Released on a double bill with Grave of the Fireflies in 1988, Hayao Miyazaki's film follows sisters Satsuki and Mei as they move to the countryside while their mother recovers in hospital, and meet the forest spirits living around their new home. It grossed a modest sum on first release but has since become Studio Ghibli's signature work, with Totoro serving as the studio's mascot.
A thousand years after industrial civilisation collapsed, Princess Nausicaä tries to keep her small valley out of a war between an empire determined to burn a toxic jungle and the giant insects that guard it. Miyazaki wrote and directed the film from his own still-unfinished manga, with only sixteen chapters of story to draw from and a production schedule of nine months on a budget under a million dollars, working with composer Joe Hisaishi for the first time and with the minor studio Topcraft rather than a major animation house.
Princess Mononoke follows Ashitaka, a young prince cursed by a demonized boar god, as he travels west and becomes caught in the war between Lady Eboshi's ironworks town and the animal gods defending their forest, including San, a girl raised by wolves. Hayao Miyazaki wrote and directed the film for Studio Ghibli after nearly two decades of development, using limited computer-generated imagery alongside hand-drawn animation for the first time in his work. Marketed by producer Toshio Suzuki in the largest advertising campaign Japan had seen for a film at that point, it became the country's highest-grossing release and the first Ghibli film given a wide international release, through a Disney-brokered deal that handed its English dub to novelist Neil Gaiman.