Tharika J (Year 12)

Author’s Note: Welcome to the first article of Disney vs Studio Ghibli – my new series where I overanalyse children’s movies, so you don’t have to. From love and family to growing up, grief and happiness, each article will compare a different theme to uncover what these stories reveal about us and the world. We begin with perhaps the biggest question of them all: What is Love (baby don’t hurt me), and who actually understands love better?

It’s kind of ironic that most of us learn what love is supposed to look like long before we ever experience it ourselves. Before the first crush. Before the awkward first relationship. Before we’re old enough to understand what intimacy or commitment even mean. Somewhere between childhood movie nights, Sunday afternoons on the couch and watching the same DVD for the fifteenth time because it was the only thing we’d happily rewatch, our understanding of love quietly starts taking shape.

For a lot of us, Disney wrote the first draft.

Disney taught us that love arrives like lightning. It announces itself almost immediately, and changes everything. There is usually one person, one moment, one kiss that transforms an ordinary life into an extraordinary one. Love is destiny disguised as coincidence, and once it arrives, the story is essentially over. The prince finds the princess, the music swells, the birds sing on cue, the castle appears in the distance, and somehow everyone has already picked out the wedding venue. The screen fades to black, and they live happily ever after. 

It’s a beautiful idea. It’s also an incredibly influential one.

People love brushing these films off with, “They’re only children’s movies,” as though children somehow absorb stories less than adults do. I’d argue the opposite. Childhood is when stories matter most because we don’t have lived experience to compare them against. Before we understand love through experience, we understand them through narrative. Every magical reunion, every princess waiting for true love, every happily-ever-after ending becomes part of the emotional blueprint we carry into adulthood. We probably didn’t realise it then— I know I was too busy singing I See the Light or wondering why Belle wasn’t more impressed by the library—but those stories stayed. Films do not simply entertain us; they teach us what kinds of endings are worth hoping for. They tell us exactly what we should expect and what to settle for. 

That’s why I find Disney and Studio Ghibli such fascinating studios to compare. They have both shaped generations of children across the world, yet they seem to believe fundamentally different things about what love actually is. Disney imagines love as something extraordinary that happens to us. Studio Ghibli imagines it as something ordinary that we choose to do every day. Neither philosophy is entirely wrong, but they lead us toward very different expectations of what relationships should feel like. 

Nowhere is Disney’s philosophy clearer than Snow White.

The relationship between Snow White and the Prince barely exists in any conventional sense. They exchange only a handful of words before he becomes the answer to every problem the story presents. Their connection is not built through shared experiences or difficult conversations, because Disney asks us to believe that love is recognition rather than discovery. The right person appears, you simply know, and everything else falls into place. Apparently there’s no soot-covered chimney sweep required. No moving castle. No years spent learning who they actually are.

It’s easy to criticise Snow White now that I’m older–and, admittedly, far less delusional–but I think doing that misses what the film was actually trying to achieve.

Snow White was never aiming for realism. It was aiming for hope. It imagines a world where kindness is rewarded, and love carries an almost magical certainty. Honestly, I understand why that fantasy has lasted for nearly ninety years. There’s something deeply comforting about believing that somewhere, someone exists who will simply understand us without explanation.

Ariel takes this same philosophy and pushes it to its emotional extreme. She falls in love with Eric after only briefly seeing him and willingly gives up her voice, her home and ultimately her identity for the possibility of being with him. Disney frames these sacrifices as breathtakingly romantic because, within its worldview, love is worth risking everything for. Yet it also leaves us with an interesting question. If love asks us to become someone else before it can exist, is it really love at all? 

To Disney’s credit, its understanding of romance has changed considerably over the years. Relationships like Rapunzel and Flynn Rider in Tangled or Tiana and Naveen in The Princess and the Frog feel noticeably more grounded than the romances that came before them. These couples spend time together. They argue, laugh, challenge one another, and gradually become better people through shared experiences rather than instant attraction. Disney has clearly become more interested in chemistry than destiny.

