Weaving Time, Nature, and Community: A Relational Imagination in Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away

Abstract

Studio Ghibli animated films have been widely examined through thematic lenses, including ecology, childhood, and spirituality. However, scholarship often approaches these dimensions in isolation, overlooking how they are cinematically entangled in shaping meaning and experience. This article examines Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Princess Mononoke (1997), and Spirited Away (2001), directed by Hayao Miyazaki, to explore how social, ecological, and temporal concerns are articulated across distinct narrative worlds. Drawing on relational theoretical perspectives and a multimodal approach informed by the kineikonic mode, the study investigates how movement, pacing, sound, and spatial organisation contribute to the films’ meaning-making processes. Through close analysis, the article demonstrates that social belonging, ecological responsibility, and temporal becoming are not presented as separate themes but emerge through overlapping relations enacted cinematically. Social recognition unfolds through endurance and labour, ecological ethics through reciprocal vulnerability, and temporal experience through liminality and sustained attention. The findings suggest that Ghibli films cultivate a relational mode of engagement that resists narrative closure and moral simplification. By foregrounding interdependence and uncertainty, the article contributes to scholarship on animated film by highlighting its potential as a site for ethical and pedagogical reflection, particularly in contexts marked by ecological precarity and social fragmentation.