Every Studio Ghibli Movie Ranked Worst To Best

Humanism colours all Ghibli productions, but perhaps no film benefits from it more than Isao Takahata's haunting drama about a woman who recalls how she became the person she is.

Intimate and crushing, Only Yesterday lacks the fantastical flare of other Ghibli efforts, instead opting for a more realist approach to its coming-of-age drama. The results are delicate, subtle, and sympathetically life-affirming.

Takahata, always the studio's more gracious and understated master storyteller, brings his story of childhood woes, young love, and the torments of memory to life with a bittersweet and infectious charm that's impossible to shake.

Only Yesterday is perhaps Ghibli's most relatable picture, a deep character study that speaks to both the child and wistful adult that lurks within us all, and the conclusions it draws about who we are are simply life-changing.