an Orwellian way (Miyazaki wrote this movie specifically as a reaction to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003).
You’d think I would be outraged by the meme generate with AI that steal the vibe of those movies.
Well I think that outrage is silly.
Everything is a remix
The story is a remix
When you stop and think about it, isn’t this movie very similar to another one?
Isn’t Disney’s “the Beauty and the Beast” essentially the same story plus a touch of Orwellian forever war?
And isn’t that movie based on a 18th century french novel?
Isn’t that novel based on a folktale classified under ATU 425?
The distinct design has been remixed
There is no doubt that one of the most distinctive traits of Miyazaki are his characters, so recognizable and quirky.
If you have watched Scavengers Reign you might get the feeling that there is a lot of Miyazaki in it, and you won’t be wrong since the creator openly said that he took inspiration from the Japanese master.
And I would argue that even Neon Genesis Evangelion has a lot of contact points with Miyazaki.
So what’s your point?
What makes Howl’s moving castle (and Spirited away, my Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, Kiki’s delivery service) unique and special isn’t the design, the story outline or the music.
Making a movie is about putting all those things together with the right rythm and editing, breath life into those inanimate characters so that I care about them.
It’s not about the tool, think about how minimal and still great is XKCD, this is just a distraction so that OpenAI can hype its valuation and raise more money.
Even if any rando on the internet can produce something similar with AI you have remember the words of Paul Cézanne: "A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art."
You can never copy Hayao Miyazaki because you cannot distill why you love those movies.
You just do
P.S. For the “but is copyright infringement” folks, I am not an IP lawyer and I am not a Sama fanboy. If OpenAI broke the law they should pay but corporate law drama isn’t what interests me.