Hayao Miyazaki and his colleagues at Studio Ghibli craft pictures that are so delicately drawn and convincingly textured that it seems as if we should be able to step right into them. Think of the bustling bathhouse of "Spirited Away” or the bucolic Japanese countryside of "My Neighbor Totoro.”
But as viewers, we are never able to actually enter these worlds of tender emotions, whimsical characters and, perhaps above all, vivid locations that set the imagination ablaze. Movies are made from flat 2D images; they remain tantalizingly out of reach.
The most committed Ghibli fans can travel to Ghibli Park in Nagoya and Ghibli Museum in Tokyo for a tactile experience of their beloved animated films. But most of us are not making that globe-trotting journey.
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