The sto­ry of Hayao Miyazaki’s for­got­ten Sher­lock Holmes series

Although the vast major­i­ty of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries are now in the pub­lic domain, a small hand­ful writ­ten in the mid 1920s remain under copy­right, cre­at­ing legal dra­mas that con­tin­ue to give film­mak­ers headaches.

In 2015, direc­tor Bill Con­don was sued along­side dis­trib­u­tors Mira­max and Road­side Attrac­tions for Mr Holmes, with the Doyle estate claim­ing that the film infringed on the few sto­ries held under copy­right. Five years after that case was set­tled, the estate filed a new case against Net­flix for a near iden­ti­cal rea­son, stat­ing that by por­tray­ing Sher­lock as hav­ing emo­tions in their YA adap­ta­tion Eno­la Holmes, they infringed on the copy­right of those same stories.

Giv­en that Sher­lock Holmes holds the Guin­ness World Record as the most depict­ed fic­tion­al char­ac­ter in film and tele­vi­sion, cas­es like this are noth­ing new. But one large­ly for­got­ten Sher­lock law­suit from the ear­ly 1980s had far greater ram­i­fi­ca­tions than any­body could have realised at the time, halt­ing pro­duc­tion on one series and free­ing its direc­tor to cre­ate not only his first major film but also to co-found his own ani­ma­tion stu­dio in the process.

That direc­tor was Hayao Miyaza­ki, who, fol­low­ing the box office fail­ure of The Cas­tle of Cagliostro in 1979, moved back to the small screen to direct Sher­lock Hound, a Steam­punk reimag­in­ing of Doyle’s uni­verse, with the famous char­ac­ters all depict­ed as anthro­po­mor­phised dogs.

Mid­way through pro­duc­tion, after com­plet­ing six episodes bear­ing his direc­to­r­i­al cred­it, the Doyle estate launched a copy­right dis­pute that wouldn’t be resolved for a fur­ther three years. That same year, Miyazaki’s pro­posed sec­ond fea­ture, a loose adap­ta­tion of Rowlf (adapt­ed from the ​‘Heavy Met­al’ sto­ry of the same name by Richard Cor­ben) fell through as stu­dio Tokyo Movie Shin­sha were unable to acquire the rights. Around the same time Miyaza­ki was approached by ani­mé mag­a­zine Ani­m­age, who were impressed with his ini­tial sketch­es for what would become Nau­si­caä, and asked him to start a new seri­alised man­ga for the publication.

In 1984, a lit­tle over two years after the first chap­ter was pub­lished, the film adap­ta­tion was released along with the first two episodes of Sher­lock Hound, brought to cin­e­mas to screen before the main fea­ture. With the excep­tion of Holmes and Wat­son, sev­er­al char­ac­ter names had to be changed to soothe ten­sions with the Doyle estate (Mori­ar­ty became Moroach, for exam­ple), but the pos­i­tive reac­tion led to the net­work resum­ing pro­duc­tion. Kyosuke Mikuriya helmed the remain­ing 20 episodes, as Miyaza­ki was now ful­ly devot­ed to his oth­er projects, and all legal woes were resolved, allow­ing the orig­i­nal char­ac­ter names to be reinstated.

All of these fac­tors have led to Sher­lock Hound being reduced to a foot­note in Miyazaki’s fil­mog­ra­phy, even though it stands as his final TV work after two decades work­ing on the small screen. How­ev­er, the episodes bear­ing his name offer a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse at many of the recur­ring visu­al and the­mat­ic obses­sions we would go on to explore in his film work. Many of these are obvi­ous styl­is­tic quirks, such as the afore­men­tioned Steam­punk aes­thet­ic, with Mori­ar­ty reimag­ined as a mas­ter inven­tor behind all man­ner of fly­ing con­trap­tions, inform­ing the obses­sion with fly­ing that would under­pin the likes of Por­co Rosso and The Wind Ris­es.

The show also rechar­ac­teris­es Mrs Hud­son as a wid­ow in her mid twen­ties. Although Miyaza­ki went on to make a film par­tial­ly about a young woman find­ing lib­er­a­tion through old age, this youth­ful rein­ven­tion of Holmes and Watson’s land­la­dy gives her the same agency as many of his oth­er hero­ines. Here she becomes inte­gral to sev­er­al action sequences, show­cas­ing her shoot­ing and high-speed dri­ving abil­i­ties; Miyaza­ki large­ly affords her agency with­out betray­ing her orig­i­nal char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. In one episode, ​‘The Abduc­tion of Mrs Hud­son’, she even finds strength through per­form­ing domes­tic tasks, con­fus­ing Moriarty’s kid­nap­ping plot by instat­ing a sense of order into his delib­er­ate­ly dis­or­gan­ised liv­ing quarters.

The major dif­fer­ence between Sher­lock Hound and Miyazaki’s lat­er works is the insis­tence on mak­ing Mori­ar­ty a con­ven­tion­al vil­lain, with a plot to get the bet­ter of the detec­tive in near­ly every episode. Still, even with this sim­plis­tic, broad­ly comedic char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion there are still some sim­i­lar­i­ties with the director’s typ­i­cal ​‘grey antag­o­nists’; reimag­in­ing Mori­ar­ty as an inven­tor rein­forces Miyazaki’s belief that vil­lains often work hard­er than heroes, which is why he often ends up empathis­ing more with char­ac­ters he ini­tial­ly envi­sions as the antagonist.

Few peo­ple remem­ber Sher­lock Hound today and, due to rights issues, it remains large­ly inac­ces­si­ble beyond a few episodes hid­den away on YouTube. Viewed some 36 years on, it is clear that the show pro­vid­ed the foun­da­tion for much of Miyazaki’s work with Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, solid­i­fy­ing many of his recur­ring inter­ests and sig­na­ture aes­thet­ic choices.