Fair warning: This is going to be paraphrased like whoa, some places more than others. I can't write by hand as fast as I can type and I couldn't get a clear audio recording to transcript. I can, however, promise that I am conveying the general gist of the answers and/or comments with high accuracy.

Q: What do you think about the problems being caused by how today's children are living more and more in a virtual world?
A: Old people always like to talk about how things aren't good anymore compared to when they were children. The children of today are living in a more virtual world than the children of 50 years ago, but even then the children of 50 years ago were living in a more virtual world than the children of 50 years before that. Movies were the last generation's virtual escape, and they still continue to be so.

Q: Why do you rarely have pure evil characters in your movies?
A: Really evil characters aren't fun to draw, and so Miyazaki made the decision to not have any true evil characters in his movies.

Q: Do you base characters or situations in movies off your staff?
A: Yes. (There's a well known example of Chihiro being a staff member's daughter, but Miyazaki mentioned that Fujimoto from Ponyo reminds him of one of the chief animation staff who is having problems with his daughter growing up.)

Q: Ponyo is supposed to be a goldfish, but doesn't look like a goldfish. Why is that?
A: She was originally supposed to be a red tin toy frog, but the story didn't work out very well that way, so she was changed to be a goldfish, but elements of her original design remain.

Q: Some crap I forgot to write down about weird animals that lead to an answer containing that...
A: Miyazaki told the staff of Totoro to make sure that you can't tell if Totoro is very smart or very stupid.

-The parents eating everything in Spirited Away before turning into pigs really ISN'T some commentary on materialism. He didn't ever intend for it to be read that way.

-Miyazaki said that he wanted to find a less obvious way to show that Chihiro was entering a fantasy world than just using a tunnel or a cabinet door or the like, but the scenes that he tried to make using alternate methods took way too long, so he decided to use a tunnel in the end. He felt like he was cheating.

-Out of 22 new animators they are training at Ghibli, only 4 are men. They're trying to recruit a further 10 animators, but out of the pool they've narrowed it down to to pick said 10 from, only 1 is a man.

Quote: "Since there are so many strong women now, I might have to start making movies about men."

-Miyazaki hopes that people who become mothers can be strong like Sousuke's mom from Ponyo. He added that her driving was amazing. (Much laughter, because her driving is TERRIFYING.)

-Miyazaki hopes people can enjoy manga just as it is, because while you can often add things to it by animating, there are some problems that make it not always turn out well. Manga and film have different concepts of time and space. Trying to show the passage of time or the dimensions of a location in manga and in anime are entirely different beasts, and if you aren't careful in adapting properly, it's easy to make the resulting anime either boring or stretching on too long.

-He's not saying that he's going to retire after this movie anymore, despite saying it a lot in the past. After Nausicaa, only his second movie, he told his wife that he never wanted to go through anything that painful again. He's been saying this to his family after every film that in his home, he's the least persuasive person and they don't always listen to what he says. So now he's trying to say things like that less.

-His advice for someone trying to get into animation: Keep a sketchbook and sketch what you see with your own eyes all the time. Find someone who will critique it harshly and fairly and not coddle you necessarily.

Q: Which characters are most like yourself?
A: He tries not to let himself show in film, although he admits that sometimes artists can accidentally let their own face into characters. But he tries not to. (This was a MASSIVELY evasive answer.)

Q: What do you think about the government trying to use soft power (anime/manga) to promote Japan abroad?
A: I think the government will be changing soon.

Q: Do you get inspired by travel?
A: I'm old now so I just walk around my house.

Q: Do you still think children in 50 years will be able to relate to your movies?
A: It'd be wonderful if he can make movies that grandmothers can tell their grandchildren that are good to watch, but he's not sure if he can make movies that a mother could recommend to her child. (This one made very little sense while I was listening to the interview, and I think I garbled my notes a bit.)

-Miyazaki likes to think of his movies less as "my" films, but "our" films. But in his case "our" doesn't refer necessarily to the staff of the current movie. He's thinking of his contemporaries, the staff with whom he started making anime years ago and with whom they swore to try and eventually make better quality product instead of turning out more and more animated trash made just for profit. Many of them have retired, but when he says "our" films he means films that belong to that legacy.

Q: What do you think about true love?
A: True love is found at the end of troubles and hardship. At the end of Ponyo, most of the staff were saying that Sousuke would have a hard time of life with Ponyo afterwards, but Miyazaki said that he thinks they'll be OK, because life and love are all about facing troubles.

Q: Who are his peers?
A: He mentioned not being the same as a lot of art film animators who he likes because he's in the entertainment industry, but when asked to clarify who he thinks of as peers in entertainment animation, he called John Lasseter and Nick Park "comrades in arms".

Q: Would you ever do a live action movie?
A: You'd have to reset the landscape of Japan back 50 years for him to do that. The cars, the houses, the trains, the landscape, the clouds, even the faces of the people have changed in that much time, and it'd take too much computer work to try and undo that. In animation he can easily recreate any setting he wants, in any kind of landscape both real and fictional.

-When asked about CG, he mentioned that they brought in someone to try and show them how CG animation now is done, but the staff was actually able to do the animation faster with traditional pencil and paper, so they don't use much of it. He compared the methods of animation Ghibli uses and modern CG animation as rowing a little boat with oars while being surrounded by speedboats with motors.

-What can we hope for in the future from him? He doesn't know. He says it's just hoping that he doesn't keel over and die in the middle of animating, because that wouldn't be a good death.

And that's it for now! Several proper news people were around and taking proper transcripts (I actually got interviewed by the Yomiuri Shimbun, and they took my real name and age and occupation in hopes to quote me in the Japanese edition), but since I promised details, I am providing details. Look for better coverage later on legitimate news sites!

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