Portal:Studio Ghibli

Toshio Suzuki (鈴木 敏夫, Suzuki Toshio; born August 19, 1948) is a film producer of anime and a long-time colleague of Hayao Miyazaki, as well as the former president of Studio Ghibli. Suzuki is renowned as one of Japan's most successful producers after the enormous box office success (in Japan) of many Ghibli films.

His professional career started at Tokuma Shoten, joining the company shortly after graduation. He was assigned to the planning department of Asahi Geino entertainment magazine, where he was responsible for the manga coverage page. Here he had a long anticipated meeting with cartoonist Shigeru Sugiura. In 1973 he became the editor of the magazine's supplement Comic & Comic (コミック&コミック, Komiku to Komiku), for which he worked with and befriended film directors, such as Sadao Nakajima, Eiichi Kudo and Teruo Ishii, as well as animators and manga artists, like Osamu Tezuka, George Akiyama, Kazuo Kamimura, Hōsei Hasegawa and Shotaro Ishinomori.

During a hiatus from the comic supplement, he was reassigned to the performing arts feature section of Asahi Geino, for which he covered such varied topics as bōsōzoku (Japanese motorcycle gangs), and the bombing of the headquarters of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries by the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front. In 1975 Suzuki was assigned to the editorial department of the monthly Television Land (テレビランド, Terebi Rando), working on series such as Wakusei Robo Danguard Ace. In 1978 he became an editor for the, newly created, monthly magazine Animage, under its first editor-in-chief Hideo Ogata.

In his capacity as Animage editor he approached Isao Takahata and Miyazaki, who had worked on the animated feature film Hols: Prince of the Sun, for a feature article in the inaugural issue of the magazine but they declined. Suzuki and Miyazaki encountered each other again after the release of The Castle of Cagliostro when Suzuki again approached Miyazaki for an Animage article. This time the meetings result in an enduring collaborative relationship.

My Neighbor Totoro (となりのトトロ, Tonari no Totoro) is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film–which stars the voice actors Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, and Hitoshi Takagi–tells the story of the two young daughters (Satsuki and Mei) of a professor and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan. The film won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize and the Mainichi Film Award for Best Film in 1988.

In 1988, Streamline Pictures produced an exclusive dub for use on transpacific flights by Japan Airlines and its Oneworld partners. Troma Films, under their 50th St. Films banner, distributed the dub of the film co-produced by Jerry Beck. It was released on VHS and DVD by Fox Video. The film was released on VHS and laserdisc in the United States by Tokuma Japan Communications' US subsidiary in 1993 under the title My Friend Totoro. Troma's and Fox's rights to this version expired in 2004.

The film was re-released by Walt Disney Pictures on March 7, 2006 and by Madman on March 15, 2006, with a new dub cast. This DVD release is the first version of the film in the United States to include both Japanese and English language tracks, as Fox did not have the rights to the Japanese audio track for their version.

Heidi, Girl of the Alps (アルプスの少女ハイジ, Arupusu no Shōjo Haiji) is a 1974 anime series by Zuiyo Enterprises based on the Swiss novel Heidi's Years of Wandering and Learning by Johanna Spyri (1880). It was directed by Isao Takahata and features contributions by numerous other anime luminaries, including Yoichi Kotabe (character design, animation director), Toyoo Ashida (co-character design, animation director), Yoshiyuki Tomino (storyboard, screenplay), and Hayao Miyazaki (scene design, layout, screenplay).

Heidi is one of several World Masterpiece Theater titles produced around the "classical children's literature period" (1974–1997), based on classic tales from the Western world. The animation studio responsible for Heidi, Zuiyo Enterprises, would split in 1975 into Nippon Animation Company, Ltd. (which employed the anime's production staff and continued with the World Masterpiece Theater franchise) and Zuiyo Company, Ltd., which retained the rights (and debt) to the Heidi TV series. The feature-length movie edit of the TV series, released in March 1979, was engineered completely by Zuiyo, with no additional involvement from Nippon Animation, Takahata or Miyazaki.