Yet even these stories ultimately remain fascinated by the same moment: falling in love. Their endings still arrive once the couple chooses each other, quietly suggesting that love’s greatest challenge is finding the right person. What comes afterwards—the misunderstandings, the compromises, the ordinary routines that make up decades of a relationship—is left largely unexplored.

Studio Ghibli approaches love from almost the opposite direction.

Hayao Miyazaki rarely seems interested in asking whether two characters will end up together. In fact, many of his films barely acknowledge romance at all. Instead, his stories are filled with people quietly caring for one another. Characters cook meals together, wait patiently for each other, share moments of silence and help one another grow without expecting anything in return. Love is rarely announced with grand declarations. It reveals itself through the attention they pay to each other.

Spirited Away may be the clearest example. Whether Chihiro and Haku are friends, soulmates or something in between almost becomes irrelevant. What matters is that they continually choose to help each other remember who they really are. Names matter in Miyazaki’s worlds. Lose your name and you begin to lose yourself. Remember it, and you automatically know where home is again. Haku rescues Chihiro from a world determined to erase her identity, while Chihiro helps Haku remember his forgotten name as the Kohaku River. Their relationship is built less on romance than on recognition of each other’s humanity. When they finally say goodbye, the sadness comes not from a love story left unfinished but from the knowledge that some people change us forever, even if they are not meant to stay.

That idea appears throughout Ghibli’s films. Princess Mononoke refuses to resolve Ashitaka and San’s differences because genuine love does not require complete agreement. The Wind Rises presents one of animation’s most devastating romances by acknowledging that love cannot always save the people we care about. Jiro cannot cure Naoko’s illness, nor does the film pretend that love is powerful enough to overcome death. Instead, it argues something beautiful and more powerful: that loving someone fully, despite knowing they will eventually leave, is meaningful precisely because it cannot last forever. Like the paper aeroplanes Jiro spent his life chasing, some beautiful things simply aren’t built to stay in the sky forever.

My favourite Studio Ghibli film ever so far, and by far my favourite example of this is Howl’s Moving Castle. At first glance, it appears to be another fairy tale romance, yet its emotional importance is not entirely romantic. Sophie does not rescue Howl because she is destined to complete him, nor does Howl magically solve Sophie’s insecurities. Instead, they slowly create the conditions in which each can become a healthier version of themselves. Their relationship is imperfect, occasionally frustrating and wonderfully ordinary beneath all the magic. Honestly, Howl’s castle is a mess for most of the film- creaking doors, impossible hallways, Calcifer holding the whole thing together but effectively their love extends beyond the two of them, eventually creating a strange little family held together by acceptance rather than perfection.

But if the question becomes which studio better prepares us for the realities of loving another person, I find Ghibli’s answer far more compelling. Real relationships are rarely sustained by grand gestures alone. They survive because of small acts repeated over years: difficult conversations, patient forgiveness, shared routines, quiet sacrifices and the continual decision to choose someone long after the excitement of first love has faded. Perhaps that is why Ghibli’s romances linger with me long after the credits roll. They understand that love is less about finding someone who completes you than becoming the kind of person capable of caring for another human being well.

In summary, Disney taught many of us to dream about love. Studio Ghibli teaches us how to practise it.

And maybe growing up is realising that we need both. We need Disney to remind us that life is still capable of magic, but we need Ghibli to remind us that magic alone has never been enough to sustain a relationship. Fireworks eventually fade – whether they’re launched over a Disney castle or disappear above Howl’s flower field. What remains are the ordinary, almost invisible choices we make every day to keep tending the fire (Calcifer <3) long after everyone else has stopped watching.

Perhaps that has been Miyazaki’s point all along. Love is not something that simply happens to us. It is something we build, protect and choose, again and again, in ways that are often so quiet we almost fail to notice them. And maybe there is nothing more romantic than that.