Studio Ghibli wins April Fools’ Day (again) | Little White Lies

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Stu­dio Ghi­b­li wins April Fools’ Day (again)

01 Apr 2019

Words by Charles Bramesco

Animated characters in a forest setting, including a young girl with braided hair and a black cat.
Animated characters in a forest setting, including a young girl with braided hair and a black cat.
The Japan­ese ani­ma­tion house con­tin­ued a noble tra­di­tion by teas­ing a fake upcom­ing sequel.

April Fools’ Day, that dread­ed hol­i­day in which the pro­found­ly unfun­ny among us decide to try their hand at jokes and pranks. The once-a-year humor poseurs under­score just how much effort good tom­fool­ery requires – time, plan­ning, and a good graph­ic design team nev­er hurt.

At least, that’s true of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li. The reput­ed Japan­ese ani­ma­tion house has turned the first of April into an august tra­di­tion all its own, annu­al­ly pulling the wool over the fandom’s eyes with the promise of a sequel to one of their many hits.

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This year, their offi­cial Face­book page announced Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice fol­low-up Lucia’s Enchant­ed Stitch­ing for a release date of 2020. They even dum­mied up a poster, depict­ing a dis­tant rel­a­tive of Kiki hop­ping on her broom with a loy­al black cat in tow.

Of course, Ghi­b­li obses­sives know full well that the stu­dio has a strict no-remakes pol­i­cy, and saw through the ruse imme­di­ate­ly. But the point of this sil­ly exer­cise has always been to delight in imag­in­ing what could nev­er be, more than keep­ing up the decep­tion. Take a look at a few of the others:

Studio Ghibli releases sequel film images and announced them as future movies on April Fool's Day. pic.twitter.com/gsxUEbtw1Z — Anime Anonymous (@animeanonymous) April 1, 2017

This, ulti­mate­ly, is what sep­a­rates Ghi­b­li from Pixar and their oth­er Amer­i­can cousins. Pixar doesn’t have the integri­ty to make jokes about yet anoth­er Cars sequel. They’re already liv­ing Ghibli’s jokes.

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