The Japanese anime house has listened to its fans and finally released its back catalogue for streaming. Time to dive in
Netflix concentrates so much of its promotional effort on pushing its original content – particularly at Oscar time, with The Irishman, Marriage Story and multiple documentaries among its films hoping to grab some gold next weekend – that you wouldn’t usually expect one of its archive acquisitions to get the biggest streaming-related headlines of the year so far. But it’s indicative of the global, generation-crossing adoration for Japan’s Studio Ghibli animation house that its new agreement with
Netflix is, in all senses, a very big deal.
Impatient acolytes will remember that Ghibli and the streaming world were at an impasse for several years, with the studio preferring not to make most of its back catalogue available for digital distribution – encouraging fans to buy its pristine Blu-ray releases instead. It’s Netflix, unsurprisingly, that has broken the barrier. “In this day and age, there are various great ways a film can reach audiences,” said Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki. “We’ve listened to our fans and have made the definitive decision to stream our film catalogue.”