Hayao Miyazaki comes out of retirement for final Studio Ghibli anime

Hayao Miyazaki has been keeping busy during his retirement.

The celebrated Japanese director announced his retirement in 2013, later again in 2018, and has been teasing a final project for years.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, the 80-year-old Japanese filmmaker confirmed that he will be coming out of retirement to make one more film - a feature-length project called How Do You Live?.

When asked why he was making another movie, Miyazaki replied: "Because I wanted to."

"[He] needed to create something in order to live, basically," said Goro about his father's return to filmmaking.

Although details of Miyazaki's upcoming feature film are scarce, How Do You Live? will be based on a 1937 novel of the same name by Genzaburo Yoshino.

According to Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki, the film is a "fantasy on a grand scale". The only other detail Suzuki would share is that he sees himself in one of the film's characters, who is not human.

How Do You Live? centres around the story of a young boy Junichi Honda, known by his nickname Koperu, who moves in with his uncle and experiences a "spiritual change".

The book deals with the structure of society and how Koperu views how he fits in.

Though no release date has been set, fans can likely catch How Do You Live? in "the next three years". Whether or not Miyazaki will finally head into retirement after this film still remains to be seen.

"In the West, we always need to know how things end," said Suzuki. "At Ghibli, the last scene is often a mystery."

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This article was first published in Geek Culture.