An Anglophile is someone who is enchanted by English culture and England in general.
Hayao Miyazaki is a self-proclaimed feminist. This attitude is displayed in many of his films: Ex. in Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime) the bellows of the iron mill were worked only by women, and in Porco Rosso, Porco’s plane was designed and rebuilt entirely by women.
Miyazaki’s second son, Keisuke Miyazaki, made the woodcut print, “Craftsman Making a Violin in Prison”, which Shizuku saw in the book in “Whisper of the Heart”.
The majority of the characters created by Miyazaki are based on real people in his life.
Miyazaki once saw “Snezhnaya Koroleva”, a Russian animation film directed by Lev Atamanov, at a time when he was unhappy about his job and wondering if he should continue working as an animator. Miyazaki was so moved by it, he “decided to continue working on animation with renewed determination”. He says that he learned that characters in animation can act if they are animated well enough, and animation can move people as other media can do.
While she is playing outside one day Mei sees two white, rabbit-like ears in the grass. She follows the ears under the house where she discovers two small magical creatures, who lead her through a briar patch, and into the hollow of a large Camphor Laurel tree. She meets and befriends a larger version of the same kind of spirit, which identifies itself by a series of roars she interprets as “Totoro” (in the original Japanese dub, it stems from Mei’s mispronunciation of the Japanese pronunciation of the word “troll”). Her father later tells her that this is the “keeper of the forest”.
