Studio Ghibli’s work is still largely recognizable as anime, but often these conventions are passed by or subverted. There is however no definitive visual style constant to all Ghibli productions. For example, My Neighbors The Yamadas (above) is a complete variation, its visuals based on the newspaper comic strip source material, or Ocean Waves, seen below, which clearly attempts a more realistically animated and detailed style, with proportionally realistic characters who portray no exaggerated emotions or features, including realistic hair colours.
Its more traditionally styled films are generally the more commercially popular ones, probably because it is what audiences expect to see from an anime film. However even these films never fully conform to all anime stylings, Miyazaki prefers not to exaggerate features or visualize emotions without reason, and therefore Ghibli films are often easier to take seriously than other anime simply as they have less comic stylings. Yubaba in Spirited away has a disproportionately large head and body, but she is a witch in the spirit world, so realistic proportional rules do not apply.
Similarly to the gargantuan transformation of Howls Moving Castle’s Witch of the Waste, and it also applies to the slight visual alterations of scenes set in the past in Only Yesterday, where everything is rose tinted, watercolour colours with surreal moments and slightly exaggerated expressions.
Often if a character has exaggerated features of any kind it is to signify a removal from the real world, and these are not generally used on central characters, or any characters anchored to the real world.
Something which adds significantly to the visual style of Ghiblis films is Miyazaki’s love for hand drawn animation, although some of his films are tweaked in computer software, many are not, and the style often creates quite impressionistic sequences, such as recently in Ponyo, where he speeds across the ocean chased by a fierce storm.
Originality as laid out by Francois Truffaut in Cahiers Du Cinema is an important part of the auteur theory, and therefore it is
important to note Ghibli’s deviation in this case. So studio Ghibli should be known not necessarily for any core artistic style, but for its readiness to deviate and experiment, and as a leader in the western perception of anime, Ghibli could well be leading the genres evolution.
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