Movies

[Lambda]

Depends on your tastes. Mononoke if you like darker stuff, Kiki for lighter stuff, Nausicaa for in between, Grave of the Fireflies if you like European art films, Totoro if you like Oscar-bait.

[Alicorn]

Spirited Away is the best. I like Nausicaa too.

[MaggieoftheOwls]

When I was a kid, we had a copy of Nausicaa in the original Japanese. I didn't speak a word of Japanese, I was just going based on what people were doing and tone of voice and stuff. I still loved it.
It was interesting, years later, when I found it in English and compared what was really going on to what I had thought was going on.

[DanielH]

How close were your guesses?

[Bluelantern]

When I was a kid, we had a copy of Nausicaa in the original Japanese. I didn't speak a word of Japanese, I was just going based on what people were doing and tone of voice and stuff. I still loved it.
It was interesting, years later, when I found it in English and compared what was really going on to what I had thought was going on.

I vaguely tempted to do this, but I barely have the attention span for a single understandable movie ».»

[MaggieoftheOwls]

Mm--mostly accurate, but I thought the Ohmu were evil and didn't really have a clue what was going on with the flesh-melty "god-warrior."

[Adelene]

Also, I recommend the Howl's Moving Castle book - the movie is very pretty but mangled the plot to the point of incomprehensibility.

[MaggieoftheOwls]

Haven't seen the movie, can wholeheartedly second the book.

[PlainDealingVillain]

I heartily recommend both the book and movie of Howl's Moving Castle, with the substantial caveat that you should not consider them related to each other. The plot is entirely unrelated and the only characters that have any similarity are Sophie, the castle, and its inhabitants.

I'd also suggest skipping Nausicaa entirely (it does nothing other Ghibli movies don't, and does them all very... flatly?), and recommend Mononoke, Howl, and Spirited Away.

[Tamien]

I remember being *extremely excited* about Howl's Moving Castle being made into an movie by Ghibli, like 20 minutes straight squeeing excited, and then *extremely let down* because of how badly it mangled the plot. It's a very pretty movie and it might be good on its own merits but I couldn't enjoy it because I was expecting it to actually resemble the book, so I don't know that I can really recommend it. I wholeheartedly recommend the book, though.