Former Studio Ghibli / Tokuma Shoten Executive Steve Alpert discusses working with visionary filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki

Anime distributor AnimEigo and parent company MediaOCD have released the latest episode of The Anime Business on YouTube featuring an in-depth interview with Steve Alpert, who played a pivotal role in bringing director Hayao Miyazaki’s films to Western audiences as a former Senior Vice President at Tokuma Shoten and Director of Studio Ghibli’s Overseas Business Division.

The Anime Business Episode 20: Steve Alpert is available on the official AnimEigo YouTube Channel.

In a wide-ranging chat, Alpert recalls his career starting at Disney and later working closely with Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s General Manager, Toshio Suzuki, and how he nurtured close relationships with both men as his own career evolved. He offers many anecdotes and keen behind-the-scenes perspectives on films like Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Spirited Away, and how they were licensed and sometimes altered, for international distribution. He also recalls the impact of the massive success of Princess Mononoke and how it propelled Studio Ghibli to global notoriety, with often mixed feelings from its founders.

Throughout the interview, Alpert notes contrasts between Japanese and Western culture and business practices as well as stark differences between anime and Western cinema and the wider entertainment industry. His recollections of conversations between Miyazaki and Pixar founder John Lasseter are poignant. He also delivers some enlightening insights into Miyazaki’s complex and often misunderstood worldview and attitudes about his work and how the Studio Ghibli brand is marketed.

Steve Alpert collected his experiences in a memoir, Sharing the House with the Never-Ending Man: 15 Years at Studio Ghibli, published by Stone Bridge Press.

The Anime Business is a first-of-its-kind series featuring a wide range of entrepreneurs and visionaries that helped to pioneer and shape the North American anime and manga industries. It is produced and hosted by industry veteran and MediaOCD founder and AnimEigo CEO Justin Sevakis. Episodes 1-17 of The Anime Business and bonus clips are also now available to stream on the AnimeEigo YouTube channel.  All episodes of The Anime Business are available in English. Japanese subtitles are also available via a special grant from the Kleckner Foundation.

About AnimEigo:

AnimEigo is a division of MediaOCD and was founded in 1989 as one the first distributors to focus on anime and an array of acclaimed Japanese live-action films in the United States and Canada. Over the last 35 years, AnimEigo consistently broadened the market for Japanese content by cultivating audiences for new genres of film. 

Renowned for high quality translations, subtitles, and dubbing, AnimEigo has released a wide variety of classic anime titles. For more information, please visit: mediaocd.com.

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The contents of this post was provided by Media Lab Public Relations.