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The Ghibli aesthetic and the pulse of the Korean public

Published: 24 Apr. 2025, 00:04

Kim Seung-hyun

The author is the director of social news at JoongAng Ilbo.

I still remember the anticipation of waiting for that boy. From October 1982 through the spring of the following year, I sat in front of the television every Friday evening for Future Boy Conan (1978). To a 10-year-old, Conan was more than a cartoon character — he was a companion and a hero. Just hearing the theme song’s opening notes made my heart race. Its lyrics — “Far beyond the blue sea,” — felt inexplicably hopeful.

Hayao Miyazaki of Japan, director of the animated film ″Ponyo,″ poses at a special screening of the film in Los Angeles on July 27, 2009. [AP/YONHAP]

Even my mother, who disapproved of my love for cartoons, eventually sat beside me, quietly watching. The image of Conan and Lana standing atop a mast, white sails fluttering against a deep blue sky, remains vivid in my memory. I must have joined the chant — “Our Co-nan!” — a hundred times. The story’s postapocalyptic setting, with continents drowned beneath the sea, imagined 2008 as a distant future. Today, I miss Conan’s cheerful resilience more than ever.

That nostalgia has returned with the rise of the so-called Ghibli-style aesthetic. Studio Ghibli, founded in 1985 by legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki, created beloved works like My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Spirited Away (2001), and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). While Future Boy Conan predates the studio — it aired on NHK in 1978 — it was directed by Miyazaki and often seen as a precursor to the Ghibli universe.

But what’s bringing the Ghibli aesthetic back into global conversation isn’t a new film. It’s AI. Powered by tools like ChatGPT, image-generation models can now transform everyday photos into illustrations that resemble Miyazaki’s visual style. Type in a prompt like “make this Ghibli-style,” and the result is a soft, emotional rendering that feels hand-drawn and familiar.

In Korea, this trend took hold quickly. The number of ChatGPT sign-ups reportedly doubled in a month. Social media filled with stylized images — friends at dinner, children in parks, pets at home — all transformed into Ghibli-like scenes. What struck me was how many people shared the same emotional response. These images weren’t just pleasing. They felt familiar.

That familiarity speaks to how deeply Ghibli’s storytelling has shaped our collective imagination. We grew up with characters who resembled Miyazaki’s gentle heroes. Titles like Anne of Green Gables (1979), Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), Whisper of the Heart (1995), and Spirited Away are enough to summon vivid memories. Seeing a friend’s photo in this style feels intimate, like revisiting a shared past.

The Ghibli-style trend is paradoxical. It’s driven by cutting-edge AI, yet it evokes analog feelings. We might expect to admire the technology, but instead, we find ourselves drawn to its emotional resonance. Even OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was reportedly surprised by how quickly the feature gained popularity. Perhaps the true power of AI lies not in its efficiency, but in its ability to remind us what we care about.

Of course, this comes with questions — energy usage, copyright issues and the ethics of synthetic art. But those are debates for another day. What matters now is that the technology is reconnecting us with long-lost emotions: wonder, gentleness and the belief that kindness still matters.

Officials sit at a registration reception center for preliminary candidates for the 21st presidential election, set up at the National Election Commission in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi on April 7. [YONHAP]

Ghibli’s visual style is more than just a look. It’s a worldview. Even if you’ve never seen a Miyazaki film, the themes resonate. Loss and recovery. Friendship and solitude. The strength to keep going when the world falls apart. Ghibli’s protagonists overcome hardship not through might, but through compassion. Watching them, we feel the kind of moral clarity that’s easy to forget in noisy times.

As Korea approaches a pivotal presidential election, politicians might do well to pay attention. Today’s public sentiment isn’t driven by ideology or party lines. It’s shaped by a quiet longing — for decency, for sincerity, for hope. The people want leaders who do not dominate but endure. Who, like Conan or Chihiro, hold onto kindness even in the face of collapse.

That’s the real meaning of the Ghibli wave: the power of decency. Even in the wake of martial law declarations and a president’s impeachment, the Korean public hasn’t abandoned its faith in renewal. We still believe that a just beginning is possible — so long as it is built with humility and integrity. We may not yet see our next hero, but we continue to look. Because that’s who we are.

The Ghibli aesthetic may seem like a nostalgic trend, but it reveals something deeper: a cultural yearning to remember that beauty, softness and courage still have a place in the world. That magic, it turns out, was never about fantasy. It was about how we choose to live.

Translated from the JoongAng Ilbo using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.