The Secret World of Arrietty

Hiromasa Yonebayashi was 36 when he directed this, the youngest to take a Ghibli feature; Miyazaki was 43 and Takahata 52 at their studio debuts. Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa adapted Mary Norton’s 1952 novel The Borrowers, moving a story set in England to a Japanese house. At the 34th Japan Academy Film Prize it won Animation of the Year and appeared nowhere else. The score is by the French harpist and singer Cécile Corbel, hired after she posted a promotional album to the studio; Toshio Suzuki responded to the harp and her voice. Her songs are sung in Japanese, English, German, Italian, Breton and French, over bagpipes, bodhrán, Irish flute and accordion. That is the French entry in the credits. There are two English dubs and they are not the same film. The British release, titled Arrietty, has Saoirse Ronan, Tom Holland, Mark Strong and Olivia Colman. Disney’s was directed by Gary Rydstrom; Shō becomes Shawn, a song called Summertime is added, and the ending is closed off by a monologue in which Shawn says he never saw Arrietty again. A good fit if you accept a scale gap carried by detail and sound rather than by villain machinery. Not for anyone watching in English without checking which print they opened; the two do not end alike